The Bad Samaritan — William Campbell Gault

Newly rich, married, and bored, Brock investigates an upper-class tragedy Private detective Brock Callahan, onetime star of the Los Angeles Rams, is racing toward a touchdown when the morgue's phone call wakes him up. His only rich relative, Uncle Homer, has just flown through the windshield of his midlife-crisis Ferrari, and Brock will never have to work again. The private detective hangs up his license, marries his longtime girlfriend, and decamps for the California hills -- where he finds life among the nouveau riche to be duller than he ever imagined. However, there is one old lady -- the quick-witted Maude Marner -- who charms the old jock. But the day after she drops hints that she might have some work for him, she is found dead, having choked to death on her car's exhaust in a gruesome apparent suicide. As Brock digs into the dark corners of upper-crust suburbia, he finds that no matter how you dress it up, murder is always déclassé.