Acts of Nature by Jonathon King

Max Freeman's been a busy boy with his developing PI business down there in S. Florida. So has his Ft. Lauderdale police detective girlfriend, Sherry. So busy they decide to take a week and go native at Max's shack/home in the eastern edge of the Everglades. No cell phones, no radios. Just some books, a little fishing, plenty of wine, campfires, some canoeing. Sounds pretty good to me (except the fishing part). One a whim, they pack up for an overnight or two at a vacant fishing camp a couple hours away.

Not the best of plans or timing with a Caribbean hurricane set to make an unusual turn NE and back up into Florida.

Buck, Marcus, and Wayne are B/E guys, fencing what electronics and jewelry they lift from Dade county homes. Buck has the bright idea that after the storm passes, all those rich folks who have weekend shacks in the Glades will be more concerned with cleaning up their homes than they will be about a shack so the picking should be pretty easy. 

Then there is Harmon and his buddy Squires, both former Army SpecOps and now security for an oil company, now safe at home after convincing some backwoodsmen in some banana republic that drilling is good, protesting is bad . . . make that fatal.

Some sun, sex, wine, more sex, naps, a little fishing, pan-fried dinner, dessert (wink, wink) under a blanket of stars. Life is good for Max and Sherry, only to be yanked to reality by the now Cat 4 storm blowing the shack they've clandestinely invaded back into the swamp. In their struggle to find what little shelter is available, Sherry falls through a floorboard and the torque fractures her femur. Open wound in the Glades is not good. Infection is now as big an issue as the storm.

After the storm, Max manages to splint and bandage her leg, gently get her in the canoe, and start the slow paddle back to his shack where he can call for help. They pass another fish camp and they pull in to see if there might be some bandages or medicine. Success. There is, but there is also a door with an electronic lock and no other way in. Odd for a fish camp.

Buck and the boys are working their way through their route of fish camps, taking all manner of fence-able items. They come up on Max and Sherry in their air-boat. Max's ex-cop radar goes nuclear, for good reason. Buck tries the nice-guy approach, but ends up ordering the bind-gag of Max and Sherry while one of his boys stands guard.

The oil company calls Harmon. Wants he and Squires to go check on a 'research station' (an illegal attempt to root around for oil in the Glades). Now that the storm is history, Harmon hires a helicopter and off they go. The noise alerts Buck and distracts Marcus, so Max, having managed to get loose of his duct tape bonds, jumps Marcus and removes Marcus' lower leg with a blast from a shotgun.

Got one of those Mexican standoffs with guns pointed at all directions, no one knowing who's who and who can be trusted.

I've missed you, Max and it's glad to have you back. The perfect remedy for this summer’s heat wave.

East Coast Don

Eye of Vengeance by Jonathon King

I started reading King's Max Freeman series, all (so far) of which have been favorably reviewed here. This is King's first standalone novel.

There's a skilled sniper working in South Florida. Veteran crime reporter Nick Mullins sees the results first hand when he witnesses the murder of a convicted pedophile during a routine prisoner transfer.

Now Nick has some serious demons. Three years ago, after a quarrel, his wife died in a traffic accident, killed by a drunk who is now being paroled. Nick went off the deep end for a while, but rehabbed by working, leaving his Cuban housekeeper to raise his daughter. Another parolee gets cut down in from of the parole office. Then two more.

The sniper turns out to be a SWAT team member, recently back from a tour as an Army sniper in Iraq. After some digging, soul searching, and the sharp eye of the newspaper research maven, Nick figures out that the sniper is using Nick's stories of mayhem as his observer choosing targets. But the police and the Secret Service don't buy it. They think the sniper is planning to off the Sec'y of State when she comes to Florida to make a speech. Of course they are wrong.

I really like the Max Freeman series and thought I was getting another to read on a recent trip. Nick Mullins was an intriguing character, but not as good as Max Freeman. Thank goodness that King has more Freeman stories still on the shelf, waiting for me to read.

East Coast Don

A Killing Night by Jonathon King

Book #4 in the Max Freeman series. Max is working as a regular PI for his lawyer friend Billy Manchester. Right now it’s talking to Philippine workers on that cruise ship with the exploding engine room. Max and Billy are building a class action case against the cruise line while the cruise line has hired a couple idiot thugs to convince the workers that going back home would be the best option. Meanwhile, Max’s former squeeze, Det. Sherry Richards, last seen saving Max’s bacon and taking in the battered wife. In this book, Richards is still a cop, but also works inside a battered women’s shelter protecting the residents in need of protection.

Three female bartenders have just flat disappeared. Vanished without a trace. Richards has Colin O’Shea in her crosshairs. Colin is a former Philadelphia beat cop (along with Max) who was implicated, along with 3 other rat bastard cops of taking liberties with a slow witted cashier in a convenience store. The 3 jerks admitted to their deeds, but Colin clammed up and the girl disappeared.

Colin has surfaced in south Florida and plays the bars, actually knowing a couple of the missing girls. Richards asks Max to check up on him, but Max takes it one step farther and returns to Philly for the first time since abruptly leaving after killing a 12yo store heist suspect.

What Max turns up does not suggest that Colin should be under suspicion. When Max and Richards turn up during a sweep of local bars, Max sees a guy slip out while giving the girl behind the bar a questioning glance. Max’s cop instincts says this guy doesn’t want to be rousted by the cops so Max starting trying to get info out of the barkeep.

The girl’s boyfriend is a local cop who gets off chasing, catching, degrading, raping, and then killing girls. And Max is closing in. He tries to follow the bum, but ends up getting the tables turned on him. That is until the girl tricks the ‘beau’ and gets the location of what might be a graveyard. That forces Richards to finally believe Max and they trap the perp where he is setting up a perimeter during an operation.

When confronted, the creep pulls his weapon and . . . death by cops.

After having a bad outing with the previous book, I decided to choose a title from a known source and King’s Max Freeman fit like comfort food. The back and forth from the Everglades and Philadelphia, between Max and Sherry, between Max and O’Shea is what drives this series. I’m wondering if O’Shea will make more appearances in later books. He’d be a good addition. I will certainly be checking back in.

East Coast Don

Shadow Men by Jonathon King

Mark Mayes is a young man eyeing the seminary. The death of a parent opens a box of old family documents including a series of letters from his great grandfather who, with his two sons, were part of a desperate lot working on the construction of the first road to cross the Everglades back in the early years of the 20th century. The conditions were deplorable with the downright evil Jefferson, a crack shot with a large bore rifle, keeping the crew from leaving the crew at night. The three never made it out and Mark has been trying all the proper channels to find out what happened to this side of the family.

Hitting closed doors, Mark goes to Bill Manchester, King's stuttering attorney to see if he can make any headway. Billy gets his now investigator, Max Freeman, to start digging. But at every turn, Max hits a wall as though someone was on his six everywhere he goes. Countless times, a bug in his phone, a tracker in his truck, keeps some faceless sleuths on his tail.

Rumor has it that Jefferson's grandson became a preacher so Billy and Max start searching various sources for a preacher named Jefferson and finally score. So Max goes to interview him in a town that has a 15yr history of a serial killer doing his best imitation of Dexter, killing bad guys and taking out the trash. Reverend Jefferson is, indeed, who they are looking for and, in an attempt to relieve some of his family's guilt, turns over a box of items including that large caliber rifle. Included in the box is an accounting of Jefferson's deeds on behalf of his employers, the first big time Florida development company, Palmco. Including a map that Max thinks are graves.

To find the graves, Max enlists Nate Brown - the 80ish WWII hero and defacto mayor of the 'glades who knows more about the Everglades than anyone. With the map, Max and Nate find the graves of Mark family. But sparks are thought to be possible when Mark travels to see Reverend Jefferson, but Mark finds that Reverend Jefferson has hanged himself in his barn. The last bit of guilt for having tried to account for his grandfather's sins by, as I said, taking out the trash.

I'm getting to like Max Freeman and his girlfriend Det. Richards, and Bill Richardson. But the guy I really like is Nate Brown. A really crusty old frog who wears the 'glades proudly on his sleeve and makes no bones about his disgust with 'progress' and desire to live in a place where right and wrong is more important than nonsense laws. Here's hoping that we see more of Nate Brown in future books. King is quite adept at shifting between Max's history back in Philly, the nightmares that plague Max, his solitude in the Everglades, and the hassles of 'civilized' south Florida. Great stuff from King.

East Coast Don

A Visible Darkness by Jonathon King

This is part II of the Max Freeman saga that began with King's Edgar Award winner for best new mystery, Blue Edge of Midnight

You will remember that Max is a former Philly beat cop who ran away to the Everglades after killing a 12yo in the midst of committing an armed robbery.

Three main players here: Frank McCane is an insurance investigator who used to be THE go-to guard for contraband in a Georgia prison. Eddie Baines is a mostly mentally incompetent small time crook in an NFL lineman's body with a taste for hookers and heroin. Dr. Harold Marshak was the prison psychiatrist who treated Eddie.

Old, mostly black, women, some of whom were among the first black entrepreneurs of South Florida, are dying. Well, they were dying anyway, but some think they are dying off a bit too quickly.

The common link is each had just sold their life insurance policy as a viatical (I had to look it up, so I linked Wikipedia) where the holder gets cash (below the policy's maturity amount) and the investors collect the full amount once the holder dies. The longer the holder lives, the longer the investors have to wait to cash out. And these ladies are dying awfully soon after selling the policy. Freeman's lawyer buddy Billy is getting no love from Miami PD about the deaths (that all seem to look to be due to natural causes) and thinks maybe Max might be a good choice to do a little digging.

And dig he does. Slowly, he learns about the women and enlists the help of a group of locals who protect the off-limits area; a drug-free zone consisting mostly of these older women and turn out to be valuable assets in his crawling though the Miami underbelly.

To make a short (but very interesting) story brief, Max (and an equally scarred female Miami PD Detective from book #1) put the pieces together to learn that a group of investors get McCane to look over insurance policies to find who might be receptive to a viatical. Once the deal is sealed, McCane tells the doc who then pays Eddie to send the holder off to the next life through suffocation. Eddie then uses his cash for drugs and maybe a hooker.

Short description of a short, and a very clever book. I was trying to think of who King reminded me of. Then I looked on his website and saw some comparisons with James Lee Burke . . . yeah, that's a good comparison. Call it swamp noir. But it can't really be noir, cuz according to MRB friend Charlie Stella's 10 rules of noir, it fails on two fronts. Rule #4 says that the femme fatale needs to be a nasty broad. She isn't. Actually, she's kind of cool. Also, rule #8 doesn't occur; too bad.

In coming books, it looks like Max becomes a Miami PI. Should be a fun series. Maybe rule #8 might surface after all. I'm hopeful.

East Coast Don

The Blue Edge of Midnight by Jonathon King

I finished The Confession on Friday morning just before the trip home from Mexico City, started this King book waiting for the flight, and finished this morning before church. Yeah, it was that cool.

Max Freeman was a smart but unambitious cop in Philadelphia, average from the academy to the beat. A call comes about a robbery in progress just around the corner. He makes the turn in a 2-footed slide to face a kid with a gun. He hesitates, sees a second perp run from the store and fires, killing a 12 year old kid, but not before taking a slug in the neck - thus beginning the nightmares and doubts.

Max can't shake his doubts and flees to the depths of the Everglades to live in solitude with his guilt. After a year or so, the nightmares are slowly retreating, but canoeing back to his shack, he spots a bundle tangled in some tree roots. Looking back at him are the lifeless eyes of a dead child. Knowing a crime scene when he sees it, he heads for the ranger station. A squad of local detectives arrive and immediately see a suspect, a suspect with a history who might be the perp they've been looking for in the matter of 4 dead kids.

The western suburbs of south Florida are creeping into the edge of the Everglades and the cops think that any one of those hermits who inhabit the 'glades could be a suspect. His lawyer, a childhood friend with a stutter, tells him not to say a thing, but Max comes forward to answer the cops questions - bad idea. Max decides to at least see where the other victims were found and enlists a local hermit/pilot to fly him around in what turns out to be a sabotaged Cessena. The crash seriously injures the pilot and Max drags him through the swamp, bandages him up, and saves him, making him sort of a hero to the local lowlifes of the swamps.

The main lowlife is an elderly legend/WWII hero Nate Brown who asks Max to meeting to sort of mediate between the locals and the cops. Max meets with 4 strange guys, all of whom wear this strange knife in a scabbard. Looks like the cops had it right, sort of - an unknown man of the marsh really is trying to scare people from buying near the Everglade's border. Then another child goes missing.

Brown shows up at Max's shack telling Max the kid's alive, but he better come quick. Brown paddles them both about an hour-ish way deep in the 'glades to a shack more run down than Max's. The child is there, barely alive. Also there is one of the locals, dead by a stretched neck. The cops think they have their man, racked with guilt, dead by suicide.

Of course Max thinks otherwise. Why, there were 2 knives at the cabin and the perp was still wearing his, so Max grabs the knife, crime scene or not. During the investigation, Max's canoe was vandalized so he and his lawyer bud go shopping. While Max is checking out, his lawyer is having a 'Witness' moment (remember when the Amish kid recognizes the murderer in a newspaper clipping and the look on Harrison Ford's face?) by spotting the same knife in a display case. Turns out it's a rare German WWII weapon. Remember Nate Brown, the WWII hero? Brought back some war booty for his 'acquaintances' in the 'glades. And it flushes out the real culprit.

And the nightmares seem to be fading.

I've been trolling the Edgar awards website looking for new authors. King was the winner in 2003 for Best First Novel with this book and looked like a good bet for future efforts on my part. King has something like 6 Max Freeman novels and a couple standalone books, too all since 2o02. He's been busy. His best trait is his ability to set and describe the scene be it Philadelphia, the Everglades, or the never ending sprawl of south Florida, which he clearly despises - sort of a serious version of Carl Hiasson's tongue-in-cheek tales of Florida. It may not have the outstanding dialogue of Stella or Pelacanos, but after reading this, I think I know a whole lot more about the Everglades. I'll be back to learn more.

East Coast Don