Mr. Paradise by Elmore Leonard (2004)

This was on the favorites shelf of one of the employees at the audio book store. It was about Michigan, so I picked it up. I didn't care for the rough voice reading the book or the cop banter, though I watch enough cop TV shows. But I always give a book at least one CD of a chance. And by the end of the first CD I was hooked.

Mr. Paradise of the title is Tony Paradiso, a rich old guy , who likes his high end hooker Chloe to do cheers in a Michigan cheerleader uniform, while watching tapes of U of M football games. He likes it if she brings a companion, so she talks her Victoria Secret model roommate Kelly in joining her. They are driven to the house by Montez and the evening does not end well with Mr. Paradiso and one of the girls dead.

Frank Delsa is the detective sent to solve this murder, a likable guy who lost his wife a year ago. There are all sorts of interesting characters in the book - the hit men Carl and Art, a crooked lawyer, Lloyd the cook, Triple J, and more. There is a side plot of three dead bodies in the basement of a drug dealer's house, and they sorta have something to do with each other in the end, but maybe this was just to show the complexity of cop and detective work.

As I often do, I had to look some things up about this book and author and it turns out that Elmore Leonard is a well know crime fighter author with 45 books to his name. He has been called the "Dickens of Detroit" and the TV series Justified is based on one of his characters. So maybe I can look in a few more of his books sometime.