In 1985, Dick Lochte presented us with perhaps the most extraordinary detective pairing in the long history of the genre. Leo Bloodworth is an LA investigator, Korean war veteran in his 50s, overweight, unfit, and tends to come off second best in fights with the bad guys. Serendipity Renn Dahlquist is 14 years old, as smart as a tack but would probably be described as ‘on the spectrum’ in these ever-so-enlightened days. Her dad never made it back from Vietnam, her mum is, as they used to say, ‘no better than she ought to be’, and the girl lives with her grandmother, an actress in a long-running TV soap.

What brings them together? Bizarrely, it is because Sarah (for short) has a dog, a bulldog called Groucho. And he has gone missing. When she goes to the police, one of the officers jokingly refers her to Bloodworth. While he never formally agrees to take on the case, events force Leo and Sarah into a reluctant partnership. In one Chandleresque paragraph, Bloodworth describes the situation: 

“I had a dead partner. I had a plastic faced knife artist. I had guys in suits tossing my office and my apartment looking for something called the Century List and talking about blackmail. I had an old lady who’d had a wall toppled on her. I also had a kid with a lost dog and her mother was mixed up in dog fights with some low life from the Mex Mafia.”

The plot spins this way and that, and draws in financial swindlers, the grim subculture of dog-fights, impersonations enabled through cosmetic surgery, and incompetent PIs. The core of the book, however, is the relationship between Bloodworth and Serendipty. It would have been as fraught with risks in 1985 to suggest any sense of sexual spark between the two as it would be now. However, on a couple of occasions, Lochte (left) flirts with danger. There were several subsequent novels featuring Leo and Serendipity, but I have not read them, so I am unable to report on how their relationship developed.

This novel, 40 years on, will not disappoint fans of LA investigator crime fiction. Of course, Lochte doesn’t hold a candle to Chandler, but then who did? I would nominate Robert B Parker as a contender, but then Spencer operated in Boston, so the milieu was altogether different.The plot spins this way and that, and draws in financial swindlers, the grim subculture of dog-fights, impersonations enabled through cosmetic surgery, and incompetent PIs. The core of the book, however, is the relationship between Bloodworth and Serendipty.

The story behind the initial search for Groucho is as complex as anything ever dreamed up by Chandler. At least we do not have to ask, “Who killed the chauffeur.?” In a rather contrived ending, Bloodworth, several tequilas to the good, explains it all away to his former cop partner, Rudy Cugat – and, of course, to us.