Pun Salad

Through the vagaries of my book-picking process, I found myself reading this Joe Ide novel just a few days after I had read his attempt at a Philip Marlowe novel. (They were in different stacks.) <voice imitation="professor_farnsworth">Good news, everyone!</voice> Ide does a much better job with his own characters than he did with Raymond Chandler's.

This is the fourth novel in Ide's "IQ" series, with unlicensed private investigator Isaiah Quintabe. Isaiah is a neighborhood hero, with his superpower being his detecting skills. Just like Batman, with the downside that Isaiah is nowhere near rich enough to afford a costume, cave-equipped mansion, batmobile, batplane,…

But what he could really use is a secret identity. IQ's life is an open book, leaving him open to coercion by the local weapons merchant Angus. Angus's daughter Christiana is the likely suspect in the murder of her boyfriend Tyler, and Angus demands that Isaiah exonerate her. If not, he'll mutilate the hands of Isaiah's sorta-girlfriend, Stella.

Complicating matters is that Christiana has a bunch of personalities, none of whom seem to be able, or willing, to clarify the circumstances of the murder. The reader finds out pretty quickly who the actual murderers are, as eventually does Isaiah. But who hired them? Finding out is perilous, pitting Isaiah against a gang of murderous white supremacists.

Coming along for the ride are the surviving members of Isaiah's retinue from previous books: Grace, his true love; Dodson, his ne'er-do-well sorta-partner; TK, his junkyard-owning mentor; and many more.

If you've read the description of the fifth entry in this series, you know this one doesn't end in total victory for IQ. So maybe don't read that, or this paragraph.