Review: River of Lies: A Novel by James L’Etoile

 

River of Lies: A Novel by James L'Etoile is the second book in the Detective Emily Hunter Mystery series that began with Face of Greed. Like any good police procedural series does, this read builds on previous events and ongoing issues so I strongly recommend reading that book first before you get to this one.

 

Detective Emily Hunter of the Sacramento Police Department has had her date for the evening with Brian Conner ruined as he got called into work suddenly. She is familiar with the problem and understands that things happen. Still, she is a bit bummed when she gets back home. She is barely inside the house when she gets her own call from the Watch Commander.

 

Other folks have had a far worse horrible evening than a cancelled date. The disturbance that her date was called in to work for has turned into some sort of mass casualty event at a local homeless camp. Fire swept through the camp displacing many who were already having a very hard time. There are casualties tonight at the third fire in a homeless camp in the last two weeks. Lieutenant Terri Williams does not yet know if they have any homicides, but the Chief wants her out there and working the case. She has a reputation and that is playing a major role in this situation. She heads out the door and calls her partner, Javier Madina, to arrange picking him up on the way to what is left of the homeless camp.

 

When they arrive at the still smoldering scene along the banks of the river, it is clear that it is a bad deal. The number of ambulances makes it clear that many folks were hurt. As they talk to witnesses and fire personnel, it is clear that the fire was a deliberate act of arson intended to do a lot of damage and burn everyone out of their shelters. If that wasn’t enough, various witness state that there was also a person attacking folks with a baseball bat Not only that, they have at least one body with a clear gun shot wound to the head.

 

While Detectives Simmons and Taylor had been the primary on the first two fires, those incidents and this new one are now all Hunter’s and Medina’s. The fires are obviously linked and escalating. Even the media has figured that much out and the public pressure is mounting by the hour. As things heat up in Sacramento, literally and figuratively, it is up to Hunter and Medina to find the culprits responsible and put an end to it.

 

This second book in the Detective Emily Hunter Mystery Series is another solidly good read. I am skipping a lot of things so as to not ruin the read for others, but this book, and the series, has a lot of storytelling meat on the bones. Detectives Hunter and Media are fully fleshed out human beings with their own personal lives beyond the job. The same is true for many of the secondary characters. Interpersonal relationships matter as these are not cookie cutter caricatures. Such details add a richness to the read that does nothing to slow down the story in any way.

 

River of Lies: A Novel by James L'Etoile is well worth your time.

  

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/44kSq9u

 

I picked this up awhile back at Amazon using funds in my Amazon Associate account.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2025

Lesa's Book Critiques: KEVIN’S CORNER ANNEX – FACE OF GREED BY JAMES L’ETOILE

 Lesa's Book Critiques: KEVIN’S CORNER ANNEX – FACE OF GREED BY JAMES L’ETOILE

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Face of Greed by James L’Etoile

James L’Etoile worked within the criminal justice system for 20 years. His crime fiction is laden with the authentic detail only someone with that kind of experience can supply. His stand-alone novel Black Label (Level Best Books, 2021) won a 2022 Silver Falchion award at Killer Nashville. Dead Drop (Level Best Books, 2022), first in the series about Maricopa County Detective Nathan Parker, was nominated for 2023 Anthony and Lefty awards. Now Oceanview Publishing is releasing L’Etoile’s first book in a series about Sacramento, California, police detective Emily Hunter and her partner Javier Medina on November 7, 2023.

Hunter and Medina are called to what appears to be a violent home invasion in which the home owner is killed and his wife beaten. Both the mayor and the chief of police were on the scene when Hunter and Medina arrived, signaling the victims had political connections. In fact, the home owner was Roger Townsend, who ran the mayor’s last election campaign. The Townsends’ social and political pull permeated and hindered the investigation considerably, yet Hunter and Medina, who make a good team, managed to uncover some questionable alliances between the Townsends and local gangs. They soon began to wonder if the ostensible home invasion wasn’t a cover for something else entirely.

This is an encouraging start to a new police procedural series. The interaction and collaborative cooperation between Hunter and Medina are among the best parts of the book. The subplot of Hunter’s search for care for her failing mother hits home for a lot of folks these days. The mingling of gangs and politicians with questionable ethics is well done.

However, I feel compelled to point out that I am really tired of the competent cop fighting inept upper management trope that is so common now. Not that useless managers don’t exist, I have had more than my fair share of them. But portraying upper management as blithering idiots is not realistic. It’s more accurate to show them as consumed with the administrative demands of their positions: the higher up the chain any employee in any organization moves, the more attuned they have to be to financial and political dynamics. I always thought Steven Havill handled the uninformed manager in the early Bill Gastner books exceptionally well. Gastner made a point of getting along with his boss, no matter how little he knew, because Gastner understood it was part of his job. Gastner also recognized the strengths his boss brought to the sheriff’s office and acknowledged them openly. It’s an approach more writers of police procedurals should consider.

Booklist gave this title a starred review.

 

·         Publisher: ‎Oceanview Publishing (November 7, 2023)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Hardcover: ‎320 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1608095878

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1608095872

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/40khNa1   

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023

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