#1508. The Scorned by David Putnam

Johnny Fillmore is an LA entrepreneur who sits at the top of a SoCal business pyramid. Owns plenty of real estate, and restaurants - his crown jewels. A subordinate oversees the next layer down - bars and strip joints mostly. The lowest layer of his empire includes variations on houses of ill repute. Those places cater to the most basal of human demands and desires. While Johnny oversees all levels of his empire, it's hard to (legally) connect Johnny with the real money makers at the bottom of his holdings.

Call him Johnny Ef. A moniker that he doesn't appreciate it. Call that to his face and that face may be the last one you ever see. 

Remember Bruno Johnson? First reviewed last year in The Sinister. Ex LA County Deputy Sheriff, Ex-con. Wanted for murder and kidnapping now living in Costa Rica with Maria, his father, and 10 kids they've liberated from shit environments and even shittier parents. Bea, his mom, is largely absent. Been that way since Bruno was a child; she lived the life of a con artist. She resurfaced in The Sinister bound to a wheelchair and looking 20 older from a life of hard living. More importantly, Maria is pregnant and due. Bruno is beside himself with joy at becoming a dad (again) at 50y.

Bea's back and Bruno ain't happy. He's sure she's only in Costa Rica to con his dad of what little money he has squirreled away - about $20K to get back in the game in LA. Bruno agrees to take her back to LA to drop her off under the condition she never ever make contact again. 

Alisa and Aleck Vargas are Costa Rican friends in Tamarindo, CR. He's an MD and thinking about running for local office with the intent of an eventual national run. Their daughter, Layla, is an undergrad in LA.  That's a problem. They tell Bruno that she's been kidnapped and the ransom demand is $100,000. They ask Bruno to deliver the ransom and bring Layla home. Bruno figures he can do both in one trip. Can it wait until Maria delivers? 

That question becomes moot as Maria goes into labor and Dr. Aleck has to do the delivery. And it's a difficult one. So much so that Aleck tells Bruno that Maria will likely sleep for the next few days so he can do these two deliveries while she recovers from the birth. Reluctantly, he agrees. He owes Dr. Vargas.

Upon arrival, Bruno's first call is to his long-time wing man, Karl Drago. A massive beast of a man who thrives on violence. Keeps a rod of rebar up his sleeve and tampons in his truck (for wound care). And if his anger directed at biker gangs, all the better. Bruno and Drago are a team to be feared. Bruno's rep in LA lingers even as he hides in Costa Rica. Rumor on the streets that he is dead, but when he shows the unconvinced his BMF tattoo on his shoulder, attitudes change from arrogance to limp-wristed dread.  He makes one other call. Helen Hellinger, LA deputy sheriff who worked with Bruno and knows the felony warrants against Bruno are meaningless.

A simple up-back delivery and pick up goes south. Mom disappears as soon as they land. Layla had fallen into Johnny Ef's orbit. The track of Layla leads to a seedy rundown hotel hard by a recent freeway where every basal human behavior can be bought. Even babies. Babies that have been given up by strung out women as well as babies bred specifically for sale. Yuck. What they've found has bubbled up deeply hidden feelings in both Bruno and Drago that can only be jammed back into the darkness with violence. Bone and blood they call it. 

Was kind of surprised when I read that this is Putnam's 10th Bruno Johnson book. In each of the previous 8, Putnam develops Bruno's law enforcement history, how he ended on on the wrong side of the law, and more importantly, the back stories to how he and Marie ended up with 10 foster children, yanked from the mean streets of LA and taken to their home in Tamarindo, Costa Rica. Also why and how Bruno lost 2 of his own children in LA. The publisher's website says all can be read as standalones, but it might help to start at the beginning with 2014's The Disposables. 

The first half of the book is more about Bruno wrestling with his conscious about his mom/dad, his newborn son, this ill-advised trip to LA, and his own flawed history. More discussion about feelings than you might find in a romance novel. But once both Bruno and Drago take the bit, they are cleaning up all things connected to Johnny Ef. And not in a way that Helen Hellinger can take to court so they have to take out the garbage in a more biblical manner and get back to doing the thing he loves . . . being a dad.

An other Oceanview winner. What can I say.

Thanks to Netgalley for making the advance reader copy available.  To be published February 7, 2023.

ECD