Outside Agency

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In his second appearance (after Local Knowledge), Kieran Lenahan, formerly a lawyer and now a pro golfer, seems to antagonize just about everyone. He's just won a place on the PGA tour, but he doesn't have time to enjoy it. A blow to the head with a blunt instrument saddles him with retrograde amnesia. Worse, when he wakes up, he's no longer in Orlando, Fla., but in Gainesville, where the police are keenly interested in why he was found in the apartment of Cindy and her corpse. Kieran doesn't have a clue, but he's allowed, though still under suspicion by the surly local police, to return to the tour to compete. After a series of intense interviews with colorful local eyewitnesses, he pieces together what transpired and quickly discovers that the shrewd and stunning Cindy was a world-class con-artist who presented serious threats to members of the tour. By defending some players against gaming charges and by threatening to reveal drug use, Kieran, now a pariah, had seriously provoked both management and players. Indeed, someone is out to get him. Readers indifferent to golf may find that too many details about technique and equipment slow the book down to the pace of the game itself. And a deus ex machina finale is truly a disappointment even if it does give the book its title. Daly, however, bestows on Kieran wry wit and puts a maliciously humorous spin on the seamier side of professional golf: organized gambling; drug violations; and, of course, corporate greed. (May)

Library Journal

Series protagonist Kieran Lenahan (e.g., Buried Lies, Kensington, 1996), a lawyer-turned-golf pro, wakes up in a Gainesville hospital with retrograde, posttraumatic amnesia: police found him unconscious in a dead woman's apartment. Off the hook so far as murder is concerned, Kieran attempts to jar his memory by revisiting the crime scene, retracing his steps, and quizzing friends and acquaintances. Kieran's luscious caddy, Meg, and corrosive business manager, Judge Inglisi, assist in his fight against illegal activities involving big names on the golf tour. A nicely evolving plot, smoothly told; of special interest to sports fans.

Kirkus Reviews

After seven years' exile, Kieran Lenahan is back on the PGA Tour—or he would be if somebody hadn't bashed his head at a Gainesville apartment complex. In a sense, Kieran's a lucky guy: He came out of his adventure a lot fitter than Cindy Moran, who was found lying next to him but never woke up. But his good luck isn't enough to save him from the baying tournament staff, who disqualify him from the current event, Orlando's Bay Hill Classic, and announce their willingness to bounce him from the tour on account of his questionable, possibly immoral, behavior. And Kieran's got no defense, because he can't remember what he was doing in Cindy Moran's apartment; he can't even remember how he traveled the hundred miles from the 17th tee at Bay Hill to the Camelot Apartments. Though he's helped himself by solving mysteries before (Buried Lies, 1996; Local Knowledge, 1995), Kieran's never had a more urgent reason for tackling a case—so he uses the time he would've spent at Bay Hill tracking down accusations of beta-blocker use, unmasking a blackmail plot, and unearthing a 20-year-old scandal. Now if only he could just find out Cindy Moran's real name, and remember just what he was doing when she got killed. . . .

Conscientiously plotted, with a well-concealed killer. Golfing wannabes will be happy to see that Daly paints the PGA Tour as an endless round of backbiting, name-calling, and endorsement-chasing, with hardly a moment for a quiet 18 holes.