I recently discovered that the Noah Braddock detective series by Jeff Shelby is still a going concern. So I had a couple books to catch up with. Bail Out comes ahead of the last one I reviewed, in sequence. But that’s not a problem; they stand alone pretty well.

Noah Braddock, San Diego surfer-cum-private eye, needs money to get repairs done on the house on Catalina he inherited from his murdered girlfriend. His massive friend Carter, who is smarter than he looks, says he has a prospective client, but he knows Noah won’t like it.

The prospective client is Darren Van Welker, an old schoolmate who was Noah’s greatest enemy in his youth. Now he’s a successful businessman with a not entirely savory reputation. Darren is getting married (for the third time), and he wants his adult son Aaron to be there, only he’s in Las Vegas and won’t return his father’s calls. He wants Noah and Carter to go to Sin City and drag the young man back.

Noah doesn’t like Darren any more now than he did in the old days, but he takes the job – making it clear that he’s not going to kidnap Aaron if he doesn’t want to go. In Vegas, they get a line on Aaron’s girlfriend. Going to her apartment, they run into a group of not very impressive gangsters, who are looking for her for their boss. Noah and Carter find themselves helping the two young people escape a serious and dangerous problem related to unpaid gambling debts.

The story is essentially pretty fun, almost a comedy. The Noah Braddock books are not comic as a rule, but author Shelby had fun with this one. The gangsters are somewhat laughable, and Carter alone is such a force of nature that nobody ever seems in great danger.

I enjoyed Bail Out immensely. Jeff Shelby is an entertaining storyteller, whether he goes dark or light. Recommended.