Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Wrong Light by Matt Coyle

Wrong Light by Matt Coyle (Oceanview Publishing, December 2018) is the fifth book in the Rick Cahill private investigator series. Years ago Rick was accused of the murder of his wife but never convicted. The police and the media believe he has gotten away with a murder he knows he didn’t commit. This assumption of guilt puts him in the cross-hairs of any law enforcement agency that finds him in the vicinity of a crime. He’s considered leaving his home of San Diego but his attachment is strong enough to outweigh the logic that tells him to start over somewhere else.

In this outing Naomi Hendrix is the voice of San Diego’s late-night talk radio, where the sleepless and the lonely go to find a friend. She has attracted the attention of a lunatic too, and the manager of the radio station hires Rick to find the person who is stalking her. Rick is appalled at the lack of security at the station and equally concerned about Naomi’s reluctance to tell him about her background. Before he can delve deeply into whatever she is hiding, one of the waitresses at the drive-in near the radio station who might have seen the stalker disappears. Rick is overcome with fear that the stalker has abducted her and searches frantically for her while fending off the local police who would like Rick to back off.

At this most inconvenient of times, an old nemesis from the local branch of the Russian Mafia decides to call in the favor that he thinks Rick owes him. So Rick is simultaneously trying to protect Naomi, find the missing waitress, and keep the Russian Mafia from killing him. He calls in a few favors of his own to help out while he juggles far too many balls.

This is another series that deserves more reader attention than it seems to receive. The plots are creative while observing the conventions of the hard-boiled PI genre. Even the minor characters are strongly developed. The individual titles in the series are well-regarded by Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and other major reviewing outlets, and a number of them have been shortlisted for major awards. The first in the series won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the San Diego Book Award for Best Mystery, and the Ben Franklin Silver Award for Best New Voice in Fiction. For fans of edgy, well-written crime stories.

·         Hardcover: 352 pages

·         Publisher: Oceanview Publishing (December 4, 2018)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1608093166

·         ISBN-13: 978-1608093168

Aubrey Hamilton ©2018

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.