Synopsis
Joseph Wambaugh returns to glamorous Palm Springs to give us a suspense novel rich in astonishing plot twists, fascinating characters, and penetrating humor.
When a bald, burly man descends from a private airplane in the middle of the California desert, knocks out a police officer in the tiny airport bathroom and disappears, the police swing into action. But it will be three mismatched people who become involved in the trail of the elusive, dangerous man.
Breda Barrows is a beautiful ex-cop private investigator who enlists the aid of Lynn Carter, a cynical, hard-drinking, soon-to-be-ex detective waiting for his disability pension to kick in. Breda and Lynn's search for the solution to their own case veers them on a collision course with Nelson Hareem, a loose cannon. Hareem, an awesomely over-eager policeman stuck in a sweltering desert town, dreams of the shade and a job with the Palm Springs police force.
The trail leads all three from remote desert canyons to the golden boulevards of Palm Springs for an action-packed ending.
Publishers Weekly
Wambaugh's latest, following The Golden Orange , promises more entertainment than it delivers. The plot centers around PI Breda spok Burrows, a former LAPD detective, and three cops: hard-drinking Lynn Cutter, waiting for approval of his disability pension and retirement; Jack Graves, whose life and career were ruined when he killed a 12-year-old boy by mistake; and Nelson Hareem, an ambitious and aggressively manic young officer hoping for reassignment from the county outskirts to Palm Springs. Burrows hires Cutter to determine why the wealthy elderly husband of her client has apparently made a donation to a local sperm bank. Meanwhile, as Graves works to redeem himself, Hareem tracks a mysterious fugitive--perhaps an international terrorist-- who beat up a cop at a desert airport, stole a truck and disappeared. An unexpected resolution to Burrows's case precedes a wild chase during a celebrity golf tournament and a bloody climax at a post-tournament party. While poking fun at the Palm Springs lifestyle, Wambaugh offers plenty of his trademark cop humor, including a funny but essentially irrelevant prologue skewering President Bush and Sonny Bono. But in this case, the whole equals less than the sum of its parts. Author tour. (Jan.)