Bum Luck — James Mullaney

BANYON INVESTIGATIONS, INC. CASES CRACKED. REASONABLE RATES.

When a desperate leprechaun needs to locate his lost pot of gold, there's only one P.I. in town dogged and sober enough to take the case. Unfortunately, his first choice is in Bimini dodging an IRS audit, so he calls on Crag Banyon instead.

That's just the start of a string of increasingly lousy luck that hounds Banyon from one emerald end of his latest crummy job to the other, where it turns out that a trip over the rainbow isn't the fun-and-booze-filled romp that all the brochures claim. Banyon finds that the whole leprechaun world is upside-down, while at the same time our own world is suffering through a mealtime catastrophe that's threatening side dishes from here to Thanksgiving and beyond.

Toss in a femme fatale more fatale than usual, along with a sexy dame reporter who's so untrustworthy even her curves are crooked, and Banyon finds that he's up to his pretty little eyeballs in more trouble than one plucky, partially plastered P.I can handle. Not without doubling his rates and/or tripling his booze consumption.

UNLUCKIEST P.I. IN THE GREATER METROPOLITAN YELLOW PAGES.