Gated prey

Hollywood decadence and duplicity are at the heart of bestseller Goldberg's entertaining third outing for Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy Eve Ronin (after Bone Canyon). With her partner Duncan Pavone ("a fat man in his late fifties") just weeks away from retiring, a wrongful death lawsuit hanging over her head, and an agent shopping around a TV series loosely based on her life, Eve is finding it increasingly difficult to do her job, which includes apprehending a gang responsible for a series of violent home invasions in gated communities. When posing as affluent homeowners almost gets Eve and Duncan killed, she discovers that some of her coworkers may be attempting retribution for her recent takedown of a group of corrupt cops. A woman in one of the gated communities who seemingly gave birth at home to a stillborn baby further complicates matters. Lively descriptive prose enhances the tight plot of this episodic crime novel, which reads like a TV show in narrative form. Columbo fans will have fun. Agent: Amy Tannenbaum, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Oct.)

A rash of cases sends Detective Eve Ronin, of the LA Sheriff's Department, into the gated communities of Calabasas, which trap the homeowners with all the evils they were meant to protect them from. The tale begins with a string of home invasion robberies Eve and her partner, almost-retired Duncan Pavone, have gone undercover to solve. Masquerading as a wealthy couple in order to lure the thieves into targeting them, they succeed all too well, and soon they have three dead bodies to answer for. The LASD gives a medal to Grayson Mumford, the young grocery store guard who shot runaway thief Paul Colter, but makes it clear to Eve that her stock among her colleagues has plummeted even as her flashy style has encouraged scriptwriter Simone Harper to write the pilot for a TV series based on her exploits. Before Eve can get too preoccupied with either shunning she doesn't deserve or fame she doesn't want, a routine call to the home of Anna McCaig, who's just delivered a stillborn child, swiftly escalates to a case of murder. Just to keep the plot boiling, Eve learns that she's being sued for $10 million by the family of a bent deputy who claims she drove him to suicide at the end of her last case. Will the department, which is also named in the suit, have her back, or will they cut her loose and let her twist slowly in the wind? Against all odds, Goldberg not only ties up most of the loose ends, leaving just a few deliberately dangling, but links some of Eve's investigations in ways as disturbing as they are surprising. The seamy side of California dreaming. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.