Helms offers us what is intended to be the first in a series of stories. The concept here isn't new (hey, Sherlock Holmes wasn't the first genius detective either) but the characters are intersting and the writing is amusing.
The narrator is Boy Boatwright, a cop who should have retired but is living on booze and adrenalin. (When the story starts he is waking up with his face on the toilet rim.) But the hero, for lack of a better word, is the remarkably-named Bowie Crapster. Crapster is "five and a half feet tall, with a figure like a Bradford pear." He dresses in flashy clothes and "looked like the vanguard of a midget Elvis parade."
Crapster claims to be a psychic detective but he graciously gives the cops all the credit for his work. He just wants the reward money. Boatwright loathes him, but the fact is, he is a pretty shrewd sleuth. In this case he deals with the apparent kidnapping of the young heir to a wealthy family.
Will he solve it? Will he drive Boatwright back to the booze? "Some days it just doesn't pay to get up out of the toilet."
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