Moving Targets

July 9, 2018
Angela Wingate, the grown daughter of a prominent Portland, Ore., couple against whom she rebelled as a teen, needs Cal Claxton’s help in Easley’s entertaining sixth mystery featuring the genial lawyer with a strong sense of social responsibility (after 2017’s Blood for Wine). A year earlier, Angela’s rich real estate developer father died of a stroke. Soon afterward, she began to make peace with her estranged mother, Margaret. The two bonded during the Women’s March on Washington, with Margaret returning home determined to shift the focus of Wingate Properties from luxury apartments to affordable housing. Five weeks before Angela’s visit to Cal, Margaret was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Angela now wants justice. Political corruption, collusion with foreign interests, money laundering, and so much more emerge as Cal investigates. Cal treats everyone with the respect and consideration they deserve, but wrongdoers get exactly what’s coming to them. Intelligent dialogue, evocative descriptions of the Oregon landscape, and sly pokes at the current cultural climate make this a winner.

July 15, 2018
A hit-and-run may be a mob play to move into a real estate venture, according to a pro bono lawyer hired by the victim's daughter.Cal Claxton, lawyer to the poor and disenfranchised of Portland, Oregon, uses the coffeehouse Caffeine Central as an ad hoc office to meet with clients. Cal's been working the low-cost circuit for a few years (Blood for Wine, 2017, etc.), having found work with clients who couldn't otherwise afford his representation rewarding to his soul if not his wallet. Former wild child Angela Wingate is not Cal's typical client. Raised in wealth by her property-developing adoptive parents, Charles and Margaret, Angela's given up her hard-partying ways only in the past few years. Angela's former lifestyle estranged her from her parents, and she was unable to make amends before Charles' death last year. But Angela and Margaret had started to rebuild their relationship when Margaret was killed in a hit-and-run five weeks ago. Now Angela pleads for Cal to investigate Margaret's death. She's sure it could be related to the leadership at Wingate Properties and to Margaret's unusual will, which cuts Angela out almost completely. To investigate, Cal connects with his longtime friend Nando Mendoza, a jack-of-all-trades who suspects that Margaret's death could be connected to Ilya Boyarchenko and the Russian mob, who have their own fingers in property development. When Cal brings his work home to his Dundee farmhouse outside the city, he finds that a mining operation has begun in his backyard, terrifying his companion dog, Archie, and thrusting Cal into legal research on his own behalf. Though he'd love the support and listening ear of his girlfriend, Winona Cloud, she's distracted by the fight of her people at Standing Rock, and her stress threatens their relationship.Though the implication of the mob in real estate isn't the most imaginative gambit, Easley continues in every installment of this series to get a better handle on his characters and the vital balance between principal and supporting plots.

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August 1, 2018
Those damned developers again. It's a perennial mystery theme: theme: greedy oligarchs overbuild high-rises that look like the boxes they came in, decimate neighborhoods, link up with folks even more unsavory than they are, and murder anyone who gets in their way. Until they cross that one person who isn't going to take it. This time it's Easley's series hero, Cal Claxton, a lawyer who settled near Portland, Oregon, after his wife's death. He'd rather occupy himself with low-voltage cases; jog with his heroic dog, Archie; and sample the local craft beers. But an heiress appears, asking him to investigate the death of her mom, who was maybe about to turn property over to charity, and Claxton is in. It's a familiar trail of crime syndicates, money laundering, and contract killers, but what's most interesting is Claxton himself?good-natured, superficially dull as dishwater, not at all deft with the ladies. He's generally slow to anger, too, but when the greedheads, on top of their international scams, crank up a loud gravel quarry outside Claxton's home, things change. They should have known better.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)