Craig, Rice. Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak. #bk. 1

Armed Services editions (Series) #1074

Read by Johnny Heller

In this novel, two New York City street photographers develop a deadly get-rich-quick scheme. Resourceful Bingo Riggs and his partner, Handsome Kusak, are in the sucker-bait business, snapping candid pics of tourists off Central Park. Their fly-by-night enterprise can be irresistible to souvenir lovers, but with one camera in a pawnshop and their developing room in the bathtub of a two-room dump near Hell's Kitchen, their venture is wretchedly underexposed-until they stumble upon an insurance fraud scheme between the allegedly dead eccentric Mr. S. S. Pigeon and his business partner and beneficiary. There's only one way for Bingo and Handsome to muscle in on that half-million-dollar claim: kidnap Pigeon and blackmail his coconspirator. Unfortunately, their foolproof plan comes with mobsters, a dodgy chorus girl, multiple murders, a refrigerated corpse, and the strange Mr. Pigeon himself, who, it seems, likes being a hostage. In fact, he has no intention of escaping. It's the surest way to protect his own secret-which could be Bingo and Handsome's biggest threat. "Grand combination of whimsy and wickedness." "Very fast, funny, and good." "Brisk and very funny." "Along with the comedy you have a genuinely puzzling mystery." "This audiobook is lowbrow, high energy, and absurdly good fun. Johnny Heller narrates a 1940s-style mystery in a voice suggestive of tough guys in old detective movies…Heller also portrays many other zany characters, employing a range of timing and vocalization."

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