Monastery Nightmare Hardcover – March 3, 1986 by Ross Spencer
 
Chicago private investigator Luke Lassiter takes on the unusual assignment of writing the newest installment in a best-selling detective series whose author has disappeared
 
From Publishers Weekly
Chicago private eye Luke Lassiter gets a chance at big bucks when he is commissioned to write the "final" thriller of missing (and presumed dead) bestselling author Carl Garvey. Long a fan and a would-be writer, Lassiter successfully apes Garvey's slam-bang style and the book is a smash. But the insurance company is suspicious, and Lassiter himself is hired to find the missing author. Garvey's lawyer is killed, then his "widow," and bodies start piling up. Before Lassiter can unravel the mystery, his live-in girlfriend is murdered and there's a climactic confrontation on a Fiji-bound ship. Spencer's (The Data Caper tough-guy tone is at first pleasantly old-fashioned but eventually becomes tiresome. Lassiter's tom-catting palls, the silly subplots founder in attempts at profundity, and the main plot cannot sustain a trite, melodramatic ending.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
 
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