Down the Darkest Street

February 8, 2016
At the start of Segura’s muddled sequel to 2013’s Silent City, a drunken Pete Fernandez, former copy editor for the Miami Times, is enduring a thorough beating in an alleyway, and his fortunes only go downhill from there. Life for Pete consists of attending AA meetings, working a part-time job in a used bookstore, and allowing his former fiancée, Emily, to bunk at his house while she works out her problems with her cheating husband, Rick. When Rick pays a call at Pete’s house looking for Emily, Rick asks Pete to tell Emily that a friend of hers, Alice, is missing. Pete and Kathy Bentley, a former newspaper colleague, join forces to search for Alice. In the process, Pete and Kathy learn that other young women have been kidnapped off the Miami streets. Their mutilated corpses are clearly the work of a serial killer, who soon targets both Pete and Emily. Segura offers little in the way of originality in this haphazardly plotted, often clumsily written yarn.

February 15, 2016
Journalist Pete Fernandez (Silent City, 2016) hits rock bottom when he confronts a serial killer. Since getting fired by the Miami Times, Pete's divided his time between helping his friend Dave Mendoza at The Book Bin and drinking himself senseless. Still, he's not too addled to miss his second chance with former fiancee Emily Sprague when she leaves her husband, Rick Blanco. Since she can't get over Rick's cheating on her with his 20-something office assistant, Alice Cline, Emily moves into Pete's guest room while she decides what to do next. What Alice does next is disappear, bringing the police to Rick's door. When Alice's body is found sliced and diced in the style of serial killer Rex Whitehurst, the cops go ballistic. It can't be Rex, who was executed years ago in front of scores of witnesses. Once Pete and Times crime reporter Kathy Bentley decide to investigate, things get ugly. Someone roughs up Pete and firebombs his house. Emily returns to Rick, sending Pete, who's just started attending AA meetings, right off the wagon. More women are snatched, and more mutilated bodies turn up. Even the FBI seems stymied. The deeper Pete digs, the more the killer focuses his rage on him, until no one in his orbit is safe. Segura can't quite decide between noir and creep show. Pete's second case may not tempt fans of either.

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April 15, 2016

Pete Hernadez's life has fallen apart. Fired from the Miami Times, he is now ostensibly a private eye. Former fiancee Emily has moved back in with him--temporarily--on a platonic basis after leaving her husband. As the alcoholic Pete and reporter Kathy Bentley struggle to solve several murders in Miami, his obsession with the case crushes a briefly reawakened romance with Emily. Slowly getting sober, Pete and Kathy track the killer whose victims are strangely posed in homage to Rex Whitehurst, a serial killer from Pete's reporter days. VERDICT This compelling sequel to Segura's debut (Silent City) is a brooding, melancholy tale with a somber ending, Pete's sadness echoes the darkest corners of Miami's roughest streets.--Jeffrey W. Hunter, Royal Oak, MI

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2016
Readers might turn up their noses at what looks, at first blush, like a retread of a retread. Segura offers Pete Fernandez, one more vodka-drenched loser. He's blown his newspaper job and been dumped by his girl, and now he's working at a bookstore because there's a cot in back where he can sleep for free. He's also trying to get his bones as a PI. Old stuff. But wait. Segura brings this tired mix to life with an edgy storytelling style, snappy dialogue, and a cast of salty characters. Even the hero's AA pal has a hand in solving the mystery. A serial killer is at work in the soggy Miami summer, and as Fernandez and his newspaper columnist colleague Kathy close in on him, they learnin several bloody episodesthat he's also closing in on them. Interestingly, the case is solved not only by violent confrontations, but also by drudge workstaring at a library microfiche machine until Fernandez comes across the tiny key that opens the big door. A really fine crime story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)