Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda

Dennis Lehane Books, 320 pages, $25.99

Ivy Pochoda re-creates the spit of land that is Red Hook, Brooklyn, by her own lights, in the same way John Steinbeck could bring a neighborhood to life, with all its tragedies and comedies, odd characters, interwoven relationships, and grace. She brings a playwright's sensibility to her book; her characters enter stage right, play their hour upon the stage, and exit left. Her present tense telling serves to intensify the characters' (and reader's) anxiety and need for resolution.

Val and June are 15-year-olds from the neighborhood. One hot summer night ("It's a hot night in a calendar of hot weeks."), they float away on a pink raft. Val is discovered on the shore early the next morning, barely alive. A massive hunt begins for June. Jonathan, a music teacher, is the person who found Val and brought her to the safety of the nearby convenience store run by Fadi, a Lebanese immigrant. Two of the last people to see Val and June the night before are Cree and Monique, former classmates. Val says she doesn't remember what happened. Because of what Val and June did, the lives of these characters will change.

As the hunt for June dwindles with the passing of the summer days, these characters are inhibited by their torpor, their sense of waiting for something to happen. Everyone has secrets and hopes that are heightened by June's continued absence. Although the pacing doesn't feel slow, Pochoda thoughtfully reveals her characters' stories drop by drop until the last few pages move rapidly along.

There's a sweetness and underlying optimism to most of the characters, despite the sorrows that they bear. Does the "visitation" of the title indicate a punishment for the sins, real or perceived, of the residents of Visitation Street, will they be touched by a divine hand and find their hearts' desire, are the ghosts of their past too stubborn to throw off, or is it their fate to finally mourn the dead?

This is the neighborhood the night of the disappearance:

Late summer smells hang in the air -- ripe sewers, cookouts, and the scent of stagnant water that lingers in Red Hook no matter the season. The night echoes with other people's noise, laughter falling from windows and the call-and-response of competing boom boxes.

Ivy Pochoda's book is sublime.

I am awarding this an MBTB star!

May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes; The Dead Run by Adam Mansbach; Outlaw by Mark Sullivan

Here's today's bonus pack.

I moderated a panel at Portland's Wordstock (www.wordstockfestival.com) festival on Saturday. Chelsea Cain, A. M. Homes, Adam Mansbach (pronounced man's-back), and Mark Sullivan discussed "The Dark Side." I was called in at the last minute to replace the scheduled moderator, so I spent an intense week trying to read everyone's latest novel. It was a pleasant revelation to have such disparate takes on "the dark side."

Let Me Go by Chelsea Cain

Minotaur, 368 pages, $25.99

I'll review Chelsea Cain's book Let Me Go later. For now, what you should know is that I am a big fan of her work. I enjoy hearing her speak. I think she is the cat's pajamas, and (almost) everyone should read her Archie Sheridan/Gretchen Lowell series, beginning, of course, with the first book, Heartsick. Her books are hysterically funny and hysterically gory and sexy. Chelsea is a lovely person who is known for her signing antics. At Wordstock, she threw (plastic) hands and noses into the audience, and gave said parts to her fellow panelists to use as talismans while they spoke.

May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes

Penguin, 496 pages, $16

A. M. Homes won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction for this book, now out in paperback. She told me she was surprised to win it, because at that point Hilary Mantel was winning all the awards for Bring Up the Bodies. Besides Mantel, the other authors whose works were shortlisted were Zadie Smith, Kate Atkinson, and Barbara Kingsolver. A. M. Homes is obviously no slouch.

May We Be Forgiven starts off describing regular, but colorless, people. Harry Silver is a professor of "Nixonology." He knows all things common and arcane about the 37th president. He is married to a smart, rigid Chinese woman who travels a lot. They share an apartment in NYC. They are stuck in their ruts and don't know enough to be actively discouraged.

When Harry's sister-in-law Jane makes a pass at him at a family Thanksgiving dinner, it throws Harry off his well-worn life's path. Harry's brother (and Jane's husband) is George. Although George is younger, he insists on telling people that he is Harry's older brother. George is a bully and has anger management problems. That becomes evident when he crashes into an SUV, kills the adults in the car, and orphans the surviving child. Then George murders his wife after he finds her in bed with Harry.

It's downhill for George and Harry for quite a while after that. Homes visits Job-like torments onto Harry's head: Harry's wife leaves him, he has to take care of George and Jane's two children, and strangers with dementia settle into his house, with the notion that Harry will take care of them. In his growing lunacy, Harry tries online sex hook-ups, editing some newly discovered Nixon short stories, fostering the orphaned boy from George's accident, and finding his lost Jewish religion.

Strangely, as the catastrophes and challenges mount, Harry becomes less colorless and more interesting. Harry struggles to find his heart and passion again and to do the right thing for everyone. (Even if that means learning to fake a special recipe for chocolate chip cookies to catch an Israeli arms dealer.)

Side note: Instead of simply mentioning the Nixon short stories, Homes actually manufactured one. Surprisingly, it has a Raymond Carver sensibility. Homes said that she enjoyed doing the research on Nixon and especially enjoyed crafting the story.

The Dead Run by Adam Mansbach

Harper Voyager, 304 pages, $25.99

Adam Mansbach plays with conventions.

In The Dead Run, U. S. citizen Jess Galvan must cross the desert at the border of Mexico and the United States like an illegal immigrant. He struggles with heat and thirst and aching muscles. He also struggles with the still-beating heart recently torn out of the body of a young virgin, given to him by an Aztec god incarnate to take to his demi-god son in Texas, thus igniting the end of the world as we know it.

Meanwhile …

Sheriff Bob Nichols is ill-equipped to help a sixteen-year-old girl that the demi-god in Texas needs as part of his cult.

The scene gets wilder and wilder. Galvan has a moral dilemma and a physical threat hanging over his head. The emphasis in the title is on the word "run."

Mansbach must have had a good time combining these over-the-top elements!

Side note: Mansbach jokingly said that he heard Bruce Willis doing a voice-over to the action in the desert.

Outlaw by Mark Sullivan

Minotaur, 336 pages, $25.99

Outlaw was a page-turner. Mark Sullivan does a good job of speeding his international intrigue thriller along.

Robin Monarch is a thief, an ex-black ops, ex-CIA operative, and currently a man for hire. The U.S. President wants him to find the U.S. Secretary of State and the foreign ministers of China and India, all of whom have been kidnapped. In addition to kidnapping, a heretofore unknown, well-organized, well-funded terrorist organization is creating havoc around the globe. Monarch and his well-chosen team have mere days to locate the dignitaries before they are killed.

Long Chan-Juan is the head of the most powerful Chinese triad. He is somehow involved in creating the chaos. His wife is a fortuneteller. She casts his fortune, but Long does not know if the fortune bodes well for him or not. Is he the good guy or the bad guy in the cryptic I-Ching messages?

The first book in this series is Rogue.

Light of the World by James Lee Burke (hardcover, $27.99)

"Light of the World" is less a mystery than a treatise on the nature of good and evil, especially evil. James Lee Burke's main characters, Dave, Clete, Alafair, and Gretchen, are one voice mulling, raging, and exclaiming about, and inveighing against the evil in their lives that either haunts them or stares at them slit-eyed in person, while smelling of sulphur and excrement.

Dave Robicheaux has been James Lee Burke's window into a world of hard times and hard crimes since 1987. Dave has been the voice crying for justice in the bayou wilderness. Although Dave carries a police detective's badge, his sense of justice is his own and not borrowed from any rule book. His best friend and former police partner, Clete Purcell, was tossed out of the New Orleans PD a long time ago. As a private investigator, he has tiptoed with elephant feet between working for legitimate bosses and mobsters.

Alafair, Dave's adopted daughter, whom we first met as an endangered child in "Heaven's Prisoners," is now an adult. She writes about crime, most recently about a serial killer named Asa Surrette. Gretchen Horowitz is Clete's recently discovered daughter. She used to be a contract killer. Now she's a film maker working on a documentary of the shale oil industry. (What? It could happen.)

Burke has rounded up all of these characters, along with Molly, Dave's wife, and taken off for Montana for some R&R. But this is not a book in which we read about Dave and Clete fishing (although they do some of that) or enjoying a leisurely chinwag or serenely gazing off at the natural beauty surrounding them (although they do some of that, too). If it's a book about evil and its earthly manifestations, then there's gonna be less R&R and more action, bloodletting, and general nastiness.

Right off the bat, someone shoots an arrow at Alafair while she's jogging. Then Gretchen discovers the sober truth about how some law officers have their own version of the law. Then a young girl is murdered. Then a slob of a guy, whom no one will mourn, is murdered. That happens fairly early on. Then leisurely paced throughout the 560 page book there are more bodies and a lot more brutality. "Light of the World" is sort of epic in that way. Maybe it should have been named "Walk Towards the Light."

Wyatt Dixon, resurrected from "In the Moon of Red Ponies," appears as a born-again, speaking-in-tongues ex-con. Does he testify for the Lord in Aramaic? "Some people say it's Syriac. Some says Aramaic and Syriac is the same thing," he says matter of factly. Is he really reformed, or is the rodeo clown from hell still a couple of gallons short of a full tank and sowing terror along with the good word?

Asa Surrette was a seriously sadistic serial killer. His body count was probably way more than his confession would indicate. Awhile back, with the idea of a book in mind, Alafair asked to interview him. Although a book never materialized, Alafair wrote several articles on Asa, none of them flattering. Although she thought that she would never actually be in danger from him, incarcerated as he was in Nebraska and especially after he died when the police van in which he was traveling burned with all hands on board, Alafair (and Dave) fairly rapidly comes to the conclusion that Asa is the one who shot the arrow at her and it is he who is now stalking her.

"Light" is also a centerpiece for the suffering of women. Although Clete and Dave thrust their chests out at perceived threats, and bluster at the authorities and rich-people-who-think-they-can-do-anything, they often take second chair to Alafair and Gretchen, who can bluster for themselves quite well, thank you. A couple of other female characters are central to the plot as well and their stories add, somewhat tediously, to the length of the book.

This is Burke talking about the awful deeds that human beings can do. They don't even have to rationalize them either. This is about the mysteries of life and death, love and hate, and God. Unfortunately for the good (but flawed, massively flawed) guys, there are complicated and conflicting clues. In Burke's world, people must gamely put one foot in front of the other, cling to what happiness and comfort they can find, try to be better people for the love of others, and prepare for the next assault.

Dave sums up what he's learned about life: "At the bottom of the ninth, you count up the people you love, both friends and family, and you add their names to the fine places you've been and the good things you've done, and you have it."

Burke's writing is ardent in his descriptions, metaphorical in its reach, intense in its crimes. I could have done without a scene or two, a character or two -- I definitely would have left Felicity Younger (wife and daughter-in-law of filthy rich, and just plain filthy, oilmen) and Bertha Phelps (appearing initially as a particularly inept reporter) at the pop stand.

Burke has been edging up in the page count over the last few books. It seems his fictional world these days contains too much to fit anymore in less than 400 pages. He has too much to say about how pitiful our standard response is to the evil out there, how we must deal with our morality and mortality, how there's more to this world than is contained in this world.

Actually, never mind "Walk Towards the Light." Based on the Odyssean nature of the quests of all the characters -- while floating on a "wine-dark sea" and hearing their individual sirens' calls -- the book should have been called "The Odyssey Redux."

Dove Season, by Johnny Shaw ($13.95)

If Cormac McCarthy had a sense of humor, he'd be Johnny Shaw. Like "The Border Trilogy," this is a very American mystery, and not just a North American one. The action in this book takes place on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border. The twin, but not identical, towns of Mexicali and Calexico straddle the border, one on each side. Traffic -- tourist and illegal -- wends its way back and forth between the towns, the former mostly by day and the latter mostly by night. If a young man grows up in California's Imperial Valley, chances are at one point or another he'll have crossed over to the Mexican side, home to several nasty delights and unregulated forbidden fruits. Besides Calexico, the Imperial Valley is populated by several small communities, mostly centered around the agricultural industry.

And that's where we find Jimmy Veeder, wayward son of Jack Veeder. Back in the Imperial Valley, just before the beginning of dove season.

Dove season once attracted movie stars from Hollywood. They'd come over, get drunk, shoot some doves, and pretend to be rugged outdoorsmen. Nowadays hunters still head to the fields, get drunk, shoot some doves, and play rugged outdoorsmen, although they may shine with lesser wattage than Hollywood movie stars.

Everything Jimmy ran away from as a young man is now again in place to haunt or challenge him. But this time Jack is terminally ill and in a care facility, and Jimmy has returned after a 12-year absence to be with him. Jack has a last wish: Find Yolanda. Yolanda, the hooker.

Using his dilapidated childhood home as a base, Jimmy seeks the help of his old buddy, Bobby Maves, to find Yolanda. Bobby grins his way through life. In his more sober moments, he's a farmer and an absentee father. Despite the years between meetings, Jimmy finds Bobby to be pretty much as he left him, a two-fisted party boy and scuffler. In fact, Jimmy and Bobby spend a lot of the book getting drunk and counting bruises.

In order to find Yolanda, Jimmy must reconnect with another person from his youth. Years ago, the older Jimmy read stories to the younger Tómas in his grandfather's bar across the street from Jimmy's home. Tómas now is a successful businessman, but his businesses are illegal on this side of the border and tolerated on the other.

Shaw does a great job of describing the conditions of a Mexico that depends on the U.S. for both its extralegal and illegal revenue. He does an equally skillful job with the California community. Everyone knows everyone else in a small place, and it doesn't matter if someone has been gone for twelve years either. Some secrets are kept better than others, but eventually some of those come to light, too. Will Jimmy survive the exposure of his family's secrets?

Dove Season is an entertaining mix of humor and grit. It's dark and violent, funny and outrageous, heart-warming and heart-rending. In a time when a lot of books are told in prologues, flashbacks and flashforwards, Shaw has chosen a straightforward path and it suits his story impeccably. He pays as much attention to the details as to the broader tale. In the end, just like dove season, everything changes but everything remains the same.

The Chicago Way (trade, $13.95), by Michael Harvey

There must be something in the Chicago water. Something that would cause the recent proliferation of good mystery novels set in Chicago: Calumet City by Charlie Newton; Big City, Bad Blood by Sean Chercover; At the City's Edge by Marcus Sakey, to mention a few I've read lately. The Chicago Way joins this interesting list. Each is stylish in its own way. Chercover adopts a traditional hard-boiled attitude. Newton has a female cop with past issues. Sakey has a hard-edged thriller novel.

Michael Harvey's character, private detective Michael Kelly, is very much a denizen of Chicago. Recognizable local areas and landmarks are inserted at every possible opportunity and lend authenticity to the story. If I had to compare him to some other writer, I would choose Lehane in how Harvey's story has heart and a history between its characters that is only slowly revealed.

The talk is snappy; the backtalk is snappy. The writing is stylish and solid. For instance: "I grew up in a hard sort of Irish way. On the city's west side. My mother drank tea, ironed a lot of clothes, and tried to stay out of the way. My father worked three jobs and dragged home $8,500 a year, kicking and screaming. He drank enough to hover between black silence and pure rage."

Former police officer Kelly is hired by his ex-partner to investigate the long-ago stabbing of a young woman by a serial killer. Kelly's ex-partner had been the police officer who caught the case. He was astounded to find the woman had survived and was now asking him for help in finding her attacker. When Kelly's ex-partner dies, the mystery deepens. Was his death related to the old case? What does the convicted serial killer, who was incarcerated at the time of his death, have to do with the crime? Memories from Kelly's own buried past involving his best friend, Nicole, a state forensics evidence examiner, resurface as he pursues the cold case. Harvey ties all the threads together in a surprise-filled plot. Whenever I think I've seen all the possible plot angles, along comes a book like this.

There is comedy and there is tragedy, both served up The Chicago Way.

The Ghost ($7.99), by Robert Harris

(Re-titled "The Ghost Writer.")

Contrary to the expectations created by the tantalizing title, it is not a tale of the supernatural. It refers to a ghostwriter. In a juicy peek into the world of celebrity memoirs, Harris's protagonist is one of the best British ghostwriters and, thus, is chosen to write the autobiography (giving new meaning to that word) of an ex-prime minister. The heady realization that he will be meeting and getting to intimately know the controversial ex-prime minister, not to mention the hefty paycheck, gives the acerbic, unnamed (appropriately so, don't you think) narrator a cause for celebration … until things start to go wrong.

Imagine Tony Blair charged with crimes against humanity in a world court for aiding and abetting the capture of alleged terrorists in Pakistan, who are then shipped to a U.S. military compound where they are tortured. Substitute "Adam Lang" for Tony Blair, and you have yourself the inspiration for this Robert Harris novel.

At first I was excited: the narrator was witty, sarcastic, sophisticated. The narrative flowed with verve and seemed full of insider looks at publishing. Because a book cannot exist with just the fun stuff showing, we had to eventually meet "the conspiracy." The narrator's ghostwriter predecessor supposedly committed suicide during a ferry ride to Martha's Vineyard, leading, of course, to all sorts of double entendres involving the word "ghost." In continuing his research, the new ghost stumbles across his predecessor's research that indicates the prime minister's rise to power and term in office may not have been all it seemed. Which leads to a frightening assumption that perhaps his predecessor's death may not have been all it seemed. It is after the narrator adjourns into incipient paranoia that the book ceases to fulfill the promise of its beginning. But as well as Harris is capable of creating a chilling scenario and as probable as the ending may eventually turn out to be, I nevertheless found the resolution to be ludicrous.

It may surprise you that I suggest you read it: for the humor, for the wit, for the promise of what could have been.

Fidelity (hardcover, $25), by Thomas Perry

Perry’s latest book has two elements I really enjoy: a good female character and a character who is quirkily meticulous. Perry is the creator of the wonderful Jane Whitefield* series and is the uncommon male author who can write an authentic female character. In Fidelity, Emily Kramer, widow of a private detective murdered under mysterious circumstances, appears with the right balance of vulnerability and strength. Point of Impact, by Stephen Hunter, against all odds, is one of my favorite books, its protagonist a Vietnam-era sniper. I enjoy a strange satisfaction from the detailed way Bob Lee Swagger, Hunter’s protagonist, narrates the art of sniping. Jerry Hobart, one of Perry’s many main characters, is a career criminal and a killer for hire. Perry’s careful detailing of Hobart’s planning and execution of his tasks echoes Hunter’s writing.

In the proverbial nutshell: Phil Kramer is murdered. His widow and the remaining detectives in his agency try to find his killer. It rapidly becomes obvious to them that Phil had an unusually secretive streak. They posit that Phil was murdered because of one of his cases and that somewhere he has hidden the evidence to unmask his killer. They learn that someone else has also figured the same thing when Emily is terrorized by Jerry Hobart, who wants that evidence on behalf of his client. It is a race to find the evidence, if it exists.

While I enjoyed the characterizations, the writing seemed too plain for the complicated emotions running through the story. With exceptions, the writing seemed terse and uncomplicated, belying the twisty path of the plot. I often grumble about how authors fail to put enough detail into their stories, the reader’s need for underlying coherence taking second place to advancing the thrill-a-thon. Perry, if I may grumble in the opposite direction, suffers from TMI. Too much information. For example, chosen (mostly) at random:

“Ted Forrest awoke knowing it was late. He could see that the level of the sun was high, that it must be at least ten. He also knew that something had come to him during the night while he was asleep, some idea, some decision. He got up and went into the bathroom. He had not brought any of his toiletries into the guest suite, but the guest bathrooms were always stocked with toothbrushes and razors and combs. He showered and wore the bathrobe from the suite to walk down the hall to the master suite.”

On the other hand, Emily has duct tape placed over her eyes as a blindfold. When the duct tape is removed, although it is painful, the implication is that she keeps her eyelashes and eyebrow hair. I am unwilling to actually test it, but my belief is that duct tape placed over one’s eyes would in fact undoubtedly whip a fair number of those lashes right out. (I hope I’m wrong and Perry is right.) I am a charter member in The Capricious Reader Society, so I want to know why doesn’t the author detail the duct tape issue and ignore where Forrest got his toothbrush.

Contrary to what you are probably thinking right now, I am actually quite easy to please and ignore, at no peril, all sorts of inconsistencies. For example, why doesn’t Hobart hare off and torture some of the people who wind up helping Emily? He certainly knows about them. He could easily go from A to C without stopping at B. But if he had, the book would have been a hundred pages shorter and certainly not as interesting.

The bottom line is I felt Perry had too many main characters -- however well done -- and too much detail about inconsequential things. On the third hand, many of Perry’s scenes -- most notably with Hobart and his on-again-off-again girlfriend -- were splendid and some of the twists provided OMG (oh, my God) moments. 

 * Jane Whitefield runs an unofficial witness protection program. She helps people “disappear” when their lives are in danger and they have no other recourse. Rumor has it that, after a lengthy absence, Perry is in the process of writing another Whitefield book.

In the Woods (trade, $14), by Tana French

French is an American-born actor who has traveled widely and has lived in Dublin since 1990. I mention this because her story seems to draw from all levels of her prior experience. Although she is American-born, In the Woods seems very Irish to me, steeped in mythology and blended with a sense of a very modern struggle to establish the country as a viable economy. I don’t know how long she lived in the United States before beginning her peregrinations, but I felt she purposely made her work accessible to non-Irish readers. (In contrast, Roddy Doyle, whom I love, takes for granted the reader knows the ins and outs of Ireland.) French, the actor, has written a drama that centers on the inner turmoil of the narrator, although several other characters receive an excellent 3-D treatment at her hands as well. 

The woods border a 1980s housing development that was supposed to have been emblematic of a rising economy, but instead represents more of a failure to thrive. Three adolescents from the estate disappear into the woods one afternoon, and only one eventually emerges, traumatized and unable to remember what happened.

Twenty years later a young girl from the same estate is found murdered and left in a spot next to what remains of the woods. Rob Ryan, the young boy who emerged from the woods long ago, has grown up to become a police detective. Since in French’s world there are no coincidences, he is assigned to the case with his partner, Cassie Maddox, a rare female in the “Murder Squad.”

Just as he once had joined in an idyllic friendship with the two missing children, so now Ryan joins with Cassie and Sam, another detective, to form both work partnerships and personal friendships to solve the young girl’s murder, which in turn may have an impact on Ryan’s own mystery.

French’s glimpse into Ryan’s psychological trauma is suspenseful and compelling. The fact that he is the narrator initially hides his gradual mental breakdown, as he sees shadows flitting at the edge of his vision and he becomes increasingly more “fidgety” with his re-introduction to the village where he lived until his friends disappeared. Can we continue to trust his perception of the current case? He himself says that if there is no darkness in what he sees, he will create darkness. It is not even clear after a certain point that he actually wants his own mystery to be solved because then he may have to face his own instability, and perhaps culpability.

French doesn’t present the reader with a neat and tidy, follow-the-clues mystery. It delves deep into the woods and the psyche, and the solution to Ryan's personal mystery is ambiguous and unsettling. It is to French’s credit and skill as a writer that, nevertheless, the reader is satisfied.

In the Woods is the 2008 winner of the Edgar Mystery Award for Best First Novel by an American and is also the recipient of an MBTB star from Jean.

P.S. French has indicated she is working on a sequel done from the viewpoint of Ryan’s partner, Cassie Maddox.

A Death in Vienna (trade, $12.95), by Frank Tallis

It was Portland author Phil Margolin who recommended this book. Phil loves to pass on good reads, and he often blurts out a title before he remembers to say hello.

I had seen this come through when it first came out but gave it a pass. I had just read or skimmed two other Freud/Jung-inspired novels that left me blah. Oh, no, not more birth-pangs-of-psychoanalysis b.s., I thought when I saw A Death in Vienna. I should have read it. And I’m glad Phil stopped by.

Vienna. 1902. The murder of a medium (the oo-we-oo kind, not a Ted Turner corporate entity). A Freud disciple, Dr. Max Liebermann, and his friend, Detective Oskar Rheinhardt, attempt to separate the supernatural from the deviously human. Liebermann tosses in a lesson in repressed memories to boot.

Vienna’s old world charm is on the verge of change, and Tallis does a nicely subtle job of hinting at what is to come with the two world wars on its horizon. He also presents an intriguing female character who, against popular practice, is interested in a scientific education. When a not-so-happy medium is dispatched by a bullet that cannot be found, in a locked room whose only key is on the inside, with a statue of the Egyptian god Seth enclosed in a locked box, with the key, naturally, found on the inside, the reader should be rubbing his or her hands with glee at these intimations of a good old-fashioned mystery. I have to say I was not disappointed.

Executive Privilege ($25.59), by Phillip Margolin

I know why Phil Margolin is so popular. I started to read his latest work and had to keep turning the pages to see what would happen next. He is not the master of allegory or metaphor and a sunset is mostly just a sunset. It is his storytelling skills that really have matured in this book.

Margolin asks the absurd (we hope) question: What if the president of the United States was suspected of being a serial killer? What would an overworked associate in the largest law firm in Portland and a mentally and physically scarred ex-cop do if they suddenly came into some knowledge that would cast aspersions on the president’s character? They’d get into a whole lot of trouble.

There are many significant characters in this story, and Margolin intertwines them very well. I really enjoyed his depictions of a strong female private eye and a sensitive male lawyer, turnabout without banging the reader over the head with a politically correct hammer. His bad guys are boo, hiss bad. His good guys are dressed in white down to their undies, metaphorically speaking. And a good time was had by all.