The Superman Project (Chico Santana) by A.E. Roman

The Bronx' PI is back! Chico Santana is hired to find Brooklyn artist Gabby Gupta and her husband, Joey Valentin, an old friend of Chico. He's drawn into the strange world of a self-improvement center that is based on religion as well as Superman comic books. In fact, there's enough of comic book references to entertain this geek. There's also a wonderful character in here, Chase, a chubby young woman who is both attractive as well as different from the way most full figured women are portrayed in fiction.
There's a murder to be investigated and there's some fights with thugs. Chico hands out some pretty good wisecracks during the course of his investigation and he shows what an interesting and complex character he is again. While the actual investigation sometimes seems to take a backseat to the colorful characters introduced the book still works perfectly as a mystery, but also offers up a more literary story.