Another noir story which just rattles along pleasantly without ever achieving much. It takes place in Mexico, where our protagonist, a private eye, has been sent to investigate the death of an expatriate American. He becomes involved (really involved!) with the dead man's three girlfriends and his next door neighbor, an odd Mexican who likes to talk a lot and has a beautiful nude female servant bring him breakfast. It's that kind of book. In between the exotica and sex scenes (not explicit) the whodunit plot line doesn't seem to be a big priority for the author, although the finale is fairly well done. Howard writes pretty well, but as in so many Gold Medal novels, there seems to have been no editor asking for the type of small improvements that could have lifted this book out of mediocrity. ( )