Dangerous Games [Hardcover]

When an aimless shot from a car full of teens strikes Jack Liffey's 16-year-old daughter, Maeve, the professional child finder has no intention of allowing justice to follow its aimless course in Shannon's lively eighth series mystery (after 2004's Terminal Island). Gloria Ramirez, the policewoman with whom Liffey lives in East Los Angeles's Boyle Heights, tries to distract him by arranging to have him hired to look for her hopelessly naïve niece, Luisa Wilson, who's disappeared and believed headed for L.A.'s porn factories. Shannon nails bizarre characters like two shady filmmakers, Kenyon Styles and Rod Whipple, who dream of hitting the big money by filming contrived disasters. Gloria's neighborhood has its share of dangers but also its share of charms. Though seedy characters abound, Liffey prefers to look on the bright side: "I'd like to believe everybody's just an inch from okay.... A little less this, a little more that." The world Liffey inhabits is far from okay, but watching him struggle to make a small difference is big entertainment.
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*Starred Review* In the newest Jack Liffey novel (following Terminal Island [BKL MY 1 04]), the amiable, introspective detective becomes the target of a drive-by shooting--but the bullet finds his beloved teenage daughter, Maeve. She survives, and Jack's novia, a cop named Gloria Ramirez, tries to take his mind off revenge by setting him up with a missing-kid case. The kid is Luisa Wilson, an Owens Valley Paiute Indian fleeing a bad home situation only to fall prey to even worse abusers in Los Angeles. Ethnicity and ethics always play a large role in the Liffey books, and Dangerous Games' extremely diverse cast lends richness both to Jack's attempt to mentor a troubled youth and to a reality-video story line that plays off the controversial bumfights videos. After eight excellent Liffeys, why isn't Shannon a household name? Perhaps it's because his stories make readers examine their own attitudes and beliefs as much as the crimes on the page. But while this isn't simple escapism, Shannon has mastered the most essential element of the genre, giving us a guy we want to stand shoulder to shoulder with while we try to make sense out of a senseless universe. Keir Graff
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Jack Liffey's new girlfriend, Gloria Martinez, a police sergeant of Paiute-Latino heritage, talks him into looking into the disappearance of her beautiful 18-year-old niece, Luisa, from a tiny reservation in the Owens Valley. To escape abuse, the girl had threatened to run away to L.A.'s porn industry, and in fact does become caught up in the phone sex business, then hostessing, and finally the trashy business of videotaping the homeless engaged in wildly dangerous stunts.

Luisa is fought over by a motley band of lowlifes and would-be rescuers, including the Jamaican Trevor "Terror" Pennycooke, whom Jack knows from an earlier case. The hunt for Luisa comes together in the Malibu Hills, where a bumbling army of suitors and rescuers touch off a gun battle and dangerous firestorm that sweeps Jack and everyone else ahead of it down the Malibu Hills toward the ocean.

John Shannon is the author of six titles in the Jack Liffey series, including City of Strangers, Streets of Fire, and The Orange Curtain. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.