Hell Hole

April 21, 2008
John Ceepak and his rookie sidekick, Danny Boyle, of the Sea Haven, N.J., police force look into the apparent suicide of Cpl. Shareef Smith, an Iraqi war vet whose body is discovered in a men's room at a Garden State Parkway rest stop, in Grabenstein's entertaining fourth John Ceepak mystery (after 2007's Whack a Mole
). The loose plot involves a group of local-yokel thieves, a major drug dealer, a squad of soldiers fresh from the Iraqi battlefields and a blowhard senator who's running for president. As ever, the fun derives chiefly from the comic byplay between Danny, who's young, inexperienced and interested in girls and beer, and Ceepak, a straight-shooter who speaks like a robot and adheres to a strict moral code (“I will not tolerate those who lie, cheat, or steal”). While some readers may find Danny's narrative voice a tad annoying, even the grumpiest won't be able to resist the occasional smile.

May 1, 2008
The streets of Grabensteins New Jersey beach town get quite a bit meaner in the fourth installment in this entertaining series. An Army Ranger, just back from Iraq, turns up a suicide, and Sea Haven Police Department officers John Ceepak and Danny Boyle soon suspect he has been murdered. The dead mans hard-partying, edgy fellow rangers include the son of an ambitious senator who wants to become president. When the senator hits town, events quickly escalate, and straight-arrow, decorated Iraq vet Ceepak and his partner find themselves investigating much more than simple murder. Like its three predecessors, this one is narrated breezily by the cynical Boyle, and Grabenstein again shows his intimate knowledge of Jersey shore towns, whose populations swell in the summer from a few thousand to a quarter million. But this series offers far more than a beach-book romp; Hell Hole is taut and satisfying crime fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)