This note contains spoilers for the book.

I picked up a couple more MacDonald books at Book Trader when Greg and I stopped by the other day. Interestingly, this one turns out to be the first non-McGee I remember that's in first person. The rest had all seemed notably distant, I remember writing not that long ago.

This one's about an insurance recovery guy operating in a corrupt town in Florida. His business is buying loot back from thieves, and his town has a pretty explicit arrangement with the local syndicate operator, so that the chief of police talks casually about obtaining false convictions. Rather a dirty way to make a living.

The main character used to be a police lieutenant, but he was encouraged to resign when he proved and testified in court that the chosen fall guy for something or other hadn't done it. The "brass cupcake" is how he felt about his formerly-gold badge when he lost it. "Cupcake" was prison terminology, relating to stuff (positive or negative) you could only get from the authorities. Yes, he'd done time in prison, before becoming a policeman -- imagine that in a contemporary novel! They also take for granted quite a lot of working over of prisoners -- though they do seem to behave as if they knew it was illegal, even if ubiquitous.