Published
by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 22 February 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-4746-0722-3 (HB)
There’s a spring
in my step as I open this book – the hotly anticipated follow- up to the
author’s terrific debut IQ. The super sleuth with the golden heart, African-American
Isaiah Quintabe, like Sherlock Holmes investigates from insight to solve crimes
and wrongdoings in his neighbourhood of East Long Beach, south Los Angeles.
In
this new novel, finding his beloved late big brother Marcus’s car rotting in a
junkyard but teeming with clues and evidence, it occurs to Isaiah that Marcus
wasn’t, as he assumed, the innocent victim of a hit and run accident but was
deliberately targeted. Isaiah is determined to leave no stone unturned to nail
the why and the how.
The
narrative starts some years later where the previous story left off and once
again we meet Isaiah’s mismatched, wise-cracking, sidekick Dodson, now more
grown-up, with a steady, sassy woman and a baby on the way.
It’s
Sarita, Marcus’s glam girlfriend, now a hotshot lawyer, who sets things spinning.
Isaiah has always harboured a secret crush for her and he can hardly believe
his luck when, out of the blue, she calls him to locate her wayward, missing
half-sister Janine, a Vegas DJ with a gambling addiction and Janine’s loser man,
Benny. Both are on the run from a murderous loan shark, Leo.
What’s
interesting is the number of sub-plots on the go that are cleverly interwoven
into the fabric of the story. In the
underworld of LA, the reader is exposed to a Chinese triad of moneylenders and cold-blooded
sex traffickers. Then there’s Seb, an outwardly genteel but vicious Rwandan
Hutu, who lost a leg when attacked by a machete wielding Tutsi and fled to the
US where he prospered, amassing valuable real estate through shady deals
laundering dirty money. And thrown into the ethnic mix is a Mexican drug cartel.
There’s no love lost between any of them and the author has skillfully and
stylishly captured their rivalries and way of life with some cracking, biting
backchat.
The
characterisation is five star, the loose ends are brilliantly tied up, there’s
a rhythm to the story, all of which add up to a must read entertainment.
------
Reviewer: Serena
Fairfax
Joe Ide
is of Japanese American descent. He grew up in South Central Los Angeles.
Joe’s favorite books were the Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. The
idea that a person could face the world and vanquish his enemies with just
his intelligence fascinated him. Joe went on to earn a graduate degree and
had several careers before writing his debut novel, IQ, inspired
by his early experiences and love of Sherlock. Joe lives in
Santa Monica, California.
Serena Fairfax spent her childhood in India,
qualified as a lawyer in England and practised in London for many years. She
began writing by contributing feature articles to legal periodicals then turned her hand to fiction. Having
published nine novels all, bar one, hardwired with a romantic theme, she has
also written short stories and accounts of her explorations off the beaten
track that feature on her blog. A tenth, distinctly unromantic, novel is a work
in progress. Thrillers, crime and mystery narratives, collecting old masks and
singing are a few of her favourite things.
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