“Trust a guy like you to drive this far. What’s wrong with Minnesota?”

“Too many Scandinavians.”

Craig Terlson’s entertaining Luke Fischer mysteries began with Surf City Acid Drop, which I’ve finally gotten around to. I had assumed, on the basis of the title, that we’d find about our hero’s background as a surfer, but in fact it’s just a metaphor. The “acid drop” is a phenomenon where a wave drops out from under a surfer; Luke (who has never surfed) gets the water pulled out from under his feet, so to speak, more than once in this story.

Luke Fischer is a Canadian expatriate slacker living near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He insists (often) that he’s not a private detective, but occasionally people ask him to look for things. His new client is a slightly shady woman who tells him she wants him to find her brother, who has disappeared and gone on the road.

Thus Luke sets out on a road trip that will take him through the American West and Midwest. Along the way he’ll encounter an eccentric hit man he calls Mostly Harold, who will become his problematic ally – if Harold doesn’t decide to kill him instead. All in a quest for a much-coveted bag full of rocks (not diamonds).

As always, Craig Terlson’s quirky characters and socko prose are what made the book. I found this one a little more cohesive than the one I read previously, but still I think Luke’s great weakness as a main character is his lack of fire in the belly. He doesn’t seem to care much about anything, and even his fear of death seems muted. Which doesn’t mean he isn’t still fun to spend time with. But it did make some stretches of the book a little slow. The humor, though often dark, helps pass the time.

All in all, I quite enjoyed Surf City Acid Drop, and recommend it. Cautions for language and violence.