1542. The Rescue by T. Jefferson Parker

Bettina Blazak, is a young, savvy journalist who works for the local Laguna Beach newspaper, “The Coastal Eddy.”  She is researching a human interest series on street dogs when she comes across a wounded stray dog at a vet clinic in Tijuana.  She adopts the dog, names him Felix and begins featuring him in her blog.  Apparently, Felix has led and interesting life.  Felix, a/k/a Joe was first owned by a boy who had to give him up after his parents died, was then trained by the DEA for stiffing out illegal drugs, then was sold to a dog trainer, Dan who used him to help one Mexican drug cartel steal from another.  It was during one of these missions he was wounded. Bettina’s blogging about her pet places Joe/ Felix in the limelight.  Everyone who once owned him wants him back and the cartels want him dead.  The story takes an interesting twist when parts are told from the dog’s point of view.  Nothing complex just basic canine needs… I’m hungry, I’m horny, who’s in my pack. Dan takes the role of the bad guy but he develops a romantic interest in Bettina.  His conflicts in his character create real danger for Bettina and her dog.

I’ve read a lot of T. Jefferson Parker’s work all the way back to Laguna Heat in the late 1980’s and this is his first attempt to include a dog in the plot.  As I read this book I kept thinking about Robert Crais’s venture into canine land when he wrote Suspect.  Amazingly in the acknowledgements Parker credits Crais for the inspiration.  Both books are good entertainment especially for dog lovers.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance look.

A Thousand Steps by T. Jefferson Parker

Flash back to 1968 in Laguna Beach, California--The Age of Aquarius, the Summer of Love, anti-war protests, hippies, psychedelic drugs, and search for enlightenment—an uneasy time of social change and a hard time for a young man coming of age.  Matt Anthony is sixteen.  His older brother is a tunnel rat in Viet Nam, his father has abandoned the family, his mother has a drug addiction, and his sister Jasmine (Jazz) has been kidnapped.  Matt survives with the few bucks he makes on his paper route and on the occasional fish he catches from the ocean.  The cops are focused on illegal drug trafficking and have given up trying to find Jazz and his parents are preoccupied in their own problems.  So Matt takes it on himself, with the help of his childhood sweetheart, to find his sister.  The adventures he experiences and the dangers he endures all while coming of age encapsulates his summer.

Laguna Beach and southern California is a popular setting for many of Parker’s novels but the coming of age angle is new.  The nostalgia blended into his gift for story telling makes this an unexpected treat.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

 

Swift Vengeance by T. Jefferson Parker

Roland Ford is a P.I. living on a small ranch just outside San Diego.  He is still mourning the death of his wife when a friend, Lindsay Rakes hires him to protect her from a death threat.  Lindsay is a former Air Force drone operator who was stationed near Las Vegas.  Even though her attacks on ISIS took place thousands of miles from the battlefield, her PTSD symptoms are just as real as the soldiers who fought hand-to-hand combat on foreign soil.  

Roland puts her up in one of his guest cottages at the ranch and enlists the aid of FBI agent Joan Taucher.  Joan specializes in domestic terrorism and respects Roland enough to allow him to participate in the hunt.  While searching for the perpetrator, two of Lindsay’s former crew members are brutally beheaded.  Roland thinks he has identified the suspect but now is facing the challenge of his life.  How can he bring the bad guy out in the open, keep the FBI on his team and protect Lindsay, all at the same time?

T. Jefferson Parker has developed a great new protagonist in Roland Ford.  A tough guy with as many vulnerabilities as investigative skills, Roland maintains his high moral code in hunting down the bad guys… great entertainment.  T. Jefferson Parker may be working his way back onto my list of top ten authors.

The Room of White Fire by T. Jefferson Parker

Roland Ford is an ex-cop, ex-Marine, and now PI who specializes in finding people.  He still mourns the loss of his wife, who died when the plane she was piloting crashed into the Pacific Ocean.  Roland now lives on a ranch/ retreat near San Diego, landlord to a group of well-meaning and loyal misfits.

Roland latest assignment is to find Clay Hickman, an air force veteran who has escaped from a private mental hospital.  Clay suffers from PTSD and also carries the burdens of guilt and shame from the role he played in the torture of Al Qaeda prisoners.  Roland soon learns that his client, Briggs Spencer, the owner of the mental hospital from which Clay had escaped, is also Clay’s former commander in the air force… in charge of the secret torture camp in Romania where Clay had served.  Was Clay institutionalized for his mental health or to cover up some insidious behavior by his captor?

Roland soon learns that a young woman, Sequoia Baine helped Clay escape and has fallen in love with him.  She escorts Clay in his quest to retrieve information that would expose Spencer.  Yet, most allies that Clay and Sequoia locate are being watched and some end up dead.  At one point Roland views video of water boarding and other horrendous methods of torture that Spencer administered while in charge of the Romanian black ops site.  By making this video public, Clay intends to ruin Spencer. Clay decrees, ‘My mission is to bring white fire to Deimos’… Deimos being the Greek god of terror and Spencer’s nickname in Romania.  The more Roland learns the more hesitant he becomes to turn Clay over to Spencer… even if he can find Clay alive.

T. Jefferson Parker has developed an excellent protagonist in Roland Ford.  His grieving for his wife and serving as landlord for a group of misfits exemplifies his compassion.  However, I do not appreciate Parker’s flare for the gruesome (too much description of torture for my taste), but the story is well told and the characters are believable.

Crazy Blood by T. Jefferson Parker

T. Jefferson Parker is known for his strong characters and suspense filled mysteries but in Crazy Blood he writes more of a family saga in the domestic fiction genre.

Wylie Welborn, a former skiing champion, returns home to Mammoth Lakes, California (a ski resort town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains) after a tour of duty in Afghanistan.  Wylie has two half-brothers, Robert and Sky Carson who are also ski enthusiasts.  Wylie was conceived when his father had an extramarital affair with his mother.  Wylie’s father was murdered by his wife, Cynthia for his infidelity.  She was pregnant with Sky at the time, was sent to prison, and has recently been released.  Shortly after Wylie returns home, Robert is paralyzed in a skiing accident and Wylie hopes to honor Robert by continuing his skiing career and hopefully competing in the Olympics.  Sky has similar aspirations and this pits the half-brothers against each other.  Much drama ensures as the duo seeks to one up the other on the ski slope and off.

Much of how I react to a book comes from my expectation.  With Crazy Blood, I had great expectations as I had loved Parker’s novels from the 1990’s: California Girl, Summer of Fear, and Laguna Heat.  In the early 2000’s, Parker took a turn toward depravity and violence that caused me to stop reading his stuff.  But in reading the synopsis of Crazy Blood, I envisioned a return to his earlier style.  Well, the violence is gone but what remains is a disappointment.  The characters were poorly developed and their behavior random.  None are believable or likable.  Who would name their kid Wylie… like the coyote?  The drama makes it feel more like a Lifetime movie than a substantive novel.  If you’re a T. Jefferson Parker fan, I’d advise taking a pass on this one.

Pacific Beat by T. Jefferson Parker

Jim Weir is a former detective in the Newport Beach police department and after several years on the force turned to deep sea treasure hunting for some adventure.  His first expedition is more adventure than he’d bargained for and he ends up in a Mexican jail.  After his release Jim is welcomed home like the prodigal son by his mother, his sister Ann, Ann’s husband, Ray who is also his best friend and a Newport cop, and Becky, his ex-girlfriend.  Their joyous reunion is short lived because on the night of Jim’s return, Ann is brutally murdered.  Her body washes ashore with multiple stab wounds indicating a violent, passionate attack.  The Newport police investigation uncovers one witness, a homeless guy who saw a squad car leaving the crime scene about the time of the murder.  The police chief chooses not to implicate his own officers and asks Weir to conduct his own covert investigation.

 

Jim’s investigation leads him to places he’d rather not go.  Seems his sister had a dark private side beginning with an affair as a teenager with David Cantrell, a wealthy local businessman.  Ann became pregnant and her parents arranged a secret birth and adoption far away from Newport Beach.  Since that time Ann’s mother and Becky have joined forces to become political enemies of Cantrell with opposing views on environmental and real estate development issues involving Newport Beach and the Balboa Peninsula.  Though Ann loved her husband Ray, she had become restless of late.  She started secretly seeing Cantrell again and was paranoid someone was watching her.  So Jim unearths his family’s unpleasant past and must cope with that while mourning the death of his sister.  Meanwhile the killer watches his every move.

T. Jefferson Parker was in my power rotation throughout the nineties before I knew what a power rotation was.  I was captivated by Pacific Beat, Laguna Heat, and Summer of Fear and was always searching for more in this genre.  Somewhere in the early 2000’s however, Parker’s work crossed a line for me.  His plots grew darker, more violent, and sometimes delved into pure evil. I just didn’t enjoy reading his stuff anymore.  But these earlier works are worth a look.  They hold their own against the likes of Michael Connelly and Jonathan Kellerman, two long-term members of my power rotation. 

Red Light by T. Jefferson Parker

Merci Rayborn is a police sergeant assigned to the Homicide Detail with the California Orange County Sheriff Department. She is coming from some recent tragedies including the death of her lover and the father of her 18-month-old son, and it was a mistake she made that led to his death. Merci is saturated with guilt but must find a way to carry on. Like most cops in real life, she is averse to actually seeking professional help for her angst. Merci is thankful that she has her own father (a retired cop) to move in with her and help her with childcare while she returns to work where she is thrown into both a 32-year-old cold case and a current one. Both cases involved the death of a prostitute and both cases seem to point towards dirty cops being involved in the deaths. Patti Bailey was killed in 1969 and Aubrey Whittaker was the recent murder victim in 2000. In the time since the death of her lover, Merci became reluctantly and distantly involved with a new man, Mike McNally, who is also a sergeant with the Sheriff Department. Somehow the cases tie together and point toward McNally as having been sexually involved with and the killer of with Whittaker. Her father might have had some knowledge about the death of Bailey. Parker weaves the stories together in an effective way.

This is the eighth book by Parker that I’ve reviewed for the blog, and I know I read one or two of his novels pre-blog. He’s written 20 novels since 1985. This book is the second of this three-book series about Rayborn, originally written in 2000 and then revised it in 2013. Some of Parker's books have been solid crime novels, others not so good. I’d put this one in the category of “airplane books,” a story that might keep you entertained but one that would not interfere with a nap during a cross country flight.

Storm Runners by T. Jefferson Parker

T. Jefferson Parker has written an excellent story that is one of the highlights of this genre. He boldly offers the basis of the plot in the first sentence of the book: “Stromsoe was in high school when he met the boy who would someday murder his wife and son.” Matt Stromsoe is the protagonist and Mike Tavarez becomes his enemy. Matt was the high school drum major who was harassed by the other high school boys, but he was defended and protected by Tavarez who went on to become El Jefe, head of a powerful Mexican crime organization. But, Stromsoe becomes a cop rather than follow Tavarez into crime. In high school, there were both in love with the same high school honey, Hallie. Initially, she chose Tavarez, but after he badly abused her, she left him for Stromsoe. Hallie and Stromsoe were married and had a child, Billy, and they led an idyllic life until Stromsoe set a plan in action to capture Tavarez. While Tavarez escaped, his girlfriend his killed. He then sought revenge against Stromsoe, but his efforts to kill Stromsoe also missed. While Stromsoe was badly injured by a bomb, he lived and it was his wife and son that were mistakenly killed. Tavarez was convicted of murder and was sent to jail forever, where he continued to run his crime organization. Stromsoe was not beyond Tavarez’s reach. That information is all backstory for the current action in this book. The title comes from the real action that centers around rainmaking, aka “moisture acceleration.” Frankie Hatfield is the San Diego weather lady, the granddaughter of Charley Hatfield who was once run out of San Diego for making too much rain for the city. She is in competition with a bad guy at the Department of Water and Power who wants water to remain a scarcity and thereby protect his own territory as the man who brings water to Southern California, not a position he wants to share with anyone. Stromsoe, back in San Diego from a two-year hiatus in which he physically and emotionally recovers from his own injuries, is called on to protect Frankie from a stalker. Of course, Frankie and Stromsoe become an item. Maybe the most unbelievable part of the book is that she is a beautiful woman who, at 38 years of age is still a virgin, until her encounters with Stromsoe. The story weaves Tavarez back into the scene since he wants to kill anyone that Stromsoe loves. This is a fast-paced story and it was hard to put down – a very good and entertaining read. Now, I have to decide what my next Parker novel will be.

California Girl by T. Jefferson Parker

T. Jefferson Parker has been a favorite of mine, but this book tops the others. This was a story told in current times about a murder that took place in 1968. It was a story of two families in Tustin, California, one a working class family that was intact and functional, the Beckers. The others was a white trash family that was not functional, the Vonns. The children of the family are the same age. The Becker boys all make something of themselves. Perhaps the most charismatic was Clay who was killed in Vietnam, a pain that lived with all of the Beckers every day. Nick became a cop, Andy became a newspaper reporter, and David became a preacher. The novel is narrated by Nick. All of the Vonns begat trouble, but its Janelle who seems to have grown above the downward spiral that has the rest of the family in its grip. She wins a beauty contest, but has to forfeit her crown when she poses for the cover of Playboy, with more clothes on that when she won the title of Miss Tustin. She was only 19 when she was killed in the most gruesome manner, a gross decapitation. Parker briefly includes encounters with Charlie Manson and Richard Nixon, just to drop two names, and the plot involves the Orange County John Birch Society and the congressman they elect, Congressman Stoltz, who was also trying to help Janelle. Her murder is solved, but did they put the correct man in jail? This was a very good read with believable characters and fast action. This was good entertainment and gets my highest recommendation.

Iron River by T. Jefferson Parker

Once again Parker writes about his detective Charlie Hood of the LA Sheriff’s Department, who is on loan to the ATFE for Operation Blowdown as they work to stem the flow of guns from the U.S. to Mexico, which is the Iron River. Parker seems to have a fascination with tying in the decendents of the mega-outlaw, Joaquin Murietta, who we learned a lot about in LA Outlaws. In this book, he also connects the current bad guys, at least by outlaw contacts, to Coleman Draper, the bad guy in the Renegades. Bringing in the old characters does lend some continuity to the writing, but it is not necessary, since this book clearly stands by itself and does not need to be read as a part of the series. In this book, Parker does extend the remarkable information about how the drug dealers in northern Mexico get guns from the US and move them across the border. He uses the interesting device of making an Orange County gunmaker, Ron Pace, the narrator for the book. Pace has gone bankrupt as the result of one of his guns killing an innocent boy and then losing a multimillion dollar judgment to the boy’s family. Now, Pace is attempting to revive this company that was created by his father and uncle, although he is doing it illegally, with drug money. After all, the drug boys need their guns and are willing to pay for them. The action opens near El Centro as an ATFE gun bust goes bad and the 17-year-old son of a major Mexican drug dealer gets caught by a stray bullet and dies. He retaliates against an ATFE agent, Jimmy Holdstock, in what turns out to be some horrific torture scenes. There are other characters in this book, and I hope Parker writes more about Mike Finnegan, a mysterious man who seems to play both sides of the drug-alcohol trade with knowledge that he should not have access to. At any rate, I found the book with my time, and I learned more about the illegal movement of guns into Mexico than I had known before. I will continue to read T. Jefferson Parker.

West Coast Don

The Fallen by T. Jefferson Parker

Robbie Brownlaw is a San Diego homicide detective who was thrown out of a six story room, and he survived. However, the head injury left him with synesthesia, a condition that I had never heard of before. He sees different shapes and colors when people talk to him, depending on their emotions. For example, he sees red squares when someone is lying to him. It seemed pretty hokey to me, but T. Jefferson Parker manages to write a good story about corruption in the San Diego government. A lot of the story surrounds the “Squeaky Cleans,” which is a group of prostitutes who service the power shakers in town. As the story evolves, Parker does a good job with Brownlaw’s character development and his own relationship problems, as well as those of a couple other key players. I don’t need to tell you anymore. It was a good and fast read, and I’d recommend it.

West Coast Don

The Renegades by T. Jefferson Parker

This was another book from Boedeker who seems to have a phobia about writing posts.

Parker’s cop/sleuth is Charlie Hood. (This guy chooses great names as in Hood for a cop and Laws for one of the bad guys.) Hood had a recent encounter that led him turning a rogue cop over to Internal Affairs, and as a result, he has chosen to leave the desired detective unit at the L.A. Sheriff’s Department (as opposed to LAPD), and take a transfer to the Antelope Valley, a place where he can be out of sight and out of mind by the main body of the department. Instead of being a detective, he’s back on patrol with a partner. The Renegades is a reference to a prior group of cops that had been good cops that were eventually turned by a couple bad guys, so the group was banned from further existence by the department. There are two primary bad guys in this one, an officer, Terry Laws, and a reserve officer, Coleman Draper. Draper is the one who wants to reestablish the Renegades, and he draws Laws into a deal in which they take over the delivery of substantial amounts of cash to a drug lord in Baja. To do that, they have to take the cash south of the border every Friday, but it nets each one of them about $7k for each trip. So, there is the tension between good cops trying to do bad things and bad cops trying to look okay and keep their side job going. There are tensions within each group as Hood is not always sure who he can trust and is not always ready to divulge what he knows to his superiors. You’ll have to read about the conflicts within the drug cartel and their doubts about their delivery boys. Of course, there is a beautiful DA with whom Hood interacts, and there are some other very interesting peripheral characters, some of whom float back and forth between the good and bad sides of the story. The ending was very well written – I did not see the final twists coming. This one is a good distraction – not great literature, but worth the read.

WC Don

L.A. Outlaws by T. Jefferson Parker

T. Jefferson Parker is the Pelacanos of Southern California, but this book was not up to his usual good story line. The main story is about a woman who has two identities. One is Suzanne Jones who is a 30-something 8^th grade history teacher, and the mother of three. The other is Allyson Murietta, the descendent of Joaquin Murietta, a bandito who lived from 1830 until his beheading in 1853. Allyson identifies with the truth/myth of her ancestor and brings his persona back to current day life. She has acquired his severed head and keeps it in a glass jar, along with some of Joaquin’s other artifacts. She steals high end cars and robs fast food joints, especially the ones where she worked as a teen. At the start of the book, she stumbles across a black market diamond deal that has gone bad. After a fire fight in which 10 men, everyone on both sides of the battle, are all killed. So, she slips into the scene and steals the diamonds before anyone else can get there. Of course, there are people who know the diamonds exist, and she is pursued by several people, including her foil, Deputy Charlie Hood. In the course of investigating Murietta/Jones, Hood falls in love with her and ends up in bed with her. Meanwhile, Murietta becomes famous in California because of the crime spree and the fact that she makes generous donations to various charities, something she believes that Joaquin had done. She also has business cards which she leaves behind at the scene of crimes. In the fast food heists, she sometimes stops to pose for pictures with the customers. Charlie Hood figures out that the current-day Murietta and Jones is the same person, but he helplessly continues the affair until Jones is killed by a Crip in the process of robbing another fast food place. The book closes with the funeral and Hood’s apparently unsuccessful attempt to convince Jones’ very bright 17-year-old to go to college and not follow his mother’s path to crime.

As much as I have liked Parker’s books as a quick and easy read, this one does not cut it, much like Kirkendall felt about Lee Child’s “Nothing to Lose.” It was a pedestrian effort by a usually good novelist. Once again, this was a book given to me by Boedeker, one that he did not report in the blog. So, Chris, do you have a phobia about book reviews? Am I just being used – you read a book, pass it to me, and wait for my review? You could have saved me the trouble of reading this one. This was the 7^th of my week-long vacation books, and I’m now back to my usual life, so it may be a while until you see another post from me.

West Coast Don

Cold Pursuit by T. Jefferson Parker

I ripped through T. Jefferson Parker’s Cold Pursuit, primarily because I realized I had already read this one. I think EC Don and I agree that he’s the Southern California version of Pelacanos. It’s a good story, a fast paced story. I think his books were originally suggested to me by my brother-in-law, who is a writing/literature prof at Long Beach State. It is not his type of genre and he tends to stick to higher brow literature.

WC Don