THE NAKED DETECTIVE by Laurence Shames

My comments as posted to DetecToday:

...Shames's style is a good fit for his protag, Pete Amsterdam, a failed writer who declares himself a P.I. as a tax dodge. There's a leisured pace to the plot, My main complaint is that Amsterdam stays on the case more by convenient coincidence than for "earned" reasons. e.g. "For some reason, my bike took me in the direction of the crime scene."

The stakes are raised toward the end, but the story has more in common with amateur detective than with hard-boiled P.I. It didn't feel like an homage, as blurbs advertised, or a parody. I'd call it a decent story about a character who's roped into a medium-boiled P.I. plot.