Bingo and Handsome are trying to make money with their photography business: they photograph people in Central Park, then hand over their business cards and offer to sell the photographs to the subjects themselves. Thanks to Handsome's photographic memory, they realize that they have a picture of a man who has been missing for almost seven years and is about to be declared dead. The missing man, S.S. Pigeon, leaves behind an insurance policy that is worth $500,000 to his former business partner, Harkness Penneyth. Bingo and Handsome cook up a plan to kidnap Mr. Pigeon just long enough for his death to be declared, hoping that the heir will kindly split his wealth with them. Before long, things go wrong. First of all, they decide that they like their kidnap victim. This is not too big a problem, because Mr. Pigeon is willing to be held, and Bingo and Handsome don't think that they are committing a serious crime by holding him. However, when other players in the game start turning up dead all around them, Bingo and Handsome have to solve the crime in order to save themselves and Mr. Pigeon from the same fate. Beautiful women, gangsters, a missing butler and a dramatic Latin American revolutionary poet all enter the story.

This Thanksgiving, two birds of a feather are about to get plucked— “Why can’t all murders be as funny as those concocted by Craig Rice?” ( The New York Times ) Former con-artist photographers Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak are en route from the grit of New York City to the glitter of Sunset Boulevard when their dreams are waylaid in a tragic roadside accident with an errant turkey. But getting stuck in the off-the-map community of Thursday County, Iowa, has an upside: a blushing farmer’s daughter with a promising sob story. To help her ailing grandma, the Halvorsen family turkey farm is up for grabs. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, Bingo and Handsome plan to make a bundle off the gobbling herd. But these two city slickers should’ve known that small towns hide big secrets—and Thursday’s secrets go back more than a decade. Before long, Bingo and Handsome get tangled up in a bank robbery, face off with an escaped convict, follow the trail of a buried fortune, are wrangled into a fowl conspiracy, and come to a dead end when they become suspects in a murder. As turkey day nears, it could very well be their heads on the chopping block. This Bingo and Handsome mystery is “a devastating satire . . . [an] immensely complex cat’s cradle of the plot” (Barry Ergang, Derringer Award–winning author). The Thursday Turkey Murders is the 2nd book in the Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Book by Rice, Scott, McBain, Ed