From Amazon.com
Any mystery that begins in the parking lot of the Claremont Hotel, that gorgeous old Victorian woodpile on the edge of the radical community of Berkeley, California, already has something special going for it. And Susan Dunlap's latest book about Berkeley cop Jill Smith doesn't disappoint: it's a rich and thoughtful mixture of the familiar (Jill's edgy nostalgia for the Berkeley of the '60s, her scratchy relationship with her fellow officers, her dogged determination to solve cases on which everyone else has given up) and the original--in this case, the tangled relationships between politics, business, and medicine. Fans of Marcia Muller and the late Ross Macdonald who have yet to discover Dunlap could well plunge in with this fine example of her work. Previous books in the Smith series in paperback are:
As a Favor,
Death and Taxes,
Diamond in the Buff,
A Dinner to Die For,
Karma,
Not Exactly a Brahmin,
Sudden Exposure,
Time Expired, and
Too Close to the Edge.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Library Journal
With each Jill Smith mystery (this is the ninth), the plots grow more convoluted and harder to believe, no matter how hard one tries. In this case, Smith tries to help p.i. Herman Ott, who also happens to be a murder suspect. The trail leads from a Telegraph Avenue jewelry vendor and a religious leader who surrounds himself with thugs to a tattoo artist, a patient defender, and ultimately a deadly pesticide. The offbeat Berkeley setting and mix of characters may appeal to Californians, but for others the detritus of the Sixties is just that.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
