Worse Angels

March 30, 2020
In Barron’s disappointing third Isaiah Coleridge novel (after 2019’s Black Mountain), Badja Adeyemi, “a right bastard of an ex-NYPD cop,” hires PI Coleridge, a former mob strong-arm man, to look into the case of his nephew, Sean Pruitt, who died at the construction site of a supercollider in upstate New York four years earlier. The official inquiry pointed to suicide, but certain details don’t fit, and Adeyemi wants “a bad news sonofabitch with a gun” to find some answers. When Coleridge travels to the site and starts asking questions, things quickly become strange. Locals are reluctant to talk about Pruitt’s death or the mysterious activities that take place at the project at night. The investigation soon involves mysticism, hypnotic suggestion, fringe science, human sacrifice, and the Mares of Thrace, a violent pagan cult presided over by a prominent businessman. Unfortunately, these undeveloped plot elements tend to distract from the central mystery rather than advance it. The resolution comes almost as an afterthought. Barron fans will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: Janet Reid, Janet Reid Literary.

April 15, 2020
When private investigator and former mob guy Isaiah Coleridge is hired to look into the suspicious death of a man's nephew, he will discover layers of corruption beneath the power of politicians. Ex-NYPD cop Badja Adeyemi had been the bodyguard for Gerald Redlick, a businessman who's now a U.S. senator. When Redlick's company came under scrutiny for corrupt doings, Adeyemi too became a suspect. Now, before he gets sent to prison, Adeyemi wants to ease his sister's mind by having Coleridge investigate the death of her son at a supercollider project site several years earlier. This will lead the tough and tough-talking Coleridge and his equally tough associate, Lionel Robard, to small towns and people with big egos, bigger payrolls, and absolutely zero scruples about doing whatever it takes to win. Although author Barron displays an ability to move along the multilayered plot, his frequently florid prose slows things down, especially when Coleridge takes a philosophical turn: "Reality is a frequency, time is a ring, and gravity bleeds through a membrane that cocoons this universe." It will take a reader even tougher than the protagonist to hold on till the end of this story.

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