It hasn’t been all that long sing TJ Peterson was drummed
out of the Vancouver PD. Anger issues. Could’ve been because his wife was
running around on him. But she and her paramour were crushed when a garbage
truck flipped over on them. Or it could be his guilt from being with HIS
paramour (a hooker) when that accident occurred.
To fill time, his former partner gets him some minor
surveillance jobs. On one occasion, a snitch, who goes by the nickname Turtle, mentions
that he overheard these 2 guys trying to top each other talking about a body
buried going on 20y ago in a city campground. A cold case that doesn’t get any
colder. Where is the body, who is buried, and why were they offed and unceremoniously
dumped in a hole?
And remember Peterson’s hooker? Her daughter has disappeared
and was last seen with one of the more violent dealers in the Canadian west. So
Peterson is juggling two cases: the coldest of the cold cases and a hot current
case. And both revolve around buying, selling, using, dealing, and dying from heroin.
The two separate, but strangely intertwined cases take
Peterson’s days while trying to stay sober dominates his nights. All the while
considering eating a bullet.
Perhaps one of the darkest noir book I have read recently,
or ever. Kroll’s 2nd JT Peterson book was deeply disturbing.
Probably because a close friend of my kids from high school succumbed to heroin
and was missing for over a year until his remains were found in a nearby
forest. In the last half of the book, I could see his face in my mind’s eye.
Hopefully no one else will have the same reaction I did.
But it was a good book. Just dark. Really, really dark.
East Coast Don
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