Robert Littell, the great US spy novelist, channels Marlowe and Crumley and possibly a few others for this exercise in wry PI desert noir. Our tarnished hero who drives down these mean highways and traverses these mean dunes and mean motels and mean casinos and mean romance, is Lemuel Gunn, ex homicide detective, ex-CIA adoptive father to an Afghan orphan and struggling with rage issues. Hired to track down a bail jumper whose photographs and files mysteriously vanish and who seems to have given the tipp-off that lead to his own arrest, Gunn sets out with admirable tenacity and ingenuity to find his man, uncovering a mess of rival mobsters and FBI witness protection gone wrong. While he's at it, he's falling for his vulnerable and slightly dippy client.

It's witty, laconic, twisty and sad, everything you need from a wry PI desert noir. Littel's a fairly high-powered thriller writer, and he keeps this tight and small and tense, and doesn't appear to break a sweat doing it.