Blackout

May 1, 2018
PI Pete Fernandez has a well-deserved reputation as a screwup, mostly gained during his alcoholic years. Now he's several years sober with some success behind him, but there are still mobsters in New York and gang members in his hometown of Miami who want him dead. When he's hired to find the son of an aspiring Florida politician, Pete finds himself also looking at the unsolved murder of Patty Morales, a high-school classmate who disappeared in 1998 and whose remains he found in 2013 in her father's yard. And it's all somehow connected to the cultish La Iglesia de la Luz, once a flourishing church that has dwindled to a scant number of followers. Working with his partner and onetime lover, Kathy Bentley, Pete follows leads from New York to Miami to Key West, as the body count grows and danger increases. With its smart dialogue and vivid settings, this series concentrates equally on the trajectory of Pete Fernandez's life and the mysteries he tries to solve. From both perspectives, it's fine crime fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)