Sham Shamus by Charlotte Stuart

A gritty but tongue-in-cheek satire of hard-boiled gumshoe fiction, Sham Shamus by Charlotte Stuart is a creative twist on the private eye genre, where the lines between hunter and hunted disappear entirely. When P.I. Eric Henderson is hired to find a ruthless political climber and informant who’s wanted by the mob, the case hits shockingly close to his dangerous double life. Cleverly laced with witty dialogue, a razor-sharp protagonist, and slick but believable supporting characters, this multilayered work of detective fiction manages to be both amusing and suspenseful, expertly pillorying old-school detective novels while also showing abundant reverence for the genre.