Camino Winds

Hi Five by Joe Ide

Unlicensed PI and South-Central LA’s respected get it done expert, Isaiah Quintabe (aka IQ), is having a tough time getting it done . . . at least in his personal life. His long-time girlfriend, artist Grace, left him and LA to get away from the streets and drama that surrounded Isaiah. Two years ago, she took off for the artist mecca of Santa Fe. Since then, Isaiah had been with Stella, an up and coming violinist with the Long Beach Symphony recently promoted to first chair and preparing to be the featured soloist in the next concert. Great woman, but she’s not Grace. And there is still the streets and drama of his life.

His rep around Compton, Carson, etc. is stellar. Solves your problems and he won’t let go until said problem is fixed. But Angus calls him, and Isaiah isn’t pleased. Angus is the biggest arms supplier to LA gangs. Christiana, his daughter, is soon to be (wrongfully) charged with murder and Angus wants Isaiah to stop that from happening. Stop it or Angus will have Stella’s hands destroyed by his crew.

Isaiah goes to meet Christiana. She runs a custom suit shop and lives with her mother. Turns out Christiana is one of those rare multiple personality disorders. Five of ‘em live in her head and continually battle each other for dominance. Angus’ right-hand man was in for a suit, but was ambushed in the shop and murdered in front of her. Isaiah has to interview each of the ‘alters’ to get all the details.

And old Angus is still doing business. Wants one last sale to send him off into retirement. And it’s a big one. He’s managed to acquire a Gatling gun. One of those 4000 rounds per minute monsters. A Mexican cartel wants it and is willing to pay the $1 million price tag. Not to mention that some other local gangs want to intercept the sale and get the gun for themselves.

Seeing the errors of Angus’ ways, Isaiah wants to stop the sale of the gun while not pissing off Angus who’d then ruin Stella’s life and hands whether Isaiah got Christiana off or not.

Can you say rock and a hard place? Add to the mix Cambodian gangs, neo-nazi skinheads, a couple dozen Latino gang members. And an old junkyard (make that 'wrecking yard') owner looking for love in his church (which is actually a very compelling subplot).

This is Joe Ide’s fourth IQ book and I think at least two earlier books have been reviewed here on MRB. Ide has been a screenwriter and has the chops for telling a story, presenting the street life around Long Beach, keeping a number of balls in the air so that all the secondary stories come off smoothly. Highly recommended for those of us who like mysteries and suspense novels. Noir? Maybe. It’s got the gumshoe, femme fatales, multiple bad guys circling each other in scattered stories and the resulting violence that pulls all the stories together.

ECD

 

All the Devils are Here

The Forgers

Game of Snipers by Stephen Hunter

73 years old. Bob Lee Swagger has earned a retirement that allows him to spend a couple hours a day on his front porch rocker looking over the serenity of the Idaho pasture and mountains. Sure he still tinkers in his gun shop cuz it’s what he likes to do. It's who he is. Rides horses when his titanium hips allow. Buys little, talks less, doesn’t vote. That he lives like this is testament to his skills honed over a life viewed through a sniper’s scope. His is a good life considering all he’s been through.

But as any skilled hunter of men knows, it can’t last.

Mrs. McDowell comes up his drive in a rental car. She’s one of those Gold Star moms. Her son came back from Baghdad in a box 14 years ago, killed by a sniper. She didn’t just accept the flag and go home to spend a life in grief. She went on the offensive. She wants the guy who pulled the trigger. She is on the fast track to going broke as she became an amateur spy, political and military lobbyist, a prisoner, a rape victim, converts to Islam and learns Arabic to move amongst the Muslims all in an attempt to find the shooter.

She does. Sort of. She has a name, or his nom de guerre, Juba the Sniper. An Islamic sniper for hire. Even knows his preferred method: set off an IED. Targets scramble into cover that actually is Juba’s kill zone. The Islamic ying to Bob the Nailer’s yang. She even has some clues to his whereabouts – some barely on the map village in southern Syria.Where he is training. For a mission. A big one.

Bob Lee feels for her but isn’t interested in any more hunts. But he is willing to pass along what she knows to a friend in the Mossad who goes by ‘Gold’. They meet in Israel. Juba is perhaps Israel’s highest value target after he slaughtered a school busload of children some years ago. A mission is quickly cooked up and the Mossad goes in hot, but Juba had just left the village. Last second escapes is an important skill for Juba.

Juba is prepping for a mission. By Swagger and Gold’s read of the evidence, Juba has been hired by sources unknown to do what no one has done . . . hit a target from long range on American soil. Swagger and Gold hit up Swagger’s old FBI friend, Nick Memphis, to sell him on the need not just for a hunt, but a highly compartmentalized hunt.

The hunt begins. Dearborn, MI. Greenville, OH. Wichita, KS, Rock Spring, WY. Anacostia, DC. At each stop, the FBI closes in an inch at a time only to have Juba slip away (Be forewarned: that summarizes probably 75% of the book). Along the way, Mrs. McDowell is called back a few times for insights the FBI minds might’ve overlooked. Remember, she knows more about Juba than any intelligence service.

Throughout the hunt, the FBI team thinks they’ve learned the date, the time of day, the distance (>a mile) and a few other tidbits. They feed all the information critical to prepping for a long shot into geographic databases to narrow down where he'd train. Tough job given the size of the US. They’ve purposefully avoided thinking about the target as that might cloud their judgement. Having all that info about the geography and roughly when the shot will be taken, they start narrowing down potential targets.

They are ready to take Juba down . . . they think. 

They hope.

The first Stephen Hunter book I read was iSniper and was immediately hooked. The boys here at MRB has since reviewed every Swagger book (about both Earl, the daddy, and Bob Lee, the son). And while we have some favorite mystery/thriller writers (like Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, CJ Box, Craig Johnson, Louise Penny, et al.), from where I sit, no one tells a story with so many moving parts in ridiculous detail about the religion of the gun, those who sit in that cathedral, and the nuances of the hunt as well as Stephen Hunter. Clancy may have invented the techno-thriller with all its detail about military might, but Hunter takes his technical knowledge about shooting (the rifle and its design, parts, assembly, the scope, the machining of the pieces of a bullet, the chemistry of the gunpowder, the process of hand loading, sighting, weather, angles, environmental  and geographical issues, etc.) to a level we readers may not fully understand but can still grasp. Wonderful story. Magnificent plot. Expertly told. Doesn't get any better. Had it not been for being an online virtual kindergarten teacher’s aide for a grandson, this would’ve been a single sitting read. Go ahead, let Bob the Nailer nail you to your favorite location for reading.You can thank me later.

ECD

The SCOTUS Affair was both a love story about a secret love, and a conspiracy novel. The secret love story was about the relationship between Ben Johnson and Acadia LaFleur. Ben was 70 years old and was a partner in an impressive law firm which made him one of the most successful and powerful black men in the U.S. Acadia was the wife of Alphonse LaFleur. She was the remarkable Southern white wife in a loveless marriage, and she had been in love with Ben for 40 years. Her husband was part of a multigeneration of politicians who successfully controlled and financially benefitted from the political power. One of the other important figures was Dimase Augustin, a professional detective and trouble shooter who worked for Ben Johnson. 

This book is the first in what may become a series of thrillers about Mr. Augustin.

 

Unlike most conspiracies, this one was not driven by ideology. The loose network of people involved were of various political leanings. The group wanted to maintain their own power and control, and therefore the purse strings of government. The group thought that kickbacks from various rebuilding and military contracts would provide them with billions of dollars.

 

But Alphonse had his sights on controlling more than his corner of Louisiana. He was in league with a corrupt senator, Richard “Dickie” Monroe, and it was there design to control a powerful shadow U.S. government, and then eventually to win the presidency. While they already were a part of the political party that had majorities in the House and Senate, they had a plan to control the Supreme Court as well. Operation SCOTUS was intended to do that death. With the natural death of Supreme Court Justice Charles Thompkins at the age of 86, they knew they could fill that spot and one more with judges they could control. Operation SCOTUS was aimed at removing the youngest Justice and replacing him with one of their own.

 

Meanwhile, Dickie kept a room at the Watergate where he entertained his ladies of the night, and it was one such woman, who used the title of Daisy May, happened to see a text on Dickie’s phone about their plans for the Supreme Court. She was also from Louisiana and had the same name as Acadia La Fleur. The author explained that it was a common Cajun name. When the order went out for the murder of Daisy May, her real name was not known to the men in Washington so it was Ben Johnson’s love that was attacked with a baseball bat and left to die.

 

Normally, I would not be drawn to a conspiracy story, but this one was different enough. The characters were interesting and believable. The plot, which was not overly complex, developed nicely. I was eager to see how the author was going to bring this story to a conclusion. It’s a good story – have a look.

The Reflecting Pool by Otho Eskin

Meet Marko Zorn,  detective with the Washington DC Metropolitan Police. Zorn just happened to be the first law enforcement officer on the scene of a pre-dawn murder. A young woman who had drowned in the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Sandra Wilcox is found in the shallow pool facing up, eyes wide open, Her deep blue eyes remind him of his older sister who was raped and murdered nearly 20 years before.

This is way more than just another of the myriad of DC murders. Wilcox was part of the Secret Service having risen to serve on the protective detail of FLOTUS. Some think her rise in the Service was a little too swift. The reflecting pool is technically the jurisdiction of the US Park Service. And, obviously, it happened in DC. That means the Secret Service, the Park Service, DC Metro, and the FBI are all at each others throat arguing jurisdiction. Seeing as how DC Metro isn't federal, they have the least to say. About the only disinterested agency is the CIA.

But Zorn is an uncompromising detective who only wants to find out the truth, jurisdiction be damned. Another thing about Zorn . . . he doesn't give a shit who he pisses off. He could care less about government officials telling him to back off. National security? Yeah, right. POTUS, FLOTUS, Chief of Staff, Secret Service, dozens of other White House staffers can't seem to get through his thick skull, Justice for Sandra Wilcox matters. Truth matters. That's it.  

So what if Zorn's pursuit of the truth might put his partner in someone's crosshairs. Heck, most of the detective service is quite unhappy with him.

The investigation ends up unwrapping some curious details of Sandra's life and death not to mention her rapid ascent in the Secret Service.  And because no DC detective only works one case at a time, Zorn manages to douse a developing gang war over a delivery of weapons and a threat of a possible presidential assassination. It's been a busy few weeks for Zorn.

Eskin spent a career in various aspects of government. His literary history is as a playwright so this is his first novel. Let's hope Zorn has a long and contentious career working DC crime. This is good stuff. Really good. 

West Coast Don reviewed this a couple months ago. He liked it, too. 

 ECD