Krapp's Last Cassette-Anne Argula

Krapp's Last Cassette
Anne Argula
Ballantine, Mar 24 2009, $15.00
ISBN: 9780345498441

Highly regarded and connected Hollywood screenwriter Alex Krapp asks Seattle private investigator Quinn to come to Southern California to discuss an inquiry. Krapp wants Quinn to find fifteen year old Danny Timpkins, who survived the abuse of the satanic cult his parents belonged to.

Last year, the teen wrote a memoir that Krapp wants to adapt into an HBO film. He has never met the teen but has talked with him over the phone. However, a Vanity Fair reporter claims Danny the star of the memoir does not exist as the work is fiction. After learning why her client flew in an outsider, Quinn leans in the direction of the reporter even when she hears Danny talking to “Poppa” Alex over his speakerphone. There are too many holes in Danny's tale of woe; starting with Danny’s past paralleling the infamous Merck pedophile-rape case that she worked when she was an LAPD cop.

Quinn’s third investigation (see WALLA WALLA SUITE and HOMICIDE, MY OWN) is an excellent thriller filled with twists including an incredible climax and prologue. The inquiry is top rate as Quinn increasingly believes a fraudulent memoir has been perpetrated with a follow-up scam taking advantage of Krapp who displays a fatherly adulation to Danny. Readers will appreciate KRAPP’S LAST CASSETTE as Quinn tries to prove the lad exists as described for Alex’s emotional sake.
Harriet Klausner