“’It’s a new dark age,” he said at one point. “Nobody reads anymore. People are losing the ability to think. Television has destroyed us. I’m glad I won’t live to see the worst of it.’” (Dry Heat, Page 73)
History and the dead, victims of crime or otherwise, have been constant themes of this enjoyable series. So too has been the price of progress and resulting urban sprawl and what that has done to Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding area. Those themes continue in this third novel of the series, which also deals with modern day realities of the Russian Mafia and terrorism.
In 1948 the body of FBI Agent John Pilgrim was found floating in a canal outside what was then small city of Phoenix, Arizona. Over 200 agents spent more than two months working the case before it was ruled a suicide and buried by FBI management. Now, an elderly homeless man has been found dead, floating in a swimming pool, at approximately the same location. Homeless people die everyday across this country and that isn’t why the media are circling above by helicopter or clogging the neighborhood streets below with satellite trucks. Word is already out that the dead homeless man had the dead agent’s badge. A badge that vanished in 1948 and never found, was sewn inside the dead man’s coat.
An interagency taskforce is formed and launches an investigation with all the political backstabbing and power plays that go along with such things. Assigned to the case, Deputy Sheriff David Mapstone should be focused entirely at the matter at hand but he can’t focus that well. Recently married to Deputy Lindsey, he knows how lucky he is and is reminded thanks to the death of a good friend and mentor, how fragile life is. When the Russian Mafia begins to retaliate for the success of Lindsey’s team that stopped dead a multi million dollar fraud operation using stolen credit card identities, both Lindsey and David are forced to go into hiding. Hiding is something that neither one is good at, especially with Mapstone pushed to solve his own case.
Containing twists and at times intense action, this novel continues the overall character story arc begun in the first novel Concrete Desert. Enjoyable as the others, this novel does have more of a melancholy feel to it. Without giving too much away it is safe to say that some decisions for the future have to be made and the ending has enough wiggle room that it can be interpreted in two different ways.
Not to say both cases aren’t satisfactorily resolved, because they are. While the Russian Mafia case is resolved pretty much as expected, the Pilgrim case has one final twist at the end that is shocking in its simplicity. Little new is added to the characters as the novel has Mapstone contemplating not only the past of Phoenix and what progress has done to the city in the last fifty plus years, but his own checkered and complex past and recent developments. Some of this ground has been covered before in “Concrete Desert and Camelback Falls but is more of a constant presence in this novel. While containing plenty of action and complex cases, this book is a more introspective work and as such has a more melancholy feel than the previous two.
However, do not let that deter you from another excellent book in the series. As always, Jon Talton delivers a read full of interesting characters, vivid descriptive settings, and a pair of complex cases. The result is another twisting tale of the past and present and one very good book.
Dry Heat (A David Mapstone Mystery)
Jon Talton
Thomas Dunne Books
www.minotaurbooks.com
ISBN 0-312-33385-4
Hardback
$22.95 US
$32.95 Canada
Kevin R. Tipple © 2005