Mario Balzic is one of those police chiefs so close to his people that nothing moves in his town without his knowing how & why. His town is Rocksburg, a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania where most of the coal has run out. In these, his fifth & sixth cases, Balzic must contend with all manner of problems. The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes finds Balzic caught up in a case where out-of-season tomatoes are the key. It begins at Muscotti's Bar, when Jimmy Romanelli sells several baskets of tomatoes to the bartender; it ends some weeks later with three deaths & a drained, disgusted Balzic, unable to take any satisfaction from his solution to Romanelli's murder. In Always a Body to Trade, Rocksburg has a new mayor, one of those simplifying self-righteous amateurs bent on law & order who can't leave anything alone. His calls never stop, even after trapping Balzic in his refuge at Muscotti's. Things get uglier from there, including a double robbery, a professional hit, & drugs.

As usual, it is a case populated by an unforgettable cast of characters, the most unforgettable of whom is Balzic. As in all the Balzic novels, the Chief is at the center of the action, He's fiercely unpretentious, in absolute command, & so fundamentally good at what he does that not even his profanity succeeds in hiding his detective genius or his golden heart. While these novels are "detective fiction" -- & marvelous examples of the genre -- that term cannot catch the superb rendition of social texture & of the particular people which define Constantine's literary mastery. If you haven't met Mario Balzic -- or his creator -- it's time you did.