Nothing pleases the mystery omnivore like a fine continuing
series, so, though it's taken nearly three years, it's good to see the
promise of Abigail Padgett's first Blue
McCarron novel, "Blue," followed up by
a second, "The Last Blue Plate Special."
Lesbian social psychologist McCarron,
here linked both personally and professionally with Roxie Bouchie, an
African-American prison staff shrink, is as endearingly quirky as in her
first outing -- she lives, for example, in an abandoned motel in the
high
desert outside San Diego -- and, again, becomes involved in a case with
political overtones. It makes for a literate mystery, several
classy notches above the norm of work by Mark Richard Zubro or Michael
Craft, and on a par with the work of Katherine V. Forrest and Randye
Lordon.
What Blue and Roxie encounter are the sudden deaths (from cerebral
bleeding) of two feisty, progressive women politicians, a state senator
and
a state assemblywoman, and the apparent involvement of a malevolent
fundamentalist who signs his cryptic notes, "The Sword of Heaven." One
thing
links their deaths, in addition to the puzzling proximity, and that's
that
both had undergone surgery at the hands of a politically connected La
Jolla
plastic surgeon.
As a mystery, Padgett's style more than satisfies, as she offers
a number of plausible suspects and believable twists and turns on the
way to
zher solution. Blue, impulsive and emotional, and Roxie, guided more
by her intellect, are well-rounded characters working hard on their
relationship, women to root for.
-- Richard Labonté
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