| Date: 11 April 2011, 21:46
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I got my copy of this one autographed at the Texas Book Festival in October 2004. We are lucky to have authors of this caliber come here. McGarrity is one of those authors whom I'll buy in hardcover, rather than waiting for the paperback.
As other reviews have mentioned the plot summary already, I'll bypass most of that, and instead mention some of the specific details I found particularly interesting in this book of the series.
First, we don't see any of Kearney's older son, also a policeman, whom we have met in several previous books. In this one, Kearney's younger son - the 10-month old one living near the Pentagon, along with Kearney's career army wife, Sara - gets a bit of the spotlight. The unusual marriage between Kevin and Sara gets strained some, but also becomes solider as a result of the strains - Kevin resists some flirtation by some of the women he meets in the course of the book.
Several seemingly unrelated plot threads come together, as parts of Kearney's investigation turn out to be things that Sara is professionally interested in. She is doing an interesting report on some sexual harassment cases that the army is trying to sweep under the rug. Sara's anger at the attempt to ignore the problem is balanced by her later glee at the opportunity to call attention to it from another direction entirely.
The main plot thread revolves around a young man who supposedly died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam 30 years before. Or did he? Right now, anything that recalls Vietnam has some resonance for many of us, and the characters involved in this part of the plot include everything from hippies on communes to rich men who buy their kids' way out of the war. The book doesn't take a current political stance - thank goodness - but it does give a reader a chance to think about issues that are still important today.
You can tell, pretty much as soon as we meet the crazy old lady, that she is not, in fact, crazy - it's not a spoiler to tell you that much. The dead man's current wife, on the other hand, is a little more psychopathic than she seems at first.
And when we meet the people to whom the pharmacist has been selling drugs, it's a nice contrast between the old hippies, supposedly all stoned, and the rich people who are currently stoned. I like the irony here.
That should be enough teasers to make you want to read the book fairly soon. Let me say, though, that if you haven't read ANY of the previous books in the series, you will be best off if you find copies and read them, before starting this book. A full appreciation of what's going on in the plot depends, in part, on knowing our characters' backgrounds.
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