Knocked for a Loop: John J. Malone Series, 10

Being framed for murder is the least of a Chicago attorney's problems in this dizzying thriller.

Attorney John J. Malone, steadfast, barfly, and proud defender of the guilty, has a lot enemies, but few more formidable than Chicago financier and anti-vice crusader Leonard Estapole. So it doesn't look good when Estapole's corpse turns up in Malone's office, liberated from this life by a bronze Buddha to the skull. But when the stiff's stepdaughter is kidnapped, and Malone is implicated, it's a frame job gone too far. Especially when Malone is suddenly saddled with the obnoxious abductee--a dimpled little extortionist who refuses to go home.

If only Malone could count on his friends, Jake and Helene Justus. Unfortunately, Helene's disappeared from a Wyoming dude ranch and her friendship with Estapole's trophy-wife widow is too coincidental for comfort. Now, with every blindsiding twist of the case, Malone is starting to feel more and more like a hostage himself.

The first mystery writer to ever make the cover of Time magazine, Craig Rice is a "composite of Agatha Christie's ingenuity, Dashiell Hammett's speed, and Dorothy Sayers's wit" (Louis Untermeyer). And in Knocked for a Loop, she's in "top form" (Jon L. Breen, Edgar Award-winning author).