Deadly Campaign by Alan Orloff (Llewellyn
Publications, 2012) was published 13 years ago but the subject might have been ripped out
of last week’s headlines. The second book in the Last Laff series, about
Channing Hayes and Artie Worsham, co-owners of the Last Laff Comedy Club
somewhere in central Fairfax County, Virginia, near Washington, DC, offers
insight into the operations of a comedy club, the life of a stand-up comic, and
the collusions of a local political campaign. I fear scheming politicos will always
be with us.
Channing and Artie have been
invited by Thomas Lee, owner of Lee’s Palace, a restaurant next door to Last
Laff, to attend a political dinner celebrating Lee’s nephew’s win in the
Democratic congressional primary. After a fabulous meal of Chinese cuisine,
nominee Edward Wong launched into a polished speech. Shortly after it started,
three masked goons dressed in black and carrying baseball bats broke into the
room, crushed the video camera, threatened several people including Channing,
and smashed the plates, platters, and glassware, then left. After police
interviewed the stunned and frightened audience, Hao Wong, Edward’s father, convinced
the detectives not to report the crime for fear of damaging Edward’s campaign.
Hao was a highly influential member of the Chinese community, many of which
were in the room, and he had no trouble pressuring those present to keep the
attack to themselves.
The next day Thomas asks
Channing to investigate the attack, even though Hao has told him through his
wife, Thomas’s sister, to stay out of it. Channing has no real investigative
experience but he begins with the obvious, by looking at Edward’s competition
to see if the attack was politically motivated. Then he asked enough questions of
Edward’s connections to attract the autocratic Hao Wong’s attention, who orders
Channing to come to his office and tells him to stop, which of course only annoyed
Channing and encouraged him to continue.
In between his bouts of
amateur PI work, Channing manages with the daily details of running the comedy
club and he develops new material for his own stand-up act which has hit a dry
streak. He’s anxious to get his performance mojo back.
Many threads add to the
interest and the plot complexity. The multiple references to places and streets
in northern Virginia, my home for 40 years, made the story especially
appealing. The ending has a couple of nice twists.
Particularly for readers of
political thrillers like Mike Lawson’s Joe DeMarco series and for readers
familiar with northern Virginia and its environs, particularly Fairfax County.
Alan Orloff is an Anthony,
Agatha, Derringer, and Thriller award winning author. He has published more
than fifty short stories in numerous anthologies and periodicals,
including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, Black
Cat Mystery Magazine, and five volumes of the Best New England Crime
Stories series. He has served on the editorial selection panel for several
anthologies and writing awards, and he is a member of Mystery Writers of
America (MWA), International Thriller Writers, and Sisters in Crime.
·
Publisher:
Midnight Ink
·
Publication
date: January 8, 2012
·
Language:
English
·
Print
length: 36 pages
·
ISBN-10:
0738723185
·
ISBN-13:
978-0738723181
Amazon Associate Purchase
Link: https://amzn.to/4f8KPQm
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025
Aubrey Hamilton is a former
librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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