From Publishers Weekly
Coffey covers a lot of legal and moral ground in this fast-paced, shocking and hypnotic debut thriller about a cynical journalist working for an L.A. daily who stumbles into a career-making story while investigating the brutal rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl. Ted Lowe finds himself handling a front-page case when the primary suspect turns out to be the girl's boyfriend, Brad Devlin, the adolescent son of a billionaire CEO of an electronics company who has the connections to protect his son from prosecution. Lowe uses a police source and some questionable reporting tactics to gather clues that incriminate the youth and his father, but his investigation takes a bizarre turn when Brad and his thuggish friends "kidnap" the reporter and force him to ride along while they rape a young girl and her mother. Lowe finds himself drawn to the violence, and his failure to report the crime becomes one of several fascinating angles that unfold as the case comes to trial. The sensationalized trial moves steadily toward an acquittal despite the evidence against Brad, leading Lowe to suspect that the father is pulling strings behind the scenes, and forcing him to choose between testifying about his own criminal behavior to help convict Brad or maintaining his silence to protect his career. Coffey, a New York Times sports editor, employs a deceptively spare, world-weary voice to slowly reveal the origins of his protagonist's emotional limbo, and he comes up with stunningly original plot twists to emphasize Lowe's excruciating moral dilemma. The cast of quirky L.A. characters helps give context to Lowe's bizarre behavior, lending color to a narrative combining the suspense of a police procedural with the moral intrigue of a legal thriller. In a genre where breaking new ground is a rare achievement, Coffey has gone far beyond the restrictions of formula to craft a remarkable debut.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A first novel about a burned-out Los Angeles reporter's edgy obsession with rough sex, depraved teenagers, and a murdered 13-year-old girl, from a New York Times sports editor. Ted Lowe, a jaded veteran of the police beat, can't forget the fragile, battered corpse he and the police find, especially when it seems superrich high-tech mogul Jeremiah Devlin and his lethally good-looking teenage son, Brad, have something to do with Megan Wright's death. Lowe's editor compels him to write a series of luridly sensational articles about the death, while L. A. is haunted by a series of rapes and robberies by a gang of masked youths who bludgeon their victims with baseball bats. The newspaper is cutting budgets and staff; a strong story might protect Lowe's job. He ends his long-standing relationship with Norreen and moves in with Rebecca, an idealistic intern who admires him and enjoys his tastes for rough sex. Meanwhile, Devlin is too rich and powerful to be indictedhe's bought both the district attorney and his challenger, members of the LAPD, the best criminal lawyer in the state, even the newspaper's publisher, at a time when Lowe has run out of leads. Lowe breaks into Megan's house, where hes kidnaped by the teenage hoodlums lying in wait for him. Their leader, Brad Devlin, takes Lowe on a rampage that results in the rape, torture, and beating of an innocent Asian woman and her daughter. Instead of going to the police, though, Lowe, fearing hes compromised, follows his obsession, even when hes laid off. Once Norreen becomes a target of Brad's fury, Lowe takes the law into his own hands, though the outcome of this unbelievable exercise in in-your-face depravity is thankfully downbeat. Tersely detailed violence, a made-for-Hollywood car chase, courtroom histrionics, and villains too bad to be true: the nastiest L.A. noir since Robert Campbell's La-La Land series. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
