[Slave Trade] features Sid Kasdan, one of the most morose private eyes in recent memory. Kasdan's wife has left him, his investigator's license has been revoked, he's broke, he's getting old, and sometimes, when nothing else is convenient, he broods about his big toe, or at least the part of it that got shot off in Korea….

Gold writes well enough when he really wants to. Unfortunately, the style that he has adopted for this book, a kind of San Francisco flip, is relentless and ultimately wearying. And his hero's continuous maundering over his lost wife, lost youth, lost chances and lost toe really doesn't help matters much. (p. E4)

Ross Thomas, "The Thrill of the Chase," in Book World—The Washington Post (© 1979, The Washington Post), June 3, 1979, pp. E1, E4.∗