Little Elvises: A Junior Bender Mystery

"Timothy Hallinan, an accomplished mystery writer (check out his series set in Bangkok, featuring an American travel writer named Poke Rafferty), introduced Junior Bender in Crashed.. Bender, who lives in Los Angeles, makes his main living as a burglar. He also moonlights as a fixer: Southern California criminals know that if they get in a real jam, they can turn to Junior to get them out of trouble. When he’s hired to clear a former music industry talent spotter of murder, Junior realizes that the more he delves into the case, the more complex it becomes. And it’s likely that nobody’s going to be happy with the outcome of his investigation. The third novel in the Bender trilogy, The Fame Thief, also came out in 2013: It was a tossup for me to choose which one to include in this list. I’d recommend reading the novels in order, but you don’t absolutely need to — each one is as splendidly entertaining as the others."