Painted Skins

October 10, 2016
Clichéd characters, some of whom speak in overdone dialect (“Going to step out and stretch my legs, me”), mar British author Hilton’s sequel to Blood Tracks. Portland, Maine, PI Tess Grey and her lover/assistant, Nicolas “Po” Villere, are searching for troubled, tattooed 24-year-old Jasmine Reed, who has disappeared. Tess and Po talk to strip-club owner Maxwell Carter, who says that he offered Jasmine a job as a dancer, but she turned him down because she still bears the scars from being cut up by an assailant. Tess is the first to figure out that two other women with tattoos and scars have gone missing, both last seen in the vicinity of a major highway in Massachusetts. Tess also identifies a suspect, who was the son of parents who briefly fostered Jasmine when she was a rebellious teen. Meanwhile, the sadist who has kidnapped, raped, and tortured young women continues to torment his prisoners. The relentlessly grim action builds to a messy, violent conclusion.

October 1, 2016
The disappearance of a young woman old enough to know better but who probably doesnt leads Portland private eye Tess Grey and Nicolas "Po" Villere, her operative and lover (Blood Tracks, 2015), into a wildly tangled thicket of felonies.Theres no reason why anyone should report Jasmine Reed missing, even after 16 days. Jazz is 24, on her own, and gainfully employed as a bartender at the Bar-Lesque, whose manager, Maxwell Carter, blandly assures Tess and Po that its not a strip club. But Jazzs grandmother, Margaret Norris, is concerned because the girl has a history of running away, although her grandmother clearly doesnt want to talk about why. Although Tess and Po fail to make much headway, they soon notice that they arent the only ones looking for Jazz. John Trojak, a dim, gentlemanly bit of muscle whose cousin, Daryl Bruin, owns the Bar-Lesque, follows them dutifully around their corner of Maine asking questions about Jazz. And theres someone else on her trail, someone just as violently inclined as Trojak but a lot less genteel. With some help from Pinky Leclerc, a friend visiting Po from Baton Rouge, Tess and Po eventually uncover the story of Jazzs childhood, which is so horrible and sad that they can see what she was running away from. What they cant seealthough Hilton obligingly gives his readers a peekis that Jazz has been kidnapped by a seriously deranged man who really likes girls with scars and tattoos. And not just Jazz. Rated R for sex, violence, sexual violence, and perhaps one too many violent rapists working independently and, indeed, at odds with each other. Now if only Hilton delivered the punch that breaking all those taboos would seem to promise.

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November 1, 2016

Because Jasmine Reed is a perpetual runaway, the Portland, ME, police are less than interested when her grandmother reports her missing. Margaret Norris hires private investigators Tess Gray and Nicholas "Po" Villere to find Jasmine, yet several other people in Portland are also searching for her, including the man who harmed her years ago. But Jasmine disappeared before he hit town, so who could be responsible? As Tess investigates, she uncovers other missing young women, all scarred or tattooed or marked in some way. Where have they all gone? Introduced in Blood Tracks, Tess and Po are memorable protagonists. Tess was a police officer who now works as a private investigator. Po is Cajun and left Louisiana after serving time in Angola Prison. Both sleuths have backgrounds ripe for further development. VERDICT The Maine setting brings to mind the mysteries of Paul Doiron, but this is much more of a thriller with some brutal overtones, more in the vein of Taylor Stevens's "Vanessa Michael Munroe" series.

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