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After the explosive events of City of Fire, Lena Gamble has been shoved to the sidelines by the LAPD brass. When she is finally given a murder to investigate, she can't help but be suspicious. Chances are there's something about the case she isn't being told. Chances are, her bosses are hoping she will fail. The murder victim is a young woman whose body was expertly dismembered, her remains dumped in a waste bin. Though detectives find her apartment is full of sex worker's paraphernalia, Lena is determined to treat the nameless woman's death with dignity. As she and her team trace the woman's life, her identity grows more and more elusive. The last man to see her alive is the troubled son of a wealthy and powerful owner of a pharmaceutical corporation who doesn't want the world to know his heir had been seeing a prostitute. From time to time, the reader spends claustrophobic time with the killer. He's a disturbed veteran of the Iraq war, a man who has a moral code that has been twisted out of all recognition. He's addicted to every kind of pill, anxious about his health, and prone to experience all the symptoms and side effects that are mumbled on television advertisements. He is clearly being manipulated by some higher authority, but is canny enough to stay one step ahead of the police. As Lena and her team painstakingly work the case, there are political wheels within wheels turning dizzyingly all around them. Fans of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series will enjoy this book. It has the same down-to-earth procedural detail, a tough and lonely hero(ine) who has a calling to right wrongs and speak for the dead, and an LA setting that combines tawdriness with Hollywood glitz. The conclusion is full of twists and revelations, drenched in paranoia. The ingredients are all familiar, but Ellis knows how to combine them in an entertaining way.
Reviewed by Barbara Fister, April 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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