Doll Eyes - Hardcover

Rooster Franklin, the laid-back former car thief and mystery series hero introduced in Hot Wire , proves to be nothing but a patsy in this unsuccessful tale built on greed and love-blindness. Shortly before his prison sentence is up, Kansas City, Kans., crime boss Marc Morelli anticipates seriously hurting Rooster, who put him away. Rooster, however, is more concerned with Morelli's sister Rosalinda, a former true love whose affections he intends to reclaim. Flying from Seattle to K.C. to convince Rosalinda to marry him, Rooster is too thick-headed to pick up on friends' hints that his devotion is one-sided. He lets himself into Rosalinda's house and finds the body of a woman recently shot to death. Next he learns that Rosalinda, who had sold her house to the victim, has married a high-society type. Deciding that his true love has fallen unknowing into her current situation, Rooster determines to investigate and save her, and in the process he uncovers evidence of kinky sex, panes of fantastically valuable "inverted" postage stamps--and Rosalinda's true colors. Russell exercises a heavy hand here, telegraphing the plot from the first chapter and making the least of his essentially likable protagonist.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

After a two-year split, the engagingly corrupt Rooster Franklin (Caught Looking, etc.) has decided he can't live without Rosalinda, and when he shows up on her Kansas City doorstep, he fully expects her to marry him. The problem? Rosalinda has already married snooty Joseph Warman--plus there's a dead body at Rosalinda's former address. Who murdered pretty Kathleen, and why? The artist was supposedly a prot‚g‚e of Rosalinda and Warman's, even though her work wasn't being shown at Inside Moves, their fancy gallery. Then an arsonist burns Kathleen's entire output, and Rooster is convinced Warman is behind it. Hellbent on separating Warman from Rosalinda, he pokes and pries and comes up with a steamy videotape that sets his romantic prospects even further back. Meanwhile, Rosalinda's mobster brother is tailing Rooster, and the cops are sizing him up for a jail cell. Finally, though, a million-dollar pane of stamps will end Rooster's chances of marrying--and explain the motive behind several other murders. A mean, funny spin on what happens when you talk yourself into being in love. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.