Back cover: Laguna... Where every day the sun makes a promise the nighttime breaks, while the super-rich live out expensive fantasies in posh beach houses and drown their memories in Cuervo Gold margaritas... Laguna... Where trouble has swept in like a Santa Ana wind, blowing the cover off a world of torture, murder, and blood-red secrets... Laguna... Where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violence-with a fiery vengeance-and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery that reaches back across forty years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past, and sweats out a deadly truth in the sweltering... Laguna Heat.
This was Mr. Parker's first book, and like many authors, it really wasn't his best. That said, he is my new favorite author and I am reading through his bibliography. I really like his style, especially I do like his style and the way he 'peels back the onion' of the plot. Although it was pretty easy to figure out, it was well worth reading to the end. and the depths and complexity of his main characters and the plots.
Parker's first book, set in Laguna Beach. Not one of his best, in my opinion, but I do like his style and the depths and complexity of his main characters and the plots. A murdered man in a gristly setting, and other crimes going back several decades, with a young detective working on his own.
A good mystery 31/2 stars