City of Fear

April 15, 2019
The killing of Dallas drug lord Ricardo Salazar leads to complications both personal and professional for detectives Rob Soliz and Frank Pierce. The detectives, part of the Dallas Criminal Intelligence Unit, were watching Salazar's place when they saw a red-haired woman enter the building. Shortly after, they heard shots. Inside, they found a dead Salazar, a voodoo doll--but no redhead. The drug lord's death sets off a wave of gang killings in Dallas, and Pierce wonders if drug dealer Levern might be involved because Levern reputedly has a voodoo link through his Louisiana grandmother. Since Pierce rescued Levern years earlier from a street attack, part of the detective wants Levern to be innocent. But that's not Pierce's biggest problem. He consults Dr. Alma Hawkins, a redheaded professor of religious studies, about the voodoo angle and is convinced she's the woman he saw at the crime scene. Yet even after another witness identifies her as being at the scene, Pierce goes on to become intimately involved with her. This rambling story is filled with clichés (words "were burned into Frank's memory"; "cold crept through his blood") and contradictions--Frank spends lots of time shopping for food yet "hadn't figured out the whole eating thing cops held so dear." The addition of a hired assassin does little to enliven the plot, and the characters, although assigned various tics, never become people the reader will care about. One wishes the author (The Burial Place, 2018) would have used his own background in law enforcement to enhance this run-of-the-mill mystery.

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April 29, 2019
The fatal shooting of big-time Dallas gang leader and drug dealer Ricardo Salazar sparks a wave of retaliatory killings in Enmon’s entertaining sequel to 2018’s The Burial Place. Police detectives Rob Soliz and Frank Pierce, who were surveilling Salazar the night he died, have one suspect: a mysterious red-headed woman who entered the gangster’s home right before he was shot and left behind a voodoo doll before vanishing. Meanwhile, a New York crime family dispatches an assassin to eliminate those they consider responsible for Salazar’s death. As the bodies pile up, Soliz and Pierce are under the gun to solve the murder, find the hit-person, and put an end to the escalating violence. The pair are a tad cookie-cutter, despite contrasting lifestyles: Pierce is a master chef turned detective who dates high-end call girls, while Soliz is a devoted family man dealing with a depressive wife. More fun and realistic are the secondary characters, each of whom has an intriguing backstory that fits well within the intricate plot. Enmon, a veteran of the Houston PD, brings authenticity to this solid police procedural. Agent: David Haviland, Andrew Lownie Literary.