CREDITS: Written by Scott Peterson; art by Tim Levins and Terry Beatty.
REVIEW: A good old-fashioned detective story where each clue leads to the next and Batman does a bit of "Sherlocking", while still needing help from others. Nightwing, crucially, has had time for fun in his life, so knows what a slide guitarist's slide looks like, and then there's all the support the Bat gets from the slide's owner, B.I. Pledge, who though blind, is quite perceptive and logical. He not only gives Batman some important clues, but may be the key to identifying the kidnapper.
And that's all fine at first; I just think Peterson goes a little far in the character's Daredevilisms to make him credible. Heck, I was almost expecting him to be the real big bad or Superman in disguise, or something. Detecting a false wall based on the echo in a room, then recognizing someone based on their breathing alone, back to back, strays into territory that did not seem earned.
But the issue has other things going for it. One of the things Peterson and Levins like to do is make Gotham look bigger through montage. They'll often have a sequence where the heroes visit different haunts and beat up on different-looking goons. Of note in this issue is a female mobster called Al Batman shakes down, unusual based on her gender. I'd like to see her again.
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