Shorty McCabe on the Job

Sewell Ford’s genial ex-pug turned physical-culture instructor returns for another round of episodes narrated in thick New York slang. This time Shorty McCabe finds himself roped into the tangled estate of the late Pyramid Gordon, a millionaire who left three million dollars and instructions to make amends to the people he wronged. Paired with the slippery J. Bayard Steele, Shorty tracks down Gordon’s old victims and doles out unexpected kindnesses, and each errand becomes its own comic chapter. Ford writes in a breezy, dialect-heavy voice full of dropped g’s and turn-of-the-century wisecracks. Readers who enjoy the loose, character-driven humor of early American magazine fiction will find these linked stories warm, quick, and quietly big-hearted beneath the wit.