Review by New York Times Review
AS FAR AS I'm concerned, Joe Ide can't write them fast enough. His unorthodox hero, Isaiah (IQ) Quintabe, happily met again in WRECKED (Mulholland, $27), is a brainy private eye from Los Angeles who helps his neighbors deal with the usual neighborhood problems: "store thefts, break-ins, lost children, wife-beaters, bullies and con men." For his services, he's usually paid in casseroles, cookies and home repairs; Louella Barnes even settled her bill by knitting him a reindeer sweater. But that sort of trade-off looks to change when a painter named Grace Monarova walks into his life, along with the prospect of bona fide, negotiable cash in order to find her mother. But the money seems less important than what else might be on offer: the sort of serious love interest that was missing from his first two cases. Unfortunately, like IQ's deadbeat clients, Grace tries to barter, paying him with his choice of a painting - although the poor guy is so smitten, he might have settled for a peanut butter sandwich. Despite being lovestruck, IQ is professional enough to realize that Grace isn't telling him everything, which makes the investigation a lot harder than it needs to be. Just the same, he's floored when a simple missing persons case leads to a vengeance drama involving an electric cattle prod with enough volts "to knock a steer sideways" and a savage beating that has him hanging tough but eventually screaming for mercy. "The only thing holding him together was the thought of the crew working on Grace. Beating her, assaulting her, breaking her fingers, breaking her art." A prologue featuring a group of former guards from the American military prison at Abu Ghraib (where they received "no instructions, regulations, limits, guidelines or supervision") provides a harrowing back story that explains why IQ is so hard-boiled. His innate sweetness in the face of such mad-dog cruelty is more of a mystery, one we'll look forward to puzzling out in his next adventure. John sandford's madly entertaining Virgil Flowers mysteries are more fun than a greased-pigwrestling contest. The plots are outlandish; the characters peculiar; and the best bits of dialogue are largely unprintable. So it is with HOLY GHOST (Putnam, $29), which is set in Wheatfield, Minn., a worn-out town of 650 weary souls who elected Wardell Holland mayor on the basis of his pitifully honest campaign slogan: "I'll Do What I Can." But nothing less than a miracle could put this hamlet back on its feet. Happily, a miracle is exactly what it gets when apparitions of the Blessed Virgin at St. Mary's Catholic Church bring in hordes of coinjingling believers to patronize the local stores, including the mayor's own establishment, "Skinner & Holland, Eats & Souvenirs." But just when commerce begins to perk up, a sniper starts taking random potshots at visitors and residents alike. This is a situation that calls for Virgil Flowers, an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, who brings a fresh eye and a keen sense of humor to the case. Although his formal investigation largely has to do with tracing ballistics, Virgil makes time to take in the sights, teach a lesson to a vicious bully and sample the terrible cooking at Mom's Cafe. IT'S always cold, damp and foggy in Anne Perry's Victorian mysteries featuring William Monk, commander of the Thames River Police. The atmosphere is exceptionally murky in DARK TIDE RISING (Baliantine, $28), which opens with a kidnapping that leads to a savage murder on Jacob's Island. "This place is like death," observes a visitor to this floating charnel house, where rotting houses are slowly sinking into a "thick, viscous mud that sucked anything of weight into itself, like quicksand." Perry makes cunning work of the plot, which raises issues of trust and loyalty while driving home a grim message about the vulnerability of women who entrust their fortunes to unscrupulous men. But it's the river that dominates the book, a mysterious presence "full of powerful currents, bending back on each other as they found obstacles, filthy, strongly tidal and ... cold enough to rob you of breath." after 240 days without rain and crops devastated by "grasshoppers as big as prairie dogs," the farming community of Jackson, Okla., is ready to pin its hopes on a rainmaker. But in Laurie Loewenstein's Depression-era mystery, DEATH OF A RAINMAKER (Kaylie Jones/Akashic, paper, $16.95), that effort ends when the man is murdered. Sheriff Temple Jennings would rather look into this crime than perform his more onerous duties, like foreclosing on Jess and Hazel Fuller's farm. The murder investigation allows Loewenstein to probe into the lives of proud people who would never expose their troubles to strangers. People like John Hodge, the town's most respected lawyer, who knocks his wife around, and kindhearted Etha Jennings, who surreptitiously delivers home-cooked meals to the hobo camp outside town because one of the young Civilian Conservation Corps workers reminds her of her dead son. Loewenstein's sensitive treatment of these dark days in the Dust Bowl era offers little humor but a whole lot of compassion. Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Ide makes it three for three with his latest IQ novel (following Righteous, 2017). East Long Beach PI Isaiah IQ Quintabe's off-the-grid, help-the-disenfranchised business is thriving in every way but one money-paying clients (Louella Barnes just settled her bill by knitting Isaiah a reindeer Christmas sweater). IQ's pal, streetwise, chief operating officer-wannabe Dodson, hopes to turn the business around with the help of spreadsheets and a gangsta approach to collections. However, the drug dealer whom Dodson, with help from Isaiah, robbed back in the day is out of jail and looking for his pound of flesh. Meanwhile, Isaiah has a new client, Grace, who is looking for her mom, who is wanted for murder; Isaiah is smitten with Grace and takes the case only to discover that she is every bit as socially awkward as IQ. And the vanished mother leads quickly to a confrontation with a group of former MPs who thrive on torture and are convinced that Grace's mother stole their money. Naturally, a confrontation ensues, with Grace, Dodson, and Isaiah seriously underarmed (as Dodson puts it, We gonna go in there with a slingshot and a caulking gun). Once again, Ide brilliantly combines caper-style comedy with real-world violence and more than a dollop of complex human relationships, the kind that too often lead to mess and muddle rather than happily-ever-aftering. If you haven't discovered this series yet, remedial action is required immediately.--Bill Ott Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Ide's less than successful third mystery featuring Isaiah Quintabe (after 2017's Righteous) focuses on action rather than deduction. Isaiah, the brilliant African-American PI known as IQ, helps his neighbors in Long Beach, Calif., with mostly mundane cases: "Store thefts, break-ins, lost children, wife-beaters, bullies, and conmen." Artist Grace Monarova, an attractive white woman he has a crush on, asks him to trace her mother, Sarah, whom she hasn't seen in a decade but knows is somewhere in L.A. Isaiah doesn't know that Sarah disappeared right after becoming a murder suspect, or that she's also the quarry of a vicious group of ex-military men, led by Stan Walczak, the founder of a global security firm. Walczak and his colleagues, who tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib but evaded prosecution, are after Sarah because she has threatened to release incriminating video of their abuses unless she's paid off. The flash-forward prologue, in which Isaiah is abused by Walczak and his team, reduces suspense. Fans of Ide's innovative take on a Sherlockian sleuth will hope for a return to form in the next book. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Oct.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Anthony, Macavity, and Shamus Award winner Ide's third book in the series starring detective Isaiah Quintabe "IQ" and his sometimes associate Dodson (after IQ and Righteous) has the duo forming IQ Investigations, although Dodson's methods make his intensely private partner uncomfortable. When IQ accepts a case tracking down the mother of a young artist whom he likes, it becomes apparent that she isn't telling him everything. The investigation turns out to be much more dangerous than expected; concurrently, a long-ago heist Dodson and IQ pulled off has reemerged and threatens to destroy all they've built. Dodson steals the show in this tale with a backstory that has grown more nuanced throughout each book. Past enemies such as African gangster Seb also make a repeat performance. VERDICT This work is grittier and coarser than previous titles in the series. Gone is the amusing banter between Dodson and IQ; instead, readers are subjected to numerous and explicit torture scenes, ranging from Abu Ghraib to current-day California. Purchase only where the series has a strong following. [See Prepub Alert, 4/23/18.]-Amy Nolan, St. Joseph, MI © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The hip-hop generation's answer to Sherlock Holmes returns fast and furious in the third installment of Ide's (Righteous, 2017, etc.) celebrated series.Over the course of the last two years, Isaiah Quintabe's stature as a quick-witted neighborhood private eye has grown beyond his East Long Beach, California, base. His bank account, however, hasn't kept pace with his legend. So IQ's friend and partner, Dodson, a lapsed street hustler, tells him it's time to stop accepting ugly sweaters, home repairs, and baked goods as payment and go full-tilt marketing, complete with a Facebook page and rate scale. This business plan quickly goes out the proverbial window when Isaiah accepts as payment paintings from a truculent, enigmatic young artist named Grace, with whom he'd become "intrigued" in the previous novel. Grace wants IQ to find her mother, but when he presses her for details, she becomes resentful and secretive. He deduces that she knows more than she's telling, and before long, it becomes apparent that Grace and her mother are both in over their heads against a sadistic cabal of Iraqi War veterans implicated in torture at Abu Ghraib more heinous than other, previously exposed incidents. Meanwhile, Dodson, just getting accustomed to new fatherhood, is being blackmailed into robbing a neighborhood dealer named Junior who has a penchant for misusing four-syllable words. Then there's Isaiah's Moriarty, Seb, the Oxford-educated African gangster lurking along the edges for any opportunity to ruin, or end, IQ's life. Ide's penchant for colorful characters, droll banter, and whackadoodle set pieces is aided by a growing command of narrative dynamics. And Isaiah Quintabe remains an engaging, fascinating protagonist, but there are signs here that he's becoming more an action hero than a puzzle solver. The world has plenty of action heroesbut nowhere near enough street-wise intellects to serve as role models.There's a harder, darker edge to the violence that gives this ripsnorting follow-up a rueful yet resonant aftertaste, perhaps in anticipation of more unsettling jolts in the hero's future. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
