T. Jefferson Parker has quickly become one of my favorite mystery writers. I started with his sprawling California Girl, which takes place in Orange County and covers a few decades in the lives of two families, one good, one bad (but both with their strays). It was like Dynasty meets L.A. Confidential, with the accent decidedly--and thankfully--on the latter. (You can read my original review of California Girl here.) From there I moved on to his L.A. Outlaws, the story of Allison Murrieta, aka Suzanne Jones, elementary school teacher by day, fast food joint robbing outlaw by night. Convinced she is a direct descendant of a famous California outlaw, Joaquin Murietta, Allison quickly becomes a media sensation, but her story is a tragic one. However the story also introduces us to Charlie Hood, a young L.A. County sheriff's deputy, who becomes Parker's continuing character in a series of books. (You can read my complete review of L.A. Outlaws here.)
I've just finished Iron River, the third Charlie Hood book. (A fourth Hood novel, The Border Lords, has just come out in hardback. I managed to skip over The Renegades, the second book, mainly because it only existed in mass market paperback; I'm now reading it on my iPad.) I have to admit that I think Parker stumbles a little with Iron River, a book that places Charlie Hood on loan to the ATFE (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Bureau), and in direct conflict with some of the deadliest drug trafficers on either side of the U.S./Mexican border. When a fellow ATFE agent is kidnapped in reprisal to his accidental shooting of a drug lord's son, Charlie and company go after him and save him. But the drug lord refuses to give up. And while all of this back and forth, cat-and-mouse pursuit and rescue is going on, Charlie is also busy monitoring a major arms deal involving a shut down gun manufacturer who lost his company due to one of its guns accidentally killing a child. The drug lords' constant need for guns is too tempting to stay shut for Pace Arms. And in the thick of that arms deal? The young son of the dead Allison Murietta, Bradley Jones. Charlie is still haunted by his mother.
But here's where Parker stumbles a little. Iron River is a great read, but it gets entirely bogged down by the presence of Mike Finnegan and his daughter, Owens. Finnegan is a man struck by a car in the beginning of the book, someone who has Charlie Hood's phone number in his wallet. Charlie is called to the hospital and enthralled by the old man in a body cast--a man he's never met before--who knows so much he shouldn't know, and his damaged daughter, who spends part of her time trying to keep away from her father. Is Finnegan the devil, ages-old and unstoppable and can he really read people's minds?
To me, at least, Finnegan is a plot point that is entirely unnecessary, and he's someone who is obviously going to pop up again in Hood's adventures. I'm a little uncomfortable with mystic aspects trailing into a book whose storyline is so incredibly ripped from the headlines of my local newspaper. All of Parker's books that I've read so far take place in my backyard, and while San Diego doesn't seem to see too much drug violence (so far--knock wood), we're only 15 miles from the Mexican border. Finnegan's "is he or isn't he?" act gets tedious after a while and the only thing he adds to the book is doubt.
Still you have to love a book--and it's writer--when it has lines like this, straight from the devil himself, Mike Finnegan, as he tells Charlie, "Making history is like painting the inside of a house—it's mostly prep work." You keep writing like that, Mr. Parker, and I'll keep reading, even if you are quoting Satan in a crime novel.
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