This was an entertaining detective book with suspense and romance between the lead character, a San Diego PD cop/actor and US Navy investigator and the investigator of toxic waste crime. Kinda light and fun to read
Wambaugh's spritely tale of environmental crime and opportunistic thievery in San Diego isn't a bad yarn. But it would have been rated higher if he hadn't fallen into a sudden tendency to end every sentence with an exclamation point! It's distracting! And amateurish, for a writer who's been around for 30 years!
The villain of the piece is Jules Temple, the son of a wealthy lawyer who takes up the toxic waste business after being disinherited. In Mexico, two of Temple's truck drivers dump a shipment of a lethal pesticide and then decide to rob the Navy base where they were supposed to make a pickup. This brings matters to the attention of an unlikely threesome: Nell Salter, a DA Investigator into environmental crimes; Bobbie Ann Doggett, a young Navy command investigator; and Finbar Finnegan, a San Diego police detective who'd rather be an actor.
I'm not the biggest fan of his fictional work, but it was entertaining nonetheless.
Finbar Finnegan , a San Diego police, detective and someime actor, has a midlife crisis at 45, his existence having been dominated by three sisters while growing up and by three ex wives as an adult. His theme song is "Someone to Watch over Me" he needs a mommy/wife, has sworn off marriage, but finds himself tied ticklingly to two female detectives at once, both of whom see him as romantically interesting despite immense shortcomings: happy, cheerful, pistol packing Petty Officer "Baaad Dog" Bobbie Ann Doggett, 28 an investigator for the navy who's looking for 2,000 boots hijacked from a warehouse: and District Attorney's Investigatior Nell Salter, 43 once divorced, and looking for a stolen truck filled with supertoxic waste. The truck actually was "stolen" by its tow drivers who lifted the boots while picking up drums of toxic waste at a naval station, took them to a fence in Tijuana, then pretended their truck was stolen while they ate lunch. The truck, however, gets sold to a Mexican pottery maker, who repaints it and uses it to deliver pots to San Diego.
