1558. Come Twilight by Tyler Dilts (#1558)

 

Come Twilight is the fourth book in the four book series by Tyler Dilts about a Long Beach Police Department homicide detective, Danny Beckett and his partner Jennifer Tanaka. I’ve reviewed all of these books very favorably. Sadly, this is the last book in the series, which was published in 2016. There’s no indication in the story that this is the last Danny Beckett novel, and in fact, the author seems to provide information that this character would be the centerpiece in an ongoing saga.

 

I opine that the end of the series is sad because Tyler has been successful in creating a most compelling character in Beckett, a hard working homicide cop who has a long list of problems, including the death of his wife in an auto accident, his own on-the-job injuries which have left him in chronic pain and suffering from insomnia, a substance use disorder as the result of that injury, an unwillingness to investigate according to the book, and a reluctance to get involved in another relationship although years have passed since his wife’s death. Danny’s partner, Detective Tanaka, provides a critical balance to Beckett’s character.

 

Just as Danny is getting his life in reasonable order and risk a new relationship, someone planted a bomb in his car as he was in the process of investigating another death case. Then his life and those around him, including his girlfriend and partner, were also at risk due to their proximity to him. Faced with ethical and unethical options when another’s life was at risk, what would you do?

 

Just maybe Dilts will continue this story with a new book. I hope so. Meanwhile, he does have a fifth book, written in 2018. It’s about a different person on the Long Beach Police Department. Given my very favorable reaction to Dilts storytelling, I’ll read that one, Mercy Dogs, in the near future.

1550. A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

A Cold and Broken Hallelujah is the third novel in a four novel series by Tyler Dilts about Long Beach Police Department homicide detective Danny Beckett and his partner, Jennifer Tanaka. Long Beach is the city in California near Los Angeles. I have written very favorable reviews about these detective murder mystery novels, and this third novel is no less interesting and exciting.

 This is a story about three gang youths who jointly throw large cups filled with gasoline on a homeless man, and then light him on fire. The kids are quickly caught, having failed to clear the area of the murder quickly enough. They were dumb enough to have a video of themselves both preparing for the murder and then actually doing the deed. One of the youths was connected to a gang lawyer, a successful guy who had actually done prison time himself for a triple homicide. While in prison, Benicio Guerra, know was “Benny War” was able to graduate from college, and once out of prison, the lawyer managed to put himself through UCLA law school with a 4.0 GPA. However, rather than lead a straight and clean life, Benny War figured out how to make crime pay the illegal way.

 

The primary plot was driven by the fact that the LBPD had no idea who the victim was. Beckett had no idea and his given street name, “Bishop” did not help them find out who he was, at least not easily. As Beckett was trying to find out Bishop’s real identity, the story took us in and around the Long Beach area, and into the local crime scene as well as the more typical Long Beach residential neighborhoods. Beckett is the guy who suffered from significant burns from an earlier on-the-job injury, and he struggled with his chronic pain and his feelings about the death of his wife who died in a traffic accident when her car caught fire. Detective Tanaka was a most interesting character who could be the primary protagonist  in other novels.

 

1539. The Pain Scale by Tyler Dilts

The Pain Scale is Tyler Dilts’ second novel. I reviewed the first one, A King of Infinite Space, in 2/23 and stated then I would get to his subsequent works. In The Pain Scale, Dilts further develops his protagonist, a Long Beach police homicide detective, Danny Beckett. 

Beckett is just coming off a year’s leave due to a serious burn injury that he suffered on the job, and he is left to deal with the physical and emotional trauma of his wounds as well as chronic pain. (In my real job as a physician, having treated numerous chronic pain patients for the emotional struggles of disfigurement, disability, and chronic pain, I was impressed with Dilts’ understanding of this condition.) Beckett is further troubled by the earlier loss of his wife in a traffic accident, and since then, he has eschewed any new romantic involvements. Upon his return to the job, he is reunited with his former partner, Jennifer Tanaka, a curious character in herself.

 

Early in the novel, he used Beckett to scoff at the routine question that is put to all pain patients, which is how they would rate their current pain on a zero-to-ten scale. Zero means the absence of pain and ten is defined as the worst pain that one could possibly imagine. In a side note, Beckett comments that such a scale is really dependent on the imagination of the injured party. As a homicide detective, he has seen the worst of death scenes including torture and burn victims, and his own imagination about the worst possible pain encompasses such events. As the story unfolds, he struggles to distract himself from his pain and he finds that his focus increases when the murders he is investigating are more complicated and horrible. Left to himself without a means to get away from his chronic pain, he can’t be distracted from his own condition. He drinks too much, apparently as an unsuccessful means of managing his pain, and he eschews any new romantic involvement due to the loss of his wife in a fatal car accident.

 

The primary crime involved in Dilts’ second book is the murder of a congressman’s daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. The crime is complicated enough and gory enough to give Beckett the distraction he needs, but his career is at stake if he can’t prove that he is able to do his job despite his severe chronic condition.

 

This is a very good story with a most compelling protagonist. It gets a 5/5 in my own rating system. I’ve already acquired the third book in the series, A Cold and Broken Hallelujah, and I hope to get to it soon.

#1523 A King of Infinite Space by Tyler Dilts

 

This is the first review of a novel by Tyler Dilts. A King of Infinite Space is the first of a four-book series with homicide detective Danny Beckett as the protagonist. It was suggested to me by my brother-in-law who recently retired from The Department of English at Long Beach State University. Stephen Cooper knew that I write a book about thrillers and murder mysteries and he thought I might enjoy this debut novel by Dilts, written in 2010. He is correct, and I’ve already downloaded the second book in the series, The Pain Scale.

 

Beckett is assigned to solve the murder of a young high school English teacher, a woman whose murder was particularly violent and gruesome, and it occurred in her own high school classroom. Beckett’s partner was a young female detective who brought a definite balance to the story about Beckett. He had lost his family nine years before in a horrific traffic accident following a big row between himself and his wife. He had avoided all relationships since that time, and he was clearly drinking too much alcohol as an ineffective means of coping with his loss, an event which continued to plague him with nightmares.

 

The title of the book comes from a line in Hamlet in conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about Hamlet’s perception that Denmark was a prison, and Rosencrantz counters that it Hamlet’s ambition that makes it so. Hamlet responded, “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have bad dreams.” There are actually several books that have borrowed that same line as a book title.

 

I thought Dilts did an excellent job with both the plot and character development. I look forward to taking up the second novel soon, but I have a writing queue that will keep me from that for the immediate future. You should know that in the nearly 1,400 reviews on the book in Amazon, that he was given a 4.5/5 star rating. Beckett is a compelling character.