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Has ex-LAPD detective Charlie Waldo gone to seed? He's swapped the City of Angels for a cabin in a small, fire-ravaged California town. He's become a bit of an enviro-freak. He rides a bicycle rather than driving a car, and he won't eat packaged food. He's determined to leave the smallest carbon footprint imaginable, showers no more than twice a week if possible, and is committed to capping anything and everything he owns at a total of one hundred items.
His girlfriend, Lorena, keeps trying to get him to formally join her private detective agency. He's reluctant to do so not only because he's become a save-the-planet zealot but also because he never wants to repeat the type of mistake he made in the past that led to an innocent man's death. But try as he might, Waldo just can't stay away from a hood who wants him to find a lost dog, a TV judge who's being blackmailed, and a thirty-year-old accidental death that just might have been murder.
Author Gould has re-imagined and contemporized the stereotypical gumshoe by creating a character with new-age eccentricities in old-school dilemmas. Waldo's sense of guilt sometimes overwhelms him. However, it keeps readers turning the pages to see if he'll stay true to his self-imposed penance-like lifestyle or just totally shut down emotionally and physically. Gould is a first-class writer highly adept at keeping the plot moving. The players are menacing, and the loose ends are left untied until the very last moment. This is a novel, a character, and an author that crime genre fans will definitely appreciate.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review