Smoke by Joe Ide

Mulholland Books, 336 pages, $28

Joe Ide’s books are like that potato chip commercial: You can’t read just one.

By the way, if you haven’t read a single IQ book, then this review is not for you. Move along.

The Isaiah Quintabe series has been getting darker. The crimes, committed and contemplated, in this book are vicious and shocking. The first IQ book, “IQ,” was a softer, more humorous look at a young man with some oddities but also with a lot of brain power. But with success comes the burden of more puzzles to solve. He’s not like a T.V. show detective. There are no longer simple, neat and complete endings. Although there is still much humor (mostly courtesy of Deronda and Dodson) in the book, Joe Ide can’t go backwards. Are you ready for the fifth IQ book, “Smoke”?

If you have been a faithful follower of IQ’s adventures, Joe Ide is going to throw a lot more curveballs your way. When we last left IQ, he had driven away from his life because of the bounty placed on his head by some bad, bad people. He knew it was safer for Grace, the love of his life, to live without him. She went to live with Deronda, a longtime neighborhood friend of IQ and IQ’s best friend, Juanell Dodson. Dodson has a lot of new stuff in his life, too, including lessons on how to be a “respectable” person from his mother-in-law, the indomitable Gloria. 

However, IQ’s sacrifice proves not enough to keep people he loves safe. It also doesn’t keep a new kind of horror from landing on his doorstep.

A new, unwanted case breaks into IQ's house and wraps its tentacles around him. It involves the deaths of several women, at least one serial killer, at least one escaped young man from a psychiatric facility, and a lot of pressure on IQ's PTSD resulting from what he has had to do in the past.

Ide alternates Dodson’s story about his attempt to make a legitimate place for himself in the working world in order to support his family and the story of IQ’s search for the killer. Ide does it with seeming ease. (P.S. We know it isn’t easy. Good writing is the product of inspiration and perspiration, as one wit decreed.) His intense killer insight is balanced by his intensely humorous and heartfelt account of Dodson, Cherise, Gloria, and Deronda. There are other characters, and fortunately, that’s exactly what they are, characters.

“Smoke” is meant to be loved. And the book after that is meant to be deeply anticipated.

MBTB star!