"'Shit.'
"I didn't say anything.
"Charlie said, 'Okay. You've got to come in. Come to my place, and we'll go in together. I'm sure we can pull bail, even after this.'
"'No.'
"'What do you mean, no?'
"'I can't come in yet, Charlie. There's something I've got to do.'
"Charlie went ballistic. 'Are you fucked?'
"I hung up."
Cole has to rely upon the more-honest REACT members to turn in their rotten colleagues and on the top brass in the LAPD to prosecute the bad cops. It's not an uplifting story, but it's as smart and suspenseful as the best of its type.
Two female writers, Sue Grafton and Sara Peretsky, have created the most normal, believable hard-boiled detectives. Grafton combats the problem of the aging detective by limiting Kinsey Millhone's experiences to the 1980s. "K" is for Killer, the 11th in Grafton's alphabet series, is again set in Santa Teresa (actually Santa Barbara), California.
Kinsey is 32, twice divorced, drives a VW Beetle, lives in a converted garage, cuts her hair with nail scissors, and has lost her primary gig as an investigator for the California Fidelity Insurance company. Along with the other detectives in the genre, Kinsey's fierce independence and the profession she has chosen make it difficult to maintain long-term friendships, let alone romantic relationships. In "J" is for Judgment, she accidentally discovers that several family members live an afternoon's drive from her home, and spends much of the novel agonizing over whether she should make contact with them.
In Killer, while waiting to interview a nurse who knew the victim of the murder she's investigating, Kinsey sits in a waiting room glancing at a glossy woman's magazine. "Intellectually I understood that these were all highly paid models simply posing as housewives for the purpose of selling Kotex, floor covering, and dog food. Their lives were probably as far removed from housewifery as mine was. But what did you do if you actually were a housewife, confronted with all these images of perfection on the hoof? From my perspective, I couldn't see any connec-tion at all between my lifestyle (hookers, death, celibacy, handguns, and fast food) and the lifestyle depicted in the magazine, which was probably just as well. What would I do with a fluffy mutt and containers full of dill and marjoram?"
Tunnel Vision is the eighth novel featuring Chicago private eye V.I. "Vic" Warshawski. Author Sara Peretsky is relentlessly P.C. and Warshawski wears her left-liberalism on her sleeve. For instance, Vic previously defended a friend's abortion clinic from Operation Rescue like protesters. In this novel, she tries to solve the murder of an acquaintance who served with Vic on the board of a battered women's shelter. (One redeeming quality: Vic is a die-hard Cubs fan.)
But once Peretsky stops preaching and lets Warshawski start detecting, you can ignore the proselytizing. Peretsky writes a great page-turner.
As with Kinsey, Warshawski's independence causes trouble with those who care most about her. She refuses help from her boyfriend, police Sgt. Conrad Rawlings, even after her apartment is broken into and she is roughed up by the burglars.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.17.10 @ 2:52AM|#
xdthxg
منتدى العرب|3.9.11 @ 8:41PM|#
Thank you