Saratoga Hexameter — Stephen Dobyns

The life of Charlie Bradshaw takes a literary turn when the private detective gets embroiled in three cases involving poetry. A colleague's death leads Charlie to a nursing home where a poem in iambic hexameter provides a clue to a series of mysterious deaths. Whoever is robbing rooms at the Bentley Hotel, in Saratoga Springs, leaves poems behind. And at a nearby artists' colony, Charlie poses as a poet to find out who's been harassing a pretentious literary critic.