Summer's Reason - Hardcover

Another barely fictional account (``the criminal activities portrayed are happening in real life, today'') of malfeasance in the Sunshine State, courtesy of police chronicler McDonald (the nonfictional Under Contract: A Cop Hired to Kill, 1992, etc.). It looks like blue skies ahead for motorcycle patrol officer Jessie Summer after she breaks up a jewel robbery, leaving one thief dead. She's temporarily reassigned to Homicide to follow up the case, and laid-back local mobster Dominic Tatari offers to swap her some info on an unsolved homicide if she'll deliver $300,000 to some tough Latinos his son Dom is mixed up with. Jessie makes the payoff, but returns to find Tatari killed, no-good Dom in charge of his father's interests, and herself in the middle of a mess that gets worse every time Dom flexes his muscles. He moves from drug smuggling, prostitution (through his strip club, Dreamland), and kiddie porn to the main event, child slavery, with the help of his ruthless Philippine connections--all while cultivating his squeaky- clean relationship with Rapier Marine CEO Tiffany Eastin (also the beneficiary of a timely parental demise) and her brother Jack. In a Chandleresque departure from McDonald's generally gritty realism, the upscale Eastins turn out to be the kinkiest couple of all: Tiffany invites Jessie over to her pool with a photo session cum seduction in mind, and she's constantly squabbling with Jack about who's going to be the real best friend of the Philippine girl scheduled to be delivered to them. A second fit of John Wayne heroics with a hostage-taking pornographer in a crowded store sends Jessie back to patrol duty, but never fear: She'll overcome official back-stabbing and her traumatic memories of her own childhood abuse to finish off whatever villains haven't already wiped each other out. A cops-and-robbers thriller so chockablock with subplots, walk-ons, and unfocused revulsion that it reads like an unedited brainstorming session for a whole season of Miami Vice. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Jessie Summer is no Travis McGee, but fans of the late, incomparable John D. MacDonald will experience a nostalgic flashback as this McDonald, a former Fort Lauderdale cop (Blue Truth), revisits Fort Lauderdale/Miami venues such as the Bahia Mar Marina in this competent, if overly psychodramatic, police procedural. Spunky Jessie, a beautiful young FLPD detective, is plagued with sexual ambivalence arising from having been raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was ten. When she kills a minor hood caught in an apparent jewel-store robbery, she stumbles into a complex conspiracy involving child pornography and the selling of children into sexual slavery. As the investigation progresses, she suspects the complicity of Jack and Tiffany Eastin, a hedonistic, incestuous brother-sister duo. Confused by her near-seduction at the hands of the treacherous, bisexual Tiffany, Jessie is finally aroused to heterosexual fulfillment by gentle Sgt. Miguel Tirado of the Miami PD. Meanwhile, McDonald's writing, except for a few sentimental excesses, grows ever more sure-handed as political interference, drugs, murder and psychosexual perversion in Florida's steamy, cocaine-rich high-rise mazes keep matters moving toward a satisfying, if ultraviolent conclusion.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.