The Missing Witness by Allison Brennan

The Missing Witness by Allison Brennan

Published by MIRA ISBN 9780778369653

Hardcover, $30, 416 pages

I have always wanted to read one of Allison Brennan's novels so I jumped into the fifth book in her Quinn & Costa series, The Missing Witness. While it can be difficult to join an established series without having read the previous books, I was able to catch up, though it did take awhile to place all the characters relationships.

The book begins with LAPD Detective Kara Quinn returning to Los Angeles to testify against a dangerous human trafficker she went undercover to catch. Kara Quinn has been on loan to the FBI in Washington DC where she works closely with Agent Matt Costa, and with whom she has a more than collegial relationship.

Kara is eager to testify, and threats against her life by the trafficker's people have given her LAPD and FBI colleagues concerns about her safety. When the trafficker is shot and killed on his way into the courthouse, there is one witness to the killing- Amy, a civilian IT consultant who has been working undercover to get information on white collar financial crimes that may implicate people high up in the city government as well as the trafficker. 

Amy disappears following the killing, and there are questions as to whether she is a witness or the killer. Quinn and Costa and Quinn's former unit in the LAPD have to work together to find Amy and unravel the white crime syndicate that has now turned to murder to protect their secrets.

Brennan does a good job explaining the complicated scheme that involves nonprofit organizations that have contracts with the city to build housing for unhoused people, and the web of deceit that has created millionaires out of people high up in the government and their family members.

There are some truly tense scenes in this fast-paced novel, including a few shoot-outs, a rooftop chase, and Kara racing away on a motorcycle from killers on her trail. I was biting my nails on these scenes.

I found it interesting how Brennan built her story around a real world problem, the homeless issue, and dealt with it from the perspective of people living in the middle of it. She clearly did her research on it. (Here is a link to an essay Allison Brennan wrote about this.)

For people who have read the previous Quinn & Costa novels, they will no doubt enjoy seeing what their favorite characters have been up to in the interim, and there are a few surprises for them. After reading The Missing Witness, I will be looking the first four books in the series- Kara Quinn is a badass.

The Merciful by Jon Sealy

The Merciful by Jon Sealy

Published by Haywire Books ISBN 9781950182077

Trade paperback, $17.95, 294 pages

One of the TV series my husband and I have been watching is Showtime's Your Honor, about a judge who tries to hide the fact that his teenage son accidentally killed a vicious mob boss's son in a hit and run accident. It's a gripping story, with one bad decision leading to the next.

Jon Sealy's new novel, The Merciful, mines some of the same territory. A young woman named Sam is killed riding her bike home from work late at night on a lonely road in a South Carolina tourist town. Daniel Hayward, the man who hit her, leaves the scene. He drives home to his wife, Francine, his college sweetheart, telling her (and himself) that he hit a deer. 

Word gets out about the accident after Sam's boyfriend goes looking for her and finds the body. People in the town are horrified that someone would leave after hitting Sam. They want her killer caught and punished.

The story shifts between the various people involved. Daniel's father contacts Henry, a big-time Charleston defense attorney whose client base is shrinking. Claire is the young state's attorney who is prosecuting Daniel. Years ago Henry berated Claire after she made a mistake, and she is determined to prove to him that she is a good lawyer.

Henry prepares Daniel for the upcoming trial, which consumes the town. In her last trial, Claire's affair with a police officer led to her losing the case. She knows that she must do everything she can to win this case, get justice for Sam, and repair her reputation. 

Daniel can't believe what has happened to him. He loses his job, Francine leaves him, he is shunned by everyone. His life was going well, how did one night change everything? 

Sam's boyfriend asks the same thing. He wanted to pick Sam up in his car that night, why did she not let him? And what happened between the time she left work and was hit? There is an hour of time missing, and that is tormenting him. Henry and Claire want to know the answer to that as well.

The Merciful is an intense novel that puts the reader in the shoes of several characters. We get the backstory to many characters- Daniel, Sam's boyfriend, Sam's sister, Henry, Claire, even the judge on the case- that lead up to the conclusion of trial, and the answer to the big question- "Why do people behave as they do?"

I was provided a review copy in enchange for an honest review.

The Whites by Richard Price

The Whites by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt

Published by Henry Holt ISBN 9780805093995

Hardcover, $28, 352 pages

Reprinted from the Citizen

Last month I binge-watched “The Wire,” the HBO series that many people consider the greatest TV drama ever. After I finished the five fantastic seasons, I discovered that Richard Price, the novelist who wrote for the show, had a new crime novel publishing in March.

He wrote “The Whites” under the pseudonym Harry Brandt. Many famous writers write under pen names — Stephen King (Richard Bachman), Ruth Rendell (Barbara Vine) and Nora Roberts (J.D. Robb) among them. Price did it because he said he wanted to write a story different than what he usually writes.

The first thing you notice about “The Whites” is the striking cover. It is stark black and white, with four cops walking up steps, and under them is the skyline of New York City. The type is raised, giving it a rich feel, something not usually seen in crime novels.

“The Whites” is a literary reference to Moby-Dick, the great white whale that destroyed Captain Ahab’s ship and took off his leg. Ahab vows revenge, no matter what the price.

The whites in this story refer to criminals who got away with heinous crimes years ago. When Sgt. Billy Graves, who commands the Manhattan Night Watch detective unit that investigates overnight crimes then hands them off to the unit detectives in the morning, comes upon the murder of a man who was one of his old unit’s “whites,” it brings back bad memories.

Back in the 1990s, Graves was part of “The Wild Geese,” a tough anti-crime unit consisting of four cops: Billy; Yasmeen, the only woman in the unit, now head of security at a local college; Pavlicek, retired, who now owns apartment buildings; and Redman, who owns a funeral home.

Graves accidentally shot and killed a 10-year-old boy while trying to arrest a crazed drug addict, and the fallout from that created a media circus, complete with protests outside his home; that cost him his marriage and put his career in the dead zone, going from one lousy posting to another.

Graves is now married to a nurse, who has some sort of emotional/depression problems, and they have two rambunctious young sons. He does his best to be a good dad and husband, but he feels there is something behind his wife’s problems that he can’t get to.

When another of the Wild Geese’s four whales is killed, and then a third is seriously wounded, Graves becomes convinced something is going on with the members of his old unit.

But how does he get to the bottom of it without questioning his old partners? After all, they all stuck by him following the shooting, and when his wife was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown, they helped care for his sons.

A reporter from a local newspaper claimed she had information that Graves was high on cocaine when he shot the young boy, but she lost her job when her information was determined to be incorrect.

The reporter, who now writes a sex column for an online magazine and works as a private investigator, calls Graves to tell him she has some information he may might want about the shooting he is investigating.

While all this is happening, a man named Milton Ramos is plotting revenge against Graves’ family. He has something very personal against Graves and his family, and as the story progresses we find out what it is.

Ramos accosts Graves' son at school, leaving a red paint handprint on the boy’s coat. A stranger picks up Billy’s dad, who has dementia, and leaves the older man to wander the streets of Harlem. A bag of bloodied clothes and toys are thrown on his porch.

Graves must find out who is after his family and why, and if it has a connection to the whites or his old partners, who once again rally to help Graves when his family is in trouble.

“The Whites” is a crackling good crime novel, one that you will stay up all night to finish. Its themes of family, honesty and the price of loyalty are beautifully done, and give the reader much to contemplate. And the city of New York is a terrific character here as well.

I liked the relationships, especially between Billy and his father, and Billy and his wife, and the writing is superb, definitely a cut above most crime thrillers. Fans of “The Wire” should pick up “The Whites”; it’s a great follow-up.

rating 5 of 5

And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman

And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman
Published by William Morrow ISBN 978-0-04-170687-5
Hardcover, $26.99 311 pages
Source: sent unsolicited by the publisher

Crime fiction is not a genre I frequently read, but I am a fan of the TV shows Weeds and Breaking Bad, so Laura Lippman's novel And When She Was Good, about a suburban single mom who runs a prostitution business, intrigued me. (I also live a block away from the place where a woman in NYC was accused of running a high-priced call girl ring.)

We meet teenage Helen, verbally abused by her unemployed father, a man separated from his wife and children, and living with Helen and her mother. He becomes more and more erratic and Helen becomes involved with the son of the owner of the restaurant where she works to make money for college.

The boyfriend is a troubled guy, a drug user, and convinces Helen to run away with him. Helen ends up working at a strip club and eventually as a prostitute. She trades in the bad boyfriend for Val, who is even worse, a serious pimp with a bad temper and a gun. When Val kills a man and Helen becomes pregnant, she plots her escape.

Flash forward and Helen is now Heloise, living in the suburbs and raising her twelve-year-old son. She is also running an internet prostitution ring, along with the help of her au pair/assistant Audrey. The only other person she can count on is Tom, a cop who knows what she does and protects her because she once helped him.

Heloise keeps a low profile:

"She always stands apart on the soccer field, her conversations with the other mothers polite yet fleeting. She's not sure whose fault that is. She stopped trying to figure out if she's standoffish because other mothers snub her or if she's snubbed because the other mothers sense she's standoffish. For the most part, she tells herself that's she's happy for their neglect... True, she encourages incuriosity in most people. Yet it's still hurtful to see how easily people fall into line with one's desire to be ignored."

When another suburban madam's murder is made to look like suicide, and Heloise discovers that the man she put behind bars may be getting out of prison and one of her former employees tries to blackmail her, things begin to fall apart.

And When She Was Good is a page-turner of a novel, with twists and turns, and you will read it in one sitting. Helen is a tough, smart, resourceful lady, but like Walter White from Breaking Bad and Nancy Botwin from Weeds, Helen sees a secret life of crime as her only solution to the problem of making enough money to support her family, but also like them, she discovers that her decision is bound to catch up with her.

The writing is crisp, the characters (even the minor ones) interesting, and the tension ratchets up with each turn of the page. I chewed off more than a few fingernails by the end. (I know, a bad habit) Lippman writes a crackling good novel, and I will be looking for more of her books when I'm in the mood for crime fiction.

rating 4.5 of 5

Now in Paperback- Very Bad Men by Harry Dolan

Very Bad Men by Harry Dolan

Published by Berkley ISBN 9780425247617

Trade paperback, $15

The latest paperback from Berkley is Harry Dolan's Very Bad Men. It is the second novel in the series featuring David Loogan, an editor for a mystery magazine who lives with Elizabeth, a detective, and her teenage daughter Sarah, in Michigan.

Loogan gets drawn into the case of Anthony Lark, a man who has murdered two men and is on his way to murdering another. All of the dead men were involved 17 years ago with a bank robbery that went bad, leaving a robber and a cop dead, and another cop paralyzed from the waist down.

The story is told mainly from the points of view of Loogan and Lark. Both men are interesting characters, and seeing the story from each of their perspectives makes this a much stronger book.

Senate candidate Callie Spencer, whose father is the paralyzed cop, is involved in the murders. But is she a target, a participant in the murders, or is Lark trying to protect her? Lucy Navarro, a reporter for a tabloid newspaper, is snooping around, and Loogan becomes her protector of sorts. When she gets too close to the truth and disappears, Loogan gets angry.

Dolan takes care to create fully realized characters. I particularly enjoyed his portraits of the teenagers; Elizabeth's daughter Sarah, and Nick, the teenage son and brother of two of Lark's targets, were really on the money for me.

The mystery of why Lark is killing these men is complicated and the reason really comes out of left field. I have to say I had absolutely no idea where it would end up, but it was a crazy trip getting there. If the author left clues as to what motivated Lark to kill, I did not pick them up. I found it satisfying that I really did not know where he was going until the end.

This novel is crackling good literary crime fiction; it put me in mind of Sara Paretsky's novels. I'm going to seek out the first novel in the series and anxiously await the third one.

rating 4 of 5