THE LAST STRIPTEASE, by Michael Wiley. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007, 245 pp., $23.95 (cloth)

In this novel, winner of last year's Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin's Press Best First Private-Eye Novel Contest, Chicago private investigator Joe Kozmarski is retained by an ex-judge to clear a man who's suspected of murdering a young woman from Chicago's Little Vietnam.

The money's too good to refuse, but the PI takes the job with understandable reluctance; the very same judge had destroyed the career of Kozmarski's policeman father.

The victim, Le Thi Hanh, aka Hannah Le, was found in an airport hotel room with her throat slashed. The main suspect, an old friend of Kozmarski from the 'hood, has gone into hiding.