Fresh Updated LA Noir from Daniel Weizmann, THE LAST SONGBIRD

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Weizmann’s updated LA noir storytelling is pitch perfect, so this quirky investigator stands in for each of us, committing in a fumbling fashion to doing what’s right even though we’re not equipped for the journey.”

 

Pull up that poignant song about driving a beautiful woman in your taxi cab and never forgetting her. Hold onto the emotion—now, pin the story to Los Angeles, to the brutal competitiveness of performance and production, and to the significance of small and persistent acts of kindness.

 

Too saccharine? Fear not. Daniel Weizmann roughs up the story of a Lyft-driving songwriter on the night streets as he hard-boils affection, friendship, loyalty. That means grit, lots of it, from drug-fueled disasters to twisted personal secrets.

 

Yet The Last Songbird, personified here by aging yet still famous folksinger Annie Linden, never quite loses the heartache and beauty of the old songs. By the time driver Adam Zantz trusts Annie Linden enough to share his own songs with her (he writes both the lyrics and the melodies) in the strange privacy of his hired car, she’s also won his faithfulness. When she and her bodyguard are brutally murdered (with Adam a suspect, of course), there’s only one mission possible: find the killer and bring them to justice. Even though that won’t bring Annie back, it will let Adam keep hearing and feeling the support of her voice.

 

“She was a songwriter’s songwriter, a taker of lyrical chances,” Adam clarifies. Annie’s become his antidote to despair, too: “Annie Linden, my Annie Linden, never had any place to hide. Because she believed in love, like a religious devotee. She said as much to me on the road when I asked her where her songs came from.”

 

Extra horseradish on the side for this dish of neo-noir, please, since Adam (Addy to his friends) presents a Jewish flavor to all his choices. His friends twist toking and Torah, like Ephraim Freiberger, aka Double Fry, who explains that his paparazzi work is bounded by not selling any photos that could embarrass someone. Addy checks this: “Embarrassing someone is strictly forbidden?” Double Fry responds, “By the Torah, it’s like murder.”  Tough boundary for a photo career in LA, though!

 

Adam’s songwriting future may be dead in the water with Annie’s murder—she was the first and only significant person who’d believed in his work—and the darkness of his nights, with its long ugly driving shifts through LA’s special brand of despair and denial, threatens his inner life as well. But under Double Fry’s pressure, he nails his urge to solve the crime: “I owe her—for giving me hope when I had zero. And I’m pissed. ‘Cause if I don’t find out who—If I don’t find out who [killed her], maybe nobody will.”

 

The clumsy but persistent efforts of this spur-of-the-heartache amateur sleuth pull him into danger, of course, as well as waves of anguish over his past and over his desperation to “make good” to Annie’s memory. Weizmann’s updated LA noir storytelling is pitch perfect, so this quirky investigator stands in for each of us, committing in a fumbling fashion to doing what’s right even though we’re not equipped for the journey.

 

Of course, classic noir would spit Adam back out in misery at the end. Case solved, or not? Annie still an inspiration to him, or lost in the clutter of her own revealed mistakes? Things change: An author who creates a Torah-hugging buddy for his protagonist can’t be consigning the case, or Adam’s songs, or hope itself to the dumpster. Best of all, in a new twist on noir (but a definite plug for those taxi-now-Lyft drivers), a playlist of the book’s songs wraps up this irresistible tale, putting all the half-spoken secrets back into active memory. Van Morrison, anyone? Mick Jagger? Dylan? Who is the “last songbird” that you’ll hear bringing you home?

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Missing Westlake's Richard Stark Crime Novels? Try Charles Salzberg, MAN ON THE RUN

 

[Originally posted at New York Journal of Books]

“Crime fiction readers may think they know what’s ahead, based on other noir work. But Salzberg is way funnier and more unpredictable himself, and the ride with the podcaster and the master thief—and the obsessed cop—takes great twists.”

 

How do you like your noir crime fiction served? If you mark the checkboxes for unpredictable, twisty, fast-paced, wry, mocking, and “with a side of dark humor,” by all means order up Charles Salzberg’s mystery Man on the Run.

 

If fact, the humor is much more than a “side” for this seasoned author. Even the premise, revealed in alternating points of view, comes with a feeling of “how come nobody thought of this sooner?” And there you have it—even the review begins to sound like Francis Hoyt, an expert in burglary and pressing the “scary psycho” buttons when he wants to spook someone and get them to leave him.

 

But that’s not really his motive in ambushing a true-crime podcaster as she’s coming out of a California coffee shop. Francis is turned on by the off-beat confidence he sees in Dakota Richards (and her lack of a bra, her pixie features, that hint of a previously broken nose). Francis Hoyt is a predator at heart, but his decision to tease this would-be journalist means he gets a new kind of attention, and frankly, he wants it.

What about Dakota? Sure, she recognizes the mythically capable criminal and fugitive. It’s her business! But she knows enough to play it cool. Besides, she’s already fascinated by what he’s like in person. Small, neat, compact. And she should be careful:

 

“He’s also got this palpable sense of danger thing about him. And it’s not because I know who he is and what he’d done. He’s just, like, like dangerous looking. And there’s something else. It’s in his eyes. Intelligence. … There’s something going on behind those eyes, something that only adds to this sense of danger that surrounds him.”

 

If that sounds like a classic tough-girl-lusts-after-bad-boy plot opening, you’re underestimating Salzberg: He’s in here for the darkness, the quirkiness. And how do you ramp that up? First, add a job, a bank to rob where even thinking about the task could get you into the crosshairs of the mob bosses who own it. Next, in the tradition of pushing your protagonists to their limits, Salzberg drops a retired state investigator, Charlie Floyd, into the middle of it all.

 

Actually, credit Dakota with both appearances, since she deliberately involved the two antagonists in her plans for a compelling podcast: She trailed hints about doing a piece on Francis, to the point where she knew he’d want to get into the reality show. Plus, she tracked down Charlie Floyd with every intention of aiming him at Hoyt. And as her own fascination with Francis Hoyt balloons, she clear-sightedly scolds herself for becoming “that sad, pathetic, desperate woman who falls for the guy in prison.” Except she’s actually fallen for risk and danger, the ultimate comeback to her mother’s snarky criticisms. She knows she’s got a hot podcast already: “I was stalked by Francis Hoyt and lived to tell the tale. How’s that for a show-stopping teaser?”

 

Crime fiction readers may think they know what’s ahead, based on other noir work. But Salzberg is way funnier and more unpredictable himself, and the ride with the podcaster and the master thief—and the obsessed cop—takes great twists, all the way to the very delightful finale. 

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 
 

Powerful New Cold Case Investigation from Michael Connelly, DESERT STAR

On November 8, the newest Michael Connelly crime novel will be released, and it features both Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch. Deftly plotted, neatly twisted, and with sharp stakes and risks, DESERT STAR proves again that Connelly's crime fiction goes much farther than "just" a crime and the hunt for the criminal—it investigates the human heart.

As the book opens, Harry's lining up pills next to a glass of water, and it's not for a good reason. In classic cop shorthand, he's thinking he's ready to "let it go." But Renée Ballard, his one-time partner who couldn't stop his job from collapsing, is at the door demanding that he open up.

Unexpectedly, after a year of her own collapse, Ballard has risen to head a new form of cold case department, one that (oh, what we learned from the pandemic) is using all volunteers and contract players to confront the monstrous backlog. She's got the ultimate lure for Harry Bosch: a stack of "murder books" all related to a family homicide that haunts him, and carte blanche to work the case properly.

"Do I get a badge?"

"No badge, no gun," Ballard said. "But you do get that desk with the six books. When can you start?"

Despite his well-fueled angers and resentments about both Ballard and the Los Angeles police, Bosch can't resist. And when he shows up at the unit the next day, there's his own mantra, painted over the entrance: "Open-Unsolved Unit. Everybody Counts or Nobody Counts."

Bosch shook his head. Everybody counts or nobody counts was the philosophy he always brought to homicide work, but it was his personal philosophy. It wasn't a slogan and especially not one he liked seeing painted on a wall. It was something you felt and knew inside. Not something advertised, not something that could even be taught.

Whether he likes it on the wall or not, it's still driving him. Nobody in the new unit recalls his cases solved, his commitment to the job—they're all new in some way—except Renée. And she's trying to manage the unmanageable and bring Harry back for the sake of what he does so well.

To Harry Bosch's disappointment and frustration, there's another case he and Renée need to solve, in full view of the rest of the team: the murder of the daughter of a city councilman. That unsolved crime is what put the councilman behind re-starting the cold case unit. So as Bosch scrambles for traction on the crime that's dogged him, he's also got to cuddle up to the new tools available, like DNA connections, and wrap up the simpler case as well.

The plot's great, a classic Connelly spinning of how police work tangles and wrestles and sometimes succeeds. But at the heart of DESERT STAR is the mentor relationship Harry has with Renée, along with his adjustment to her fully capable investigative skills now in place. So, scrap any father–daughter images, if he had them. In fact, one of his first actions in the new "team" environment undercuts Ballard badly, as he takes off out of the office like a lone dog on the trail.

Renée Ballard's quick realization is, "Putting him on a team did not make him a team player. That was not in his DNA." She intends to patch the gaps he's creating.

But her own insecurities surface in wrestling for control with Bosch and making clear that he's got to do the councilman investigation at higher priority. When he concedes, he tells her, "By the way, you're not a shrew, whatever a shrew is. Okay? More like a desert star." "Whatever that is." "It's a flower that's undaunted by heat and cold. By anything. Even an old guy set in his ways."

While Ballard accepts this half of an apology and tugs gently at the leash to get Bosch on track again, it's still clear that he's exactly what he's said: an old guy set in his ways. And that may jeopardize the cases underway, the renewed existence of the investigative unit, and his life.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Brief Mention: Laurie R. King, BACK TO THE GARDEN

If you've been asking yourself whether the communes of the 1970s really were what you recall (or reall learning)--passionate about freedom, love, and justice, as well as drenched in music and hormones and surviving on the strength of good gardening and skilled planning--the new crime novel from Laurie R. King will be deeply reassuring!

Sidelined police inspector Raquel Laing tackles identifying a set of bones discovered at a long-ago California commune, now a serious historic and art attraction. She's racing the clock, because the suspected killer (highly psychopathic) is close to death and playing games with not revealing the names of the (gasp) seventeen women he admits to have slaughtered and buried in the state.

Readers will either love or hate King's choice of alternating time periods between the commune's heyday and Laing's investigation. I found it tolerable, for the sake of the acute insight into "those days" and the fervent beliefs that impelled decisions and lifestyles. The police procedural aspect of the novel, as Laing interviews one commune leader after another, reflects what a long and often unrewarding process this can be in real life. But Laing's own passions and her skills in reading emotions, lies, and truths are fascinating and highly believable. 

King has described this as a standalone. If so, that's a shame -- Laing as an investigator, with her quirks and questions, would make a great foundation for an enjoyable series, and King is expert at crafting long-term pathways of detective work and personal growth. She's accessible via social media; if you feel the same way after reading BACK TO THE GARDEN, drop her a note to encourage a sequel (I will).

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Traditional Sleuthing with Jewish Touches, from Andy Weinberger

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books] 

“This fine traditional LA crime novel with its Jewish tang and its quandaries of the elderly provides enjoyable entertainment.”

Amos Parisman is feeling his age—he needs naps, he misses his wife (she’s in a care home with dementia), he has to be careful about remembering his keys. But that doesn’t mean he’s ready to quit the private eye work he’s done all his life. So when a “homeless lady” in is neighborhood is murdered and his police buddy Lieutenant Bill Malloy is open to his help, Andy’s eager to contribute. Anything that will dispel the fog of aimlessness and sorrow in his life is more than welcome.

The lieutenant half apologizes for the collaboration, and hopes Amos doesn’t mind. He’s blunt: “Mind? Are you kidding? This is exactly the kind of case I need.” He admits, “It’s a police matter. Only I happen to know a little bit about her. And besides, Bill—this retirement thing?—between you and me, I’d rather be dead.”

Although Amos is not religious, he’s 100 percent Jewish in heritage and outlook, and his thoughts and conversations are sprinkled with scraps of Yiddish and wry comments about his mixed neighborhood in Los Angeles.

And that’s the fun half of this old-fashioned PI tale, because the other half, getting acquainted with a lot of homeless people and the not always pure-minded folks who “help” them takes a lot of Amos’s energy. That energy drain is also part of why his gentle romance on the side with a wealthy Jewish woman is pretty low key, mostly holding hands, kissing, and sharing a bottle of wine (much more for her). Amos has a moral code and he’s still in love with his wife, absent though her mind has become—and yet this new “girlfriend,” Mara, wants him to move in with her, to save money and be less lonely.

This might not be great for Mara’s granddaughter, Amos considers: “She’s a smart girl and has figured out that I’m quietly shtupping her grandma. His effort to hold Mara back isn’t exactly working, since she can point to his efforts to assist the police as being unpaid, so somehow worth less. Amos, on the other hand, says “The pool old woman in the dumpster? The throwaway?” Mara is blunt: “She’s not going anywhere.”

Maybe his PI work soothes his conscience, which is not exactly happy with the situation. Or maybe he’s just stubborn and doesn’t want to let go, the way he hasn’t let go of his wife. But isn’t that a good think?

This fine traditional LA crime novel with its Jewish tang and its quandaries of the elderly provides enjoyable entertainment, and is the third in Andy Weinberger’s own late-life second career (he’s a bookseller first of all). By the time Amos figures out what’s actually going on in the crescendo of deaths of the homeless, he’s got himself into a risky situation that someone his age should have known better about.

Then again, who should be better at making moral choices than an old Jewish PI who wishes he could always figure out what’s right? When the case finally ends, Amos says, “It’s not a good thing. The only good thing is that it’s over."

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Newest Mickey Haller Crime Fiction from Michael Connelly, THE LAW OF INNOCENCE

 [Originally published in New York Journal of Books]

“Connelly spins a story where the risk is life itself, and the collateral damage may be integrity. Watching Mickey Haller work out how to balance the two makes this a compelling crime novel that lingers in value long after the last page.”

What is the difference between innocent and not guilty? Michael Connelly’s The Law of Innocence, extending his “Lincoln Lawyer” series, confronts Mickey Haller with that important issue, in painful ways. Mickey knows he hasn’t murdered a former client who never paid the bill for Mickey’s defense work. But when the man’s corpse is found by police, jammed in the trunk of the Lincoln that Mickey drives, with the killing bullet smashed on Mickey’s own garage floor … who’s going to believe he didn’t do the job?

Connelly writes two significant California mystery series. One features police investigator Harry Bosch, always in pursuit of criminals and punishment for crime. Mickey, on the other hand, is a defense attorney whose demand for justice takes a very different form: If the State can’t prove a case against his clients, they shouldn’t lose their freedoms. That’s the “not guilty” side: when a jury concludes the crime hasn’t been successfully (“beyond reasonable doubt”) pinned on someone.

The frustration for Mickey in this book is, he knows he’s innocent. A handful of people—his staff, his ex-wife Maggie, his daughter, and thank goodness, his half-brother Harry Bosch—accept this innocence. But the frame against him is so clever and complete that even his attorney friends have doubts about him.

In placing Mickey in the hands of the law and a furious prosecutor who’s convinced he committed the crime, Bosch sends his protagonist to prison for months. Living on three meals a day of bologna sandwiches makes Mickey’s clothing hang loose, and he struggles to stay alive as the people he’s offended in the past, including sheriff's deputies who run the prison where he's held, see a chance for brutal revenge.

Connelly spins this series as a first-person narrative, which slows the pace. There are plenty of action scenes, but also a lot more inner conversation than in the Harry Bosch books. Micky reflects:

I had no illusions about my innocence. I knew it was something only I could know for sure. And I knew that it wasn’t a perfect shield against injustice. It was no guarantee of anything. The clouds were not going to open for some sort of divine light of intervention.

I was on my own.

… In the law of innocence, for every man not guilty of a crime, there is a man out there who is. And to prove true innocence, the guilty man must be found and exposed to the world.

The back story of the murder itself—who profits, from what looks like a pure case of revenge against Mickey?—must be determined in order to find that “guilty man.” Working under a near-impossible deadline, and directed by Mickey from his cell much of the time, his team quickly finds promising threads. But they lead, in multiple ways, to dead ends.

Along the way, two big changes take place in the people around him, as Mickey sweats his way to discovery of the pieces: his half-brother Harry Bosch aggressively takes his side (even financially), and Mickey falls back in love with this daughter’s mother. The feeling might even be mutual. Will it make them more successful in solving the crime in time to get Mickey off the hot seat, though?

Passionate followers of the Bosch series may not find much to enjoy in The Law of Innocence: Bosch’s appearances are brief and not very interesting, compared to the character himself. That’s part of the cost of Connelly’s choice to write Mickey “from the inside.” The criminal enterprise that forms the back story of the murder is also rather weak. That said, Connelly carries out what he’s endlessly powerful in doing: He spins a story where the risk is life itself, and the collateral damage may be integrity. Watching Mickey Haller work out how to balance the two makes this a compelling crime novel that lingers in value long after the last page.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Like Your Noir Crime Fiction Very Dark? Pick Scott Phillips, THAT LEFT TURN AT ALBUQUERQUE

When the first hardboiled crime novel from Scott Phillips, Ice Harvest, came out in 2000, nominations and awards quickly swarmed to the clever and sardonic book. (Dave and I picked up multiple copies and were thrilled to get them signed.)

In a great twist of plot, Phillips has brought his latest, THAT LEFT TURN AT ALBUQUERQUE, over to Soho Crime (Soho Press's imprint) and grabbed a dynamic platform for his wicked work. Taking the classic slip-into-crime approach that Donald Westlake so excelled at, Phillips provides the slimy and increasingly unlikeable Douglas Rigby, a California attorney who should know better. But then of course, making dumb and immoral decisions just "happens" to Rigby. None of it is his fault ... right?

Home for a quick lunch with his real-estate agent wife, Rigby's no longer as jittery about his upcoming financial disaster as he had been the night before, and assures his spouse:

"Don't worry about it, baby. It's under control."

"We could lose the  house, Rigby. That's a disaster for anybody, but for a real estate agent ... Jesus, I don't even want to think about it."

"Baby, did I just say I've got it under control or didn't I?" He was squirting Sriracha sauce onto a plate of cottage cheese.

"You did, and as usual you left out the important details. All the details, in fact. And also the broad strokes. ... Don't blow smoke up my a**, how much trouble are we really in?'

He shrugged and made a face, eating fast and talking with his mouth full of pinkish, mushy curds. "Look, we're not out of it yet, but I've got a plan. We're going to be fine. Now, all I need is for you to stop worrying."

And that's classic Phillips -- if Rigby's casual amorality isn't obvious in his clichés of "I've got it and it's not my fault anyway," his disgusting habits round out the character description, don't they?

If you're already a Phillips fan, you're bouncing in your seat by now, wondering how much worse things will get and how many stupid solutions Rigby will come up with, before getting caught in his own leg-hold trap. And if this author is new to you, imagine Westlake's most disastrous crime capers, shoved into darker and more dire straits ... or Dave Zeltserman's morally ambiguous criminals on the loose, shackled only by having a home life they mistakenly think they might be owed.

It's good to see the twisted noir end of the Soho shelves filling up with deftly narrated, irresistibly twisted material like this! But of course, it won't fit every taste. So, reader, consider yourself warned -- and invited. How bad can Rigby's decisions get? Once you're halfway in, you won't be able to resist finding out.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

More 2019 Crime Fiction to Sample, from J. D. Allen, Luca Veste, David Putnam

Sort these terms between the categories of "mystery" and "crime fiction": investigation, puzzle, elucidate, race the clock, sleep on it, round up resources, prevention, seek justice.

There, you see? Even on the days when you can't spell out the difference, it's there.

So here are three powerful works of crime fiction from 2019, with diverse locations and investigations, and a drive to cope with an often dark and violent world:

J. D. Allen's second in her Sin City Investigations series is SKIN GAME, again featuring Las Vegas private investigator Jim Bean, as in the first book, 19 Souls. The plot is intense — Jim's ex-fiancée turns up looking for her missing sister, and Jim's own disastrous past surges up to overflow and consume him. The human trafficking ring he faces turns this book into high-risk suspense. The writing also thrives by including great moments of what's important in life, like this cat, for instance:

[Ely] pulled the fussing feline out. "Didn't want the pigs to let her out or hurt her when they pulled their Stormtrooper act." He cooed at her. Patted her head. She calmed down some. ...

Again, Jim fought the urge to let the past and his anger overwhelm him. Annie [the cat] leapt from Ely's arms to his. She clung to his shoulder, digging in with her claws. He inhaled her kitty scent. Petted down her soft back fur. "I really like that damn door. Just painted it blue."

Reed Farrel Coleman blurbed this book, and Jeffrey Deaver blurbed the first one; it's close in feel to their urban suspense, but also a good match for those who enjoy Karen Slaughter and today's California Noir authors. [Midnight Ink is the publisher.]

*

The sixth book from English author Luca Veste, who describes himself as of Italian and Scouse heritage, is a terrifying crossover of very dark (noir) crime fiction, and horror. THE BONE KEEPER begins with three teens daring each other to pass through a dark tunnel -- and one never makes it back out. DC Louise Henderson probes the case through the uncertain and frightening memories of victims who may have experienced related attacks:

"How did you get away, Caroline?" Louise asked, not taking her eyes off the woman in the bed. "How did you end up on that road?"

Caroline shook her head, blinking away more tears. "I don't know. I don't remember. I was just suddenly ... out. I must have broken whatever was holding me. ... I just know. It was going to kill me. There's no way it would have let me go. No one every gets away from it."

Veste has a perfect pace of terror, suspense, and discovery, so that even though the book had me checking the locked door and turning on extra lights, I never put it down until the end.

[This author's website is not up to date, but here is his agent's. Sourcebooks is the publisher.]

*

David Putnam, a former law enforcement pro, writes the Bruno Johnson series. THE RECKLESS, his 2019 title, is the sixth. He won a lot of praise for the earlier books, of which I liked The Squandered, but not so much The Vanquished. I was relieved to find THE RECKLESS taut and well-paced with wonderful twists. Bruno Johnson, a young Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff, gets loaned out to the FBI and finds himself caught up in a criminal case that links back to a triple homicide from Johnson's own past, and an episode in the Watts riot of 1965, when he was a kid -- and his father witnessed an accident, extricated a child, and had Bruno, only a child himself, drive them to the hospital, the only way Dad sitting in the passenger seat could keep the child alive.

"Faster, son. You're going to have to go faster. You're doing fine. We only have ten blocks to go, that's all." He brought his foot over and put it on top of mine, and pushed down. The car lurched forward.

One block passed, then another.

"There. There's a police officer," Dad said. "Honk the horn. Honk."

Dad had always taught be to stay away from the police whenever possible, that sometimes the police did not treat blacks appropriately. That's all he'd say about it. My entire life, I'd dodged them, took the long way around, whenever I came upon them. Now, he wanted me to get their attention while I was committing a crime.

Putnam's writing isn't always as smooth as the writers at the top of the field, but it's always edgy, well paced, and comes squarely to grip with the grit and harshness of real life. He continues to earn praise from authors like Michael Connelly and Timothy Hallinan, and he's earned it for sure with THE RECKLESS. [Oceanview Publishing deserves big credit for these.]

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

California Noir in Fresh Memes, from Jonathan Lethem, THE FERAL DETECTIVE

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

When Arabella, an Oregon college student, vanishes into a Southern California desert cult, it’s Phoebe Siegler’s call to action—because Arabella is the daughter of her best friend and somebody needs to do something, right? A referral near a mountain retreat connected with both Buddhist monks and Leonard Cohen leads Phoebe to a highly eccentric local detective who may be able to help. So The Feral Detective, one of the strangest and deepest mysteries of this year, begins as a missing-teenager case, only to morph into looking at what’s missing in Phoebe herself.

Of course, she doesn’t see herself as having issues, other than her tremendous rage and grief surrounding the 2016 presidential elections. (Somebody needs to do something!) Obviously, private eye Charles Heist, with a live opossum in his desk drawer and a wild young woman burrowing into the blankets on the office couch, is a prime candidate for Phoebe’s judging and labeling. In fact, she tags him as “the feral detective,” using a term that most of us only attach to starving and flea-bitten cats that won’t accept affection. Is it the investigator who fits the term? Or is it Phoebe herself, with her abrupt sexual approach and immediate aggression toward the people she meets?

To get a hint at where the missing Arabella may be, PI Charles Heist opts first to assist a group of “homeless” people (really quite at home in their scrap of vulnerable land) to evacuate from a massive gully—a “wash”—before the oncoming rain sweeps them away. They may already know Arabella. Phoebe accepts the role of sidekick for the effort, doing something that’s more productive than her usual routine of watching and hating the politics of the moment. Then suddenly Heist leaves her at her hotel and takes off with some of the rescued outdoor folks:

Then came a strange time. In the hours before Charles Heist reappeared and took me away in his truck again, I entered a kind of spell or pall as if the small hotel room were a kind of tunnel too, and I’d been left behind instead of rescued. I stripped off my soaked clothes and took a hot shower, and while one part of my mind urgently wished to scrub off the mud of the Wash, the rank smell of the tunnel and of my homeless companions in the cab of Heist’s pickup, another part mourned some loss I couldn’t specify. I felt I’d been allowed to taste Heist’s world, teamed with him in pursuit of abjectly hopeless tasks in a pit in the rain. And then I’d been expelled.

But Heist does return, with a hint of where to look for Arabella: amid the often dangerous vagabonds, hippies, and outcasts who make up a pair of opposing cults out in the desert east of Los Angeles. Is Arabella caught up unwillingly in a massive feud between two groups known as the Rabbits and the Bears, or is she about to take part in a ceremony that will turn her into a desert queen? If Phoebe and Charles do extract her, will Arabella consent to go home with them?

Jonathan Lethem’s writing weaves together the surreal and the heart-wrenching, and Phoebe’s strong dark voice speaks with the same alcohol-soaked despair as in the earlier Los Angeles noir. At times, she sounds like one of the PIs of the 1930s, harsh, unlovable, able only to attack the world that refuses to accommodate her.

Readers of classic noir will recognize and bond to Phoebe’s gruff assessments of her case and her life (post-election trauma, anyone?); imagine Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain crushed in the latter-day typewriters of Lisa Brackmann and Taylor Stevens, then dried out under a desert sun. Complex, tragic and comic at once, and utterly memorable, Phoebe and her “hired gun” become memes for all of us trapped in political quagmire and questions.

But going deep isn’t the only way to read The Feral Detective: It’s also one of the most unusual, unlikely, and un-put-downable PI novels ever.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Crime Fiction Debut from Martin Jay Weiss, THE SECOND SON

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

A debut thriller is always an adventure—has the author been secretly practicing the craft of tight, suspenseful writing, so that the plot will make sense, the pace will force the pages to turn, and the characters will be memorable? Or will there be small gaps in means and motive and opportunity, or flaws in dialogue, or accidental mismatches?

Fortunately, Martin Jay Weiss is far from the usual debut author. Under the name Marty Weiss, he’s already an accomplished filmmaker and director, producing award-winning commercials. Translation: He can set a scene swiftly, raise the ante, and make it work.

So Rare Bird Books didn’t just snatch up his debut—this independent California press grabbed both THE SECOND SON for this season, and Flamingo Coast (not a sequel) for next year. That’s great news.

Start with the risky and exhilarating business of a California tech entrepreneur. “Stalker,” owned by brothers Ethan and Jack Stone, isn’t quite ready to go fully public. Its facial recognition software still has glitches. But the pressure from their CFO (chief financial officer), Bailey Duff, keeps escalating. There’s not much the brothers can do to rein that pressure in, since it’s coming from an anonymous financial “angel” who refuses to give the team its next dose of funds unless Stalker launches immediately.

So the tradition of “first death, first chapter” in many a thriller becomes, instead, a premature birth of an app. At the same time, Ethan Stone’s life decomposes in a matter of hours, as his brother Jack, who’s his twin, announces an immediate departure to go work for the competition. The two have never been significantly apart. How can this happen?

And when Ethan gets home, the other intimate part of his life turns upside down, because his live-together-girlfriend, his beloved Brooke, has left him at the same time. How can this happen? Have his brother and his heart’s desire somehow bonded in a way that’s stolen them both from his life? Will his venture-capital-funded tech firm collapse, as his private life explodes?

 Even so, Ethan’s awareness of what’s really going on hasn’t really started. What’s the real connection that Brooke has with her own business, the Dancing Rabbit retreat house in Big Sur? Why do people disappear there? If Ethan’s own business is about people finding each other via new search modes, could Brooke’s business somehow be doing the opposite? And, as mysterious as all the rest, how could the firm’s competitor, Hounddog, have recruited Ethan’s twin out of his life?

When Ethan decides to undertake his own search for both Jack and Brooke, he stumbles into evidence of a pair of deaths near the retreat house, and suddenly he’s interfering with the police:

 Ethan took a few steps forward and tried to explain, ‘I haven’t been able to get through to them on the phone and I just want to make sure—‘

‘This is an investigation, sir. I need you to get back to your vehicle.’

The officer didn’t want to leave his post but was getting irritated. Ethan knew the officer wouldn’t let him through, so he waved, as if thanking the officer for permission, and headed for the crushed metal barrier opening.

The officer shouted, ‘Don’t even think about it!’

By the time the officer waited for a passing car, Ethan had already disappeared into the pitch-black muddy slope. The officer grabbed his walkie-talkie and warned the officers below. ‘Civilian approaching!’

Another voice echoed a complaint, but it was too late. Ethan was upon them.”

Haunting the rest of the action and the secrets that Ethan’s got to uncover is something Brooke told him before she vanished: “Birth order and birthrights shouldn’t matter, but they always do.”

Even between twins?

The pace is tight, even though the writing shows an early-career tendency to “tell” more than “show,” making the book a little too wordy. But there’s enough adventure in here to promise a heady career for the author. A parallel could be Paul E. Hardisty’s books, which began a little too “loose” and turned into the powerful Claymore Straker series, increasingly tight and challenging. Espionage from Karen Robards has the same feel.

Granted, Martin Jay Weiss has some distance to go, but he’s already worth reading. And here’s the other excitement of a debut thriller: spotting the ones where the author’s rapid growth will make that first book into a treasure. THE SECOND SON offers exactly that promise. (Published by Rare Bird Books)

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Edgy San Francisco Mystery, Dystopian, from Jonathan Moore: THE NIGHT MARKET

Wow!

I really liked Jonathan Moore's mystery from last year, The Dark Room. And I figured I'd enjoy the 2018 book, which was already scheduled at that time. But I had no idea what was in store -- THE NIGHT MARKET knocked me breathless.

Fiercely plotted with twists and blade-sharp revelations, wrapped around homicide detective Ross Carver in a San Francisco of the hauntingly near future, THE NIGHT MARKET takes "techno-thriller" to a new height of expert writing and psychological disturbance. I couldn't put it down, and I'm shaken by the suggestions on how Big Money and Big Advertising may already be twisting our culture -- and threatening our lives.

Here's how it starts: Ross Carver and his partner, as the homicide team on duty, answer a call to a home where there's a presumed murder that's just taken place. That is, there's a corpse, and blood -- and the neighbor reported sounds of a frightening disturbance. But when Carver gets into the room with the body, what he sees makes no sense ... a covering of some kind of fungus already engulfing the body. Even less does the next moment make sense, as the FBI bursts onto the scene and drags Carver and his partner out to some kind of biological decontamination rig.

We know that -- but Carver, waking up in his own apartment with a neighbor he's never met taking care of him, has to start from scratch, because his memory has been wiped, and so has his partner's. The messed-up records of where he may have been are enough to suspend him from duty. But the tiny scrap of information left for him -- a fragment from a case he and his partner were supposed to investigate -- turns out to tie him back to the dangerous experiment he seems to have stumbled into.

The trouble is, it looks like organized crime and Very Very Big Money are running a scam in San Francisco -- maybe across the country -- that Carver can't afford to discover if he wants to survive.

Here's a scrap of conversation between Carver and his mysterious neighbor, Mia, who might be on his side. Or not. At any rate, she's ahead of him on figuring out the technology behind the crime scene that he witnessed:

"I didn't know what else to do," Mia said. "I've been sitting here for weeks, waiting. Either to be killed, or for someone to pull me out. And there wasn't any other choice. I  can't do this alone. I don't even know how they got to her, so I have no idea what's safe and what isn't." ...

"Did Johnny Wong kill her?" Carver asked.

"I don't know."

"But you didn't hear that name for the first time from me. You already knew about him, didn't you?" ...

"We finally had a lead," she said. "Years in the dark, and then we thought we had a way in."

"Tell me."

"It's like what they said about J.F.K. You want to know who killed the president? List the world's best marksmen, and then find out which ones were in Dallas. Making these devices would be incredibly hard. We guessed only a few scientists in a few labs could do it."

"So you did your research, and then you made a list."

The closer Carver gets to figuring out the trap he's in, the closer he gets to a very nasty death. Or worse.

I couldn't put this one down, and I know I'll re-read it, tugging at the dangerous truths woven into the page-turning fast-paced plot. I know it took Moore a while to bring this one to publication -- he had to insert at least one other book before it -- and it was worth the wait. He sees it as the finale of a three-book painting of San Francisco: The Poison Artist, The Dark Room, The Night Market. Which of course suggests there won't be a sequel -- I wonder what he'll next bring to dark, vivid life on the pages.

From HMH, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. And do check out Moore's author webpage, here. Last but not least, should I point a finger at the character name, for mystery/suspense fans who know their classics??

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

New Release, THE ULTIMATUM, Thriller from Karen Robards

There's a time for hot suspense, and sometimes there's a place for romance -- but in THE ULTIMATUM,  the new and exhilarating thriller from Karen Robards, it's suspense and danger that take the hot seat. And that's terrific news, because Bianca St. Ives -- daughter of an outrageous international con man who's taught her the ultimate in survival skills and problem solving -- needs all her wits about her to carry out her own high-stakes tasks.

If you've ever wondered where the equivalent of Jack Reacher was for women, the answer is, in this page-turning global crime novel. Bianca's irresistible, a determined young women making fools out of the unprincipled gangsters she's up against. The first hundred pages of THE ULTIMATUM pits her against a misogynous prince of Bahrain, and she's leading a crew of top-notch thieves to reclaim something the prince shouldn't have. But it looks like the whole night's been a setup, to get to her and her team -- or, most dangerously of all, to her father.

So when the heist goes catastrophic, and she and her least likely associate watch a death trap in operation, Bianca shakes off the horror that's frozen her in place:

"We have to go," she said, and stood up. It took every ounce of strength and determination she possessed. Fire trucks raced up the street, screaming to a stop beside the flaming truck. Firefighters jumped down, ran to connect their hoses to hydrants along the plaza. ...

Doc rose too. "But we can't just --"

"Yes, we can. We have to go," she repeated more strongly and grabbed his arm. "We can't help them. We can stay here and die with them, or we can save ourselves."

Strong, fierce, determined -- these are the key words for Bianca St. Ives. She's also hungry for family and loyal friends, and when she finds them under threat, her own actions have one route only: Save them, no matter the challenge.

Whether she's negotiating terms on a boat at sea or struggling for footing on a snow-covered mountain, her extreme fitness skills and her desire to follow the quest her dad instilled in her drive her into high action and hair-raising hunts -- where she is sometimes the hunter but just as often, the prey.

Robards salts the adventure with a deft touch of sexual tension, since one of Bianca's opponents has an odd knack of taking her breath away. But it doesn't stop Bianca, or deter her. Not at all.

I kicked myself as I reached the final chapter, having only just realized what the book's title suggested; some readers will figure that part out much sooner than I did. More importantly, I hated to turn the final pages. Good thing this is the start of a series, even if the name "The Guardian Series" sound more like sci fi than international thriller. Hmm. When you've devoured your copy (turn off all distractions), let me know what you think. No spoilers, though!

Robards, by the way, is the author of more than 50 novels -- if, like me, you haven't sampled her work before, that may be because a her early work was romantic suspense, then contemporary suspense. I'm hoping she'll stay with intense thriller as her long-time genre, now that she's broken into it so boldly and marvelously. Quick comparisons: Less emotionally torn than Taylor Stevens's Monroe, not as wounded at Carol O'Connell's Kathy, but a bit more complex (and hence engaging) than Jack Reacher. Grab a copy.

 PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Grit, Violence, Dark Losses - and Somehow, Love, in David Putnam's Fourth, THE VANQUISHED

Placing his Bruno Johnson series within a network of friends who've worked the worst police beats in Southern California guarantees that David Putnam's suspense fiction will continue dark and violent. The third in the series, The Squandered, was a really good read, with plenty of unexpected twists. Brotherly friendships and the intensity of police work made the novel unusual and I liked it.

Number four in the series, THE VANQUISHED, hits a lot of the same buttons. But this time Bruno and his wife Marie find their Costa Rica haven -- where they are hiding the abused kids they've rescued -- is under threat from old enemies in an outlaw motorcycle gang. With the kids at risk, Bruno charges back to California to straighten things out. Soon Marie's at his side.

And that's the one drawback of this one ... the Bruno/Marie pairing doesn't leave much room for the police brotherhood that I liked in The Squandered. But there's no question that THE VANQUISHED is a page-turner, jammed with threat and danger.

Putnam has the solid investigative past himself to make the twists in his book authentic, and that's good. But I missed the redemptive notes of the earlier book. If you pick up THE VANQUISHED, let me know what you think. A must-own for those who especially appreciate the wild motorcycle world, too. Published by Oceanview.

San Francisco Police Suspense from Jonathan Moore, THE DARK ROOM

A couple of weeks ago, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt released Jonathan Moore's newest crime novel, THE DARK ROOM; there should still be plenty of time to collect a first printing of this powerful and intricately plotted investigation. Moore's third book, The Poison Artist, is also set in San Francisco, that city of fog and back alleys that forms such a powerful backdrop for pain and loss.  In Moore's hands, the city itself is an enabling force -- one that investigators must confront.

In THE DARK ROOM, we meet Gavin Cain, an SFPD homicide investigator. He's in the midst of witnessing an exhumation when a phone call drags him away at top speed: The city's mayor is being blackmailed about what looks like violent and sadistic sex games from his past. And Cain's task is to stop the possible release of dirty information about the mayor, as well as protecting him and his family -- against a very angry blackmailer with a ticking clock.

Complicating the investigation, for Cain, are threads that lead from it toward his own secret: He's become the committed lover of a former crime victim, whose chance at resuming normal life depends on his ability to protect her from further threats. Soon the cases inevitably cross, and the tension ramps up exponentially.

Despite the emotional risks involved, Cain's investigation is at heart a skilled and multipronged one, so that THE DARK ROOM is also an adept police procedural. Here's Cain thinking things through and prioritizing:

Cain stopped at a light on Santa Cruz Avenue, put his phone on his knee, and began to dictate a note to himself. This didn't require any real precision. He just spoke in a free flow of thoughts.

Thrallinex. Benzyldiomide.

Redding thought the drug was the key, and he might be right. In an hour, the ME could tell Cain how it compared to a hypnotic like Rohypnol, what a dozen pills would have done to the girl. Then there was the dress. When it came to high-end fashion, he had no idea where to begin. He'd been wearing the same suit three days running, and knew switching ties and shirts wasn't fooling anyone. But every problem had an entrance. Maybe a clerk in one of the shops around Union Square could poin him in the right direction.

The '84 Cadillac Eldorado was something he might be able to work with, though. No one had to register a dress. Pills got passed from hand to hand. But cops know how to find cars.

It's clear that the city's mayor has a dark past that's made him vulnerable. But it's the present that matters most, and Cain's hampered by the mayor's refusal to open up -- and tangled in the dodgy information that the mayor's family ekes out to him.

Intense pace, taut plotting, an investigator who gambles his own life to save others -- it all adds up to one heck of a good thriller, with a highly satisfying ending. Count this as a little darker than Michael Connelly in terms of plot, and a bit less dark in terms of how haunted the investigator is, but with the same gift of compelling storytelling and, of course, overlapping terrain.

Finally, there's a note from the author that makes it clear THE DARK ROOM is effectively the prequel to another book that Jonathan Moore had already written, called The Night Market. Its publication will follow this one (scheduled for January 2018). Count me among the people who will be preordering a copy.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.