CITY OF SECRETS, oops...started at #4, don't do that!

CITY OF SECRETS
P.J. TRACY
Minotaur Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan returns in P. J. Tracy’s City of Secrets, the next book in the series praised by the New York Times Book Review: “Tracy seems to have found her literary sweet spot.”

Los Angeles Police Detective Margaret Nolan and her partner have worked a lot of different cases, ones where things aren’t always as they appear. And it’s Nolan’s job to find the truth in the darkness around her. When they’re called to the scene of what looks like a fatal car-jacking, Nolan soon realizes her victim was a founder of a company about to sell for millions, and within a day of his death, his partner’s wife is abducted. As Nolan learns more about the victim and his life, she gets pulled into a disturbing world of sex, violence, and big business; and an even darker world, where whispers of an "Angel of Death" are beginning to surface.

One of today's finest crime writers, P. J. Tracy has created a series that is a rich and authentic portrait of LA, filled with the tragedy and optimism of her multi-layered characters and a story guaranteed to keep readers enthralled.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Starting a series with book four is never ideal. I felt no investment in the Maggie/Remy subplot, but really didn't expect to once I twigged that the series was multiple books along.

That said, the dynamic between Maggie Nolan and Al Crawford, her policework partner, was an effortless joining of process. In large part that's because the pseudonymous Tracy partners really involve us in the way the investigation goes. This book, and I presume the entire series (as series authors seldom change tones radically this early in one), exemplifies the charms of the police procedural...that sense of being in on the action, a fly on the wall.

That's a wonderful way to build a series IMO because it gives the plotting a major through line without the need, at times, to contrive things just to keep up the pace. Of course the police work is a reductive fantasy version of the real thing, granted – stipulated – understood but it's the mystery reader's vision of it from countless other iterations, so it works. It also means one knows, if the series mystery world is not a new and fresh experience, that ornamental plot devices stand out. There are "dark sexual secrets' in the murder victim's life. Cheap, brummagem time-waster from the get-go, and, with Margaret's dull "romance" as the other lusterless sex distraction, means I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes.

The existence of a well-stocked larder of interesting side-characters, however, both redeemed and further irked me. I'm quite sure they've been here before, but I haven't. I'm on the fence about picking the series up but if I do, the first trip will be back to #1 before anything. I really want the answer to one burning question: Why does Ike like licorice?

Note for animal lovers: despite some suspense on the matter, no abuse or harm occurs and past wrongs are righted.