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Title: Great Screwball Comedy/Mystery
Review: Jonathan Latimer was a reporter with Chicago Herald Examiner in the thirties before publishing this novel in 1935. The central character is Bill Crane, an operative with a detective agency in Chicago. There are 4 other Bill Crane books by Latimer, all of them hilarious. Crane has to be the hardest drinking private dick in the history of literature, even surpassing Hammett's Nick Charles. This whole series is a screwball comedy lover's dream. Hearse follows the efforts of Crane and his cronies to save an innocent man on death row with only twenty-four hours until the execution (and for Crane, that's a lot of drinking!). Latimer is superb at mixing comedy, suspense and pathos. This is a great first novel.
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