The Innocents

November 20, 2017
Set in Los Angeles in 1988, Putnam’s uneven fifth Bruno Johnson novel (after 2017’s The Vanquished) opens dramatically. Deputy Bruno’s morning tryst with the captain’s secretary at his East Compton apartment is interrupted by a visit from his former lover, Sonja Kowalski. Sonja thrusts an infant into Bruno’s arms, saying the baby is his and she can’t take care of their daughter. It’s an inauspicious way to start his first day as the least experienced member of the new four-person L.A. County Sheriff Violent Crimes unit. After dropping off the baby with his understanding father, Bruno joins his team and its leader, Lt. Robby Wicks, whom he’s not sure he can trust. Bruno is soon given an undercover assignment—to infiltrate a sheriff’s narcotics unit that may be operating a murder-for-hire scheme. Putnam, a law enforcement veteran, realistically explores a corrupt police unit, but too much violence and clichéd dialogue overwhelm the story. Bruno comes across as too naïve to be a cop, even a new one, and the other characters are merely caricatures. Agents: Mike and Susan Farris, Farris Literary Agency.

December 1, 2017
Bruno Johnson, an African-American detective in LA, goes undercover to figure out if a group of cops has gone rogue.Bruno's white former girlfriend, Sonja, knocks on his door one day and stuns him by handing over their newborn daughter to raise, a child he didn't know existed. He and his father welcome the baby's presence, but life turns dicey when Bruno is assigned to the LA County Sheriff's Violent Crimes Team. An early case results in the unnecessary death of a suspect, and his boss, Lt. Robby Wicks, invites him to a barbecue "to celebrate the team's first kill." "A man died," Bruno says. "That's nothing to celebrate." But the barbecue is an excuse to have him meet Deputy Chief Rudyard, who wants him to go undercover in a police narcotics squad that's operating a murder-for-hire ring and identify "the dog heavy"--that is, the person running the operation. Bruno is a likable and principled character who knows he's being sucked into a bad situation and can't do much to avoid it, even becoming an unwitting accessory to murder. Some of his racist colleagues hate him--one refers to himself and Bruno as "a white guy and a smoke," and Bruno struggles to contain his rage. Whether a white author can truly understand a black cop's feelings about racism is hard to know, but Putnam (The Vanquished, 2017, etc.) creates a sympathetic hero. Meanwhile, people may not be who they say they are, and no colleague is above suspicion. "They need to get you dirty more than ever," Wicks tells Bruno in the middle of the operation, and "they" are on the brink of succeeding. The scenes feel authentic and tense thanks to Putnam's decades of law enforcement experience.Great reading for crime-fiction fans.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2017
Ask Bruno Johnson if he believes in justice, and the African American sheriff's detective in L.A. will tell you he damn well does. It's something he plans to administer with his baton, resulting in broken teeth, ribs, and arm bones. But then he'll back away, shocked at his own taste for savagery and terrified that he's moved toward the evil I'd dedicated my life to chasing. He tends to think in those apocalyptic terms, and his 10-cylinder approach to crime-solving sends him into a quandary when his boss drops him into a looking-glass world. He's to go undercover in a narcotics squad to investigate rumors that the drug cops are covertly operating a murder-for-hire operation. Author Putnam has a wonderful way with the sensory feel of this world: the smell of bad food, bad coffee, bad people. Unfortunately, Johnson's Holy Fool innocence leaves him unprepared for the tangle of corruption he unearths. Putnam's knack for creating powerfully cathartic action scenes provides just what we need after spending time in a world that's like a forties movie, where everybody's a rat fink. Except Bruno Johnson.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)