The flood waters have receded, and the city is in full bloom, when Harding’s most cherished artist dies in horrific fashion, just hours after unveiling his greatest work yet to the public. Crime scene analysis confirms Detective Kyle Villante’s hunch: Poison. But the exotic poison’s mere existence is a mystery in itself.Retired from police work, Solomon Aduwo has returned to Harding to lose … lose himself in volunteer service, but Harding’s elites single him out and draw him into their circle of power, power he finds intoxicating. They make him offers he can’t refuse, but when the artist’s death rocks their ranks, Aduwo is there to witness the aftermath. And something isn’t right. Old habits die hard, and he’s lured into an investigation of his own.
Villante and Aduwo’s paths cross, and they must grudgingly combine their knowledge and efforts if there’s any hope of cracking the case. Surprises along the way send both men reeling, leaving all of Harding at risk. And after Aduwo confronts the murderer, he finds his mask game may have come to an end with a terrifying result.
Poison Secrets is a thrilling mystery, full of vivid characters, puzzling questions, action and suspense.
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Poison Secrets by Mark Hazard
Reading the second installment of the Harding Saga reminds me the story of Colin Dexter, and his Series of books and a British TV police drama, titled, Inspector Morse that went on for 13 years, and stopped because of the passing of the eponymous main character, Endeavor (yes, it was his given name) Morse, played by John Thaw.
As Dexter tells the story of how he started to write books about DI Morse and his exploits he was vacationing at a seaside resort in the UK and, to keep himself entertained in case of bad weather (and when it is not bad weather at the British seaside) a few whodunit books. He soon realized that the books were so bad that he decided he could do much better. Ergo, DI Morse came to life with his loyal sidekick, DS Robbie Lewis.
Morse, almost a complete anti-hero, wasn’t always right, had his devices, not the least his fancying a pint of bitter, even though he was a severe diabetic, intellectually superior of the police brass, often cynical and giving a wide berth to standard police regimen. That made him far from being the sweetheart of his extremely rigid organization and nowhere near of the fast-track promotion. Morse was quite often saved from weighty trouble by his sergeant, playing the straight, strict company man.
The setting was Oxford, a college town and the writing wasn’t just intelligent, but also educational. And the stories sprung from the daily life of the college-town milieu. In addition to a plausible and exciting yarn, as the whodunit aspect went, you also got informed on different subjects that one usually has not a clue about. No surprise here because Dexter was a college professor by trade and as such teaching must have been in his DNA. And a thin layer of cynicism as always made the reading fun without obscenities and belly-laugh.
The similarities between Dexter’s work and the evolving series of Hazard are astounding, albeit entirely unintentional. The parallels end, however, at life-like, flesh-and-blood characters, stories anchored in a unique environment, intelligent and educating writing, and a thin layer of cynicism, laughing at the hypocrisy and quirks of their own protagonists. (Villante knows what a paramour is because he looked it up when he came across a new band by that name.)
Oxford is a college town extensively endowed with intellectual snobbery as it appears to Dexter at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st Centuries. Harding, in contrast, a medium-size typical American city well into the new age, with a relatively small police force, all the socio-economic and environmental problems facing the country. To exacerbate the second-decade, new century’s issues that confront the city, it also has a large immigrant community, hailing mostly from Africa. Hazard doesn’t shy away from touching on all the problems this environment has to deal with. On the contrary, he makes it central to his story.
As far as I am concerned, the relationship between the two protagonists, Villante and Awuko, is most fascinating and turning from an initial love-to-hate to a hate-to-love affair. Particularly, when Kyle, accidentally, finds out how Solomon saved his backside at the end of the first book and why is he now an ordinary citizen and not in law enforcement.
The reality and realism don’t stop there. In what detective mystery would the reader find a chief of police whose first-morning job in her office is to operate a breast pump to have enough milk for her new baby boy whose insatiable appetite is “sucking the life out of her.” Or, two investigators summarizing what they have on and about prime suspects in an outdoor café using different kinds of sweetener packaging to represent the possibles, physically.
Above all, there is no gunplay. It is replaced by sophistication and educating the reader, in this instance, about natural symbiosis that creates deadly poisons, albeit, as Hazard cautions, “sola dosis facit venenum” (the poison is in the dosage), a razor-thin difference between a medical miracle drug and a murder weapon. And the murder mystery itself is no chopped liver either but well thought out and realistic.
It seems that romance is on the horizon for Kyle. It started with an “accidental” serious physical encounter (is there such as thing?). Turned dormant for a while and now it is at the stage of lets-get-to-know-each-other-better (is there such a stage?). To make matters more exciting the lady in this case, as we learned from the first book, is the daughter of the mayor.
Speaking of the Mayor of Hasting. He is the corrupt member of the good old boy political network. I suspect Hazard develops the character in coming books to serve as the protagonists-duo nemesis. A cleverly crafty move.
I must confess, I got the book as a freebie. But so could everybody get it after reading the first book and asking the author for this one. And although one might call me a cheapskate, I am to the effect one who might send just one dozen of red roses instead of two but not to the extent of writing this review for 99 cents.