Jack Lynch’s series of mysteries about San Francisco private eye Pete Bragg continues with Speak for the Dead. I’m not sure what the title means in terms of the plot, but the book was enjoyable.

Pete Bragg gets a call from an old friend from his newspaper reporting days. There’s a bad situation at San Quentin prison. A prisoner named Beau Bancetti, a biker gang leader, has attempted to escape with some buddies. The attempt failed. Now he and his friends are barricaded in an activities center, with two guards and two women as hostages. He demands that somebody go up to his home town and help his brother Buddy, who’s been charged with murder. Buddy isn’t like him, he explains. He’s painfully shy and gentle. He couldn’t kill anyone.

Ordinarily the prison administrators wouldn’t worry about hostages being killed. It’s one of the rules – civilians who go inside know the risk. But in this case, one of the hostages happens to be a popular female movie star incognito; they don’t want the bad press. So they need a private eye to go to Beau’s home town and investigate the murder. Would Pete do it?

Of course he will. And from the time he shows up in town he knows something screwy is going on. Nobody believes Buddy Bancetti could murder anyone. But a lot of them are hiding something too. Pete will be attacked by thugs, and shot at by a sniper. Then he’ll uncover a nasty conspiracy.

The story moved along well and kept my interest. My constant complaint in reading this series has been that Pete rarely actually solves a case – he’s usually a step behind and only puts it all together just in time to avoid getting killed. This time he actually solves one – and it’s pretty complicated.

Author Lynch seems (he’s gone now) to have had a thing about marijuana – this story includes an argument for legalization, which annoys me. But I guess that ship has sailed.

Another concern was a scene where he allows himself (purely for information-gathering purposes) to get into a semi-sexual situation with an underage girl. I think that’s the kind of scene you could get away with back in the 80s – you couldn’t do it today.

But generally it’s an okay book. I don’t give it highest marks, but it passed the time and did not bore me.