Chercover's second novel featuring Ray Dudgeon finds the p. i. still hauling a truckload of angst, and now, because of certain events in the first novel, he's hooked on percocet. That's tough enough, and when he agrees to look into the murder of a woman named Joan Richmond, things do not take a turn for the better.Everyone agrees that the Richmond murder is an open-and-shut case, but her father asks Dudgeon to look into it to find out the "truth" of things. He says he wants to know why it happened. Dudgeon takes the case, and, wouldn't you know it, things are more complicated than they'd first seemed. To say they're a lot more complicated would be more accurate. Dudgeon finds himself involved with the feds, with mysterious men whose very wristwatches have no trade names to identify them, and with private contractors who have ties to the government. He's not quite over his head, but he's in deep trouble, as are plenty of others.
More assured than Chercover's first novel (Big City, Bad Blood), this one will probably show up on a lot of award lists at year's end.
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