Double Indignity: A Rex Koko, Private Clown Mystery (#2)

In the follow-up to the award-winning Honk Honk, My Darling, NYT best-selling author James Finn Garner (Politically Correct Bedtime Stories) returns to the restless streets of Top Town, a ghetto full of circus has-beens and never-wases, and the stomping grounds of that Sam Spade in Whiteface, Rex Koko.

In this thrilling clown noir caper, Rex Koko is asked to bring in a rogue lion and has his expensive shoes chewed up in the process. While trying to be repaid for them, Rex runs afoul of drug-pushing quacks, alligator hypnotists, Amazonian witch doctors, infantile mobsters and blue-nosed moral crusaders. Before the second act, menace fills the Top Town air like the smells of popcorn, whiskey and fear. The South American jungle was never so dangerous as the tawdry streets of Top Town, "the next best thing to a good time."

It's three rings of danger, suspense and more danger. As e.e. cummings said, "Damn everything, but the circus!"