Here's the first installment of a promising new mystery series featuring Jack Murphy, a cop turned private investigator who sets up shop in sunny L.A. Hired to investigate the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl, he's plunged headlong into the seedy world of pornography; as if that weren't distasteful enough, someone is very serious about preventing Jack from finding the girl. Can our hero solve the mystery and keep himself in one piece? Sherman's gimmick isn't entirely fresh--like several other writers, he combines a mystery-noir prose style with a vividly contemporary setting--but he pulls it off with panache. His plotting needs a little work (Jack gets at least two important leads through the kind of luck and coincidence that just doesn't play in a realistic thriller), but he's sure to iron out the rough spots in future Jack Murphy adventures. Sherman is a talented writer, and, despite its flaws, this is a suspenseful and thoroughly enjoyable novel--the first, one hopes, in a long series. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Booklist, Oct 2002
"A promising new mystery series . . . a suspenseful and thoroughly enjoyable novel—the first, one hopes, in a long series."
See all Editorial Reviews
