Mind Scrambler

March 2, 2009
Grabenstein’s appealing fifth John Ceepak mystery (after 2008’s Hell Hole
) finds ultra-straight-arrow cop Ceepak and his laid-back partner, Danny Boyle, on leave in Atlantic City. Soon after a former girlfriend of Boyle’s, the nanny for a smarmy stage magician’s children, approaches Boyle for advice, she winds up dead in a bizarre s&m ritual before she can explain the problem. The local police deputize the two Sea Haven, N.J., cops as more corpses pile up. Ceepak and Boyle aren’t too surprised that everyone is lying in a murder case involving professional illusionists with nasty secrets. Grabenstein has a good eye for the grit under a glitzy setting and a good ear for character-defining accents, including Boyle’s wry narrative voice. In less skillful hands, Ceepak might come across as a mere hybrid of Sherlock Holmes and Dudley Do-Right, but the author succeeds in making his hero’s earnest devotion to a rigid code of behavior both believable and moving.

May 1, 2009
A young cop's reunion with an old flame is cut short by her murder.

New Jersey police detectives John Ceepak and Danny Boyle, who tells the story in pungent first person, are in Atlantic City taking a deposition to help Ceepak's estranged father beat a murder charge in Ohio when Boyle runs into his old girlfriend, Katie Landry, who's now the nanny to the children of flashy magician Richard Rock. Rock headlines a family-friendly show at the Xanadu assisted by his babelicious wife and his kids Richie and Britney. Though she's dating Jake, a muscle-bound dancer in Rock's show, Katie agrees to meet Boyle for a drink after the evening performance. Then Ceepak's dad pleads guilty, abruptly ending the duo's mission, and Rock's abrasive manager Zuckerman hires Boyle and Ceepak as extra security for the evening. Lady Jasmine, a magician notorious for stealing her rivals' best illusions, plans to attend the show with her entourage. When Katie and Jake go AWOL, Rock improvises, but Boyle is suspicious. Rock's shrewd centerpiece trick, designed to encourage the Xanadu guests to gamble, turns an audience member's lucky number into a winner. As Rock is tracked by cameras making his way to a gaming table, Boyle slips backstage to find Katie, provocatively dressed and strangled to death.

Though his characters may be shallow, Grabenstein's sharply arch prose and steady plotting makes Ceepak's fifth (Hell Hole, 2008, etc.) compulsively readable.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2009
The fifth installmentin this popular series set in a New Jersey beach town continues the process of making the crimes darker. Sea Haven cop Danny Boyle and his straight-arrow partner, Iraq War vet John Ceepak, are in Atlantic City on police business when Danny meets Katie, a beautiful Jersey girl he once had a crush on. Katie is working as nanny to the children of master illusionist Richard Rock, who is a headliner at the Xanadu casino. Within hours of seeing Katie, Danny and John are investigating her death; shes been found bound and gagged and wearing fetish gear. One murder leads to others and to evidence of torture and pedophilia. Grabensteins portrait of Atlantic City, its casinos, and the gamblers who flock there is harsh but accurate. The Springsteen lyrics he always employs are darker than usual, overtly political, and clearly aimed at the Bush administration. Mind Scrambler may be a meatier novel than the more amiable early installments in the series, but this reviewer looks forward to finding Danny and Ceepak back in Sea Haven during another sunny summer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)