As I said in my review of The Bigger They Come (ESG/AA Fair), I rate books based on vibes- on "how good is this book relative to what I want when I take books like this out of the library"? As such, I'm giving this one exactly the grade that I think it deserves. It's really, really fun, very well written, entertaining, good characters... just all around a good time and a super quick page-turning read. The quarter of a point is for

my wish that they'd developed the romance a bit more

and

the fact that I managed to guess both the fakeout solution and the real solution

but the fact that it's only a quarter of a point for both shows how much I'm not sure that it really mattered

(not to mention that, for the latter, there can be something nice in reading the book and realizing that you cottoned on to what the author was trying to do)

. Elements of the solution/motive are kind of silly, but not THAT much more so than in the average detective novel of this kind (and it was solidly sane compared to some others I've read recently). The central concept- the detective as an inpatient at a mental health sanatorium- is original and everything is explained well, very vivid, and just an excellent time. 

I'd previously read SS Murder by Q Patrick (which was a team-up of two authors, one of whom also was part of the Patrick Quentin pair-up that resulted in this book) and while that was fine, this one was better, and I kind of want to read all the Duluth books now.