Pun Salad

The author, Joe Ide, was recently picked by the Raymond Chandler estate to write a Philip Marlowe novel. I haven't been impressed with those "authorized" efforts in the past. (Whether by Lawrence Osborne, John Banville, or even the late, sainted, Robert B. Parker.)

But while e-reading this book, I highlighted this bit:

She greeted him at the door with a bottle of Crown Royal, glittery purple eye shadow, and a negligee that looked like a lace tablecloth thrown over a buffalo.

Oh, hell yes. That's perfect. Joe Ide could be a great choice to write a Marlowe novel. And I bought his effort, The Goodbye Coast, near-immediately after reading that.

But this book: it's number three in Ide's series centering around IQ, aka Isaiah Quintabe, a young man of mixed racial heritage, Sherlockian skills of observation and deduction, and (unfortunately) near-negligible skills in romance. Which governs the path he follows in taking on the case of Grace, the mysterious young woman he encounted back in book number one. Grace was abandoned by her mother, Sarah, years back, without explanation or clue. But Grace saw her recently, sitting in a parked car. Can IQ track her down?

Well, sure. Of course. But Sarah's on the run, thanks to her efforts to blackmail the rich head of a secretive security corporation, one that makes Blackwater look like Pepperidge Farm. It involves very nasty deeds in an Iraq prison during the war. So IQ has to deal with them too, and they have access to state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, and no scruples about murder and torture to find Sarah themselves.

There's less detective work going on here, it's more of a deadly cat-and-mouse game, where the mice are Sarah, Grace IQ, and their allies. A page-turner of course.