Godchild: P.I.Jack Marconi
by Vincent Zandri
Thomas & Mercer, ISBN 978-1612183435
September 4, 2012
His world is spinning out of control.
Jack "The Keeper" Marconi thinks he might be going out of his mind.
It is the day of his wedding, his second wedding, and he stops by the grave of his first wife to leave flowers, when he see the car that broadsided his car two years ago, killing his beloved Fran. He had searched for her killer..he feels it was intentional...and just when he has come to some peace and is ready to start over he is dragged back into it. He leave his bride at the altar and ends up the day in a bar, way too drunk, shooting his gun off.
His friend, a high priced and very, very shady lawyer to the rich and powerful in Albany, one setting of the book along with Mexico, keeps him out of jail and offers the out of work PI a job to distract him. It is a very dangerous job, and a job that pays very well, to rescue the wife of a very powerful man who was arrested by the Mexicans on the border, supposedly smuggling drugs. She is being held in a horrible prison, tortured for some information that her captors believes she holds.
As a ex-warden of prisons, Keeper seems like the perfect man to have some insight into getting her out. But he is not really interested at first, that is until he is looking at the material the husband has given him about the wife and studies a photograph of the husband and missing woman at the funeral of their infant son. He sees, standing in the crowd, the driver of the car that killed Fran, the man Keeper calls The Bald Man.
Can there be some connection between his wife's death and this woman disappearance?
Keeper is a man possessed and he will find out the truth, he will get his revenge, he will weigh out his own justice even if he dies trying.
This book is a sequel to Zandri's The Innocent and picks up where that book leaves off, but I did not read that one and don't think that really effected my enjoyment of this book. And by in large I did enjoy this one a good deal.
Keeper is a good character, flawed, sometime acting irrationally, drinking too much and maybe too easily swayed by a pretty face. But aren't all good characters flawed?
And the missing woman, author Renata Barnes, who we get to know through much of the book in little glimpses into her mind..well, she has taken flawed to a whole new level. I must warn you this book is pretty dark in places and the scenes of Renata in prison may have you reconsidering that Mexican vacation. This place make Attica seem like a holiday camp. The plot is tight and faced paced and except for Keeper sometimes acting like an idiot, pretty smart. Who is good, who is bad, who can you trust..who will slit your throat when you turn your back..it will keep you guessing.
I must admit I had a few issues with the last part of the book where the happenings just really started to test my mystery reading sense of believability. Just a bit too much, piled on top of a bit too much, on top of a bit too much but by then I had bought into the story and happily went along for the ride. If I gave stars, I would take one away for that. But that still leaves it a solid four stars in my book.
My thanks to Amazon Vine for providing a review copy of this book
All good characters are flawed because all people are. Who can stand to read about a perfect character? This book sounds interesting.
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting ... thanks!
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