Synopsis
-Houston, 1961
Texas’ slickest politician loses his presidential bid to a good-looking naval hero from Massachusetts. President Kennedy wants to put a man on the moon, and the Freedom Riders are raising morale for local civil rights activists.
Sleepy backwater Houston finds itself short on air conditioning just when things are heating up. In a seedy downtown office, a well-dressed out-of-towner hires P.I. Harry Lark to tail two D.C. visitors looking to build NASA a space center.
The more Harry finds, the more he suspects he’s working for the wrong side, and vows to wash his hands of the case. Meanwhile, Harry’s twelve-year-old daughter Dizzy is puzzling over a mystery of her own—she’s running a lost-and-found out of a suburban garage and is unexpectedly hired to find a missing dad who’s supposed to be dead and buried.
When Harry’s client turns up dead in his office, and mobsters start hounding him for cash, Harry realizes he needs all the help he can get—even if it comes from his daughter. As Harry and Dizzy’s cases converge, one thing is clear: someone wants Houston to look like a lawless Wild West Cowtown.
Together, Harry and Dizzy are going to find out who.
Review
If you like gritty PI books set in the 1960s when private investigators were a different breed, then this is a book you will want to pick up and read.
This book has all the characteristics of a Sam Shade novel but add in a 12 year old girl that is channeling Nancy Drew, the hot city of Houston, and the mafia and this all sets the scene for some fascinating reading.
The book switches POV from Harry to Dizzy. At first it was a little confusing until I understood the relationship between the two and because the story would jump around in time a day or two based on the POV. The stories intertwine and I enjoyed how the stories merged into one and that despite the times, Harry did not discourage Dizzy from doing what interested her, even shooting guns. This is Texas after all!
The story also hits on racial issues as this is the beginning of desegregation and there are several scenes that highlight those fighting for equal rights. Crooked politicians and the space race round out the plot lines in the book.
I was pulled into this story wondering how it was all going to play out and as the storylines merged, along with Harry and Dizzy’s interactions, I couldn’t wait for the climax and I was not disappointed.
Some of my favorite lines from the book:
“We still had plenty of vice and crime, of course, but it was the homegrown, loony Lone Star variety.”
“You pulled off Barbie’s head?” I asked. Further proof that my daughter was not a typical girl.
The mismatched file cabinets looked like they had been salvaged from Davy Jones’s locker. There was something on the floor that resembled green carpet, but in places it had given up trying to cover the floorboards altogether. The venetian blinds had slats missing and slats hanging at odd angles like drunken sailors.
“It’s like stirring up a nest of fire ants. You’re bound to get stung, and it doesn’t matter how many ants you step on, there’ll be more ants.”
This was an engaging book and we give it 4 paws up.
About the Author
D. B. Borton has published eleven mystery novels in two series, the Cat Caliban series (Berkley, Hilliard and Harris) and the Gilda Liberty series (Fawcett). She has published academic work on film, women’s literature, and the supernatural; she is co-author of Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American Women and Ghost Stories by British and American Women. She also wrote for Ms. magazine.
A native Texan, Borton became an ardent admirer of Nancy Drew at a young age. At the age of fourteen, she acquired her own blue roadster, trained on Houston freeways, and began her travels. She also began a lifetime of political activism, working only for candidates who lost. She left Texas about the time everyone else arrived.
D. B. currently teaches writing, film, and literature at Ohio Wesleyan University.
