China Doll, another comical and exciting adventure, ripped straight from the files of Honolulu’s most incorrigible and languid, soft-boiled private eye, Richard Bishop.

People come to Richard Bishop’s shabby Hotel Street office for professional help when trouble raises its ugly head because trouble is his business. But when the private investigator accepts an assignment from Nikki Kwan, a stunning and curvaceous China doll, to protect her and to deliver a sealed envelope to her ex-boyfriend, Rick soon has plenty of trouble all his own.

He finds himself squarely in the crosshairs of rival Chinatown mobsters who want his client and him dead. As the drama unfolds, the criminals also take aim at Rick’s gorgeous blonde Australian girlfriend, Sally Jayne Fisher. Even after enlisting the aid of Lieutenant David Chang, his friend and former partner at HPD, Rick still collects the usual assortment of bumps, bruises, cracked ribs, and lacerations as the stumbling, bumbling gumshoe struggles to stay out of the hospital and save the lives of his client and his girl, not to mention his own.

Can Bishop and Lieutenant Chang take down the mobsters before it’s too late? Or will the Chinatown gangsters prevail, handing Chang three more homicides to investigate?

China Doll is the fifth book in Larry Darter’s humorous, soft-boiled Rick Bishop, Private Investigator series from Fedora Press, featuring Honolulu’s most inept and indolent gumshoe. But you may enjoy reading the books in any order.