When it comes to murder, nothing is as it seemsAfter being laid off from his job as a newspaper reporter in a coastal Florida town, Dexter Vega meets a wealthy retiree who hires him to find his daughter who is supposed to be attending the local college. When Vega visits his client to inform him that his daughter is in Mexico, he discovers the man has been murdered. And Vega’s prints are all over … prints are all over the murder weapon.
As the police build a case against him, Vega flies to Mexico City to locate his client’s daughter, hoping she will help him find the murderer and thus clear his name. But when he finds the woman, she tells him a very different story—nothing is as it seems.
Beaten by thugs and ordered to leave Mexico, Vega returns home to find himself immersed in a web of blackmail, greed, and revenge. Still pursued by the cops—and now a target of evil predators.
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This Novel Had Potential, But There Were Too Many Problems
The novel begins with Dexter Vega, a professional journalist recently let go, sitting in a bar. A rough looking man walked into the bar and started to talk and then shout at an old man there. He started to assault him in the bar. He then took the old man out to the parking lot and continued the assault. Dexter tried to break up the assault, but it was the owner with a baseball bat that convinced the man to leave. Dexter offered a ride home. Home turned out to be very expensive home on the bay. The old man, Nick Zavala, was rich. He had made his fortune in the sex accessories retail business. Nick, upon learning the identity of Dexter as a newspaper journalist, asked if Dexter would find his daughter with whom he recently lost contact. The next day, $10,000 convinces Dexter to take the job. He quickly learns that this daughter had left to join an expedition near Mexico City looking for a salamander believed to be extinct. On returning to Nick’s house the next day, the police are everywhere. Nick Zavala was murdered. Dexter becomes the prime suspect when his prints were discovered on the murder weapon. The story proceeds from here with twists, turns, and misdirections that kept my interest throughout the entire novel.
The B-story, and more specifically, the character of Dexter is where I had the most problems with this novel. His basic attributes were drinking, sleeping with every woman, except one lesbian, with whom he was close, and listening to his vinyl record collection. The major problem I had with this character was that he was an eleven-year newspaper journalist, but his use of the English language was not what I would expect from a professional journalist. He used “me” as the subject of a sentence, “good” as an adverb, and uses “got” instead of a proper verb in sentences. Second, he uses a laptop to write and collect information for his articles, but tells one person that he doesn’t do Facebook. He later sends a friend request. In several situations, the use of the Internet to find some information would have made several of his searches for people, much easier and quicker. Lastly, one of his interviews with a college professor read more like a Sam Spade in a Deshell Hammett novel than a modern day conversation.
As a reader beware, there is some use of vulgar language, and while there is not a detailed sex scenes there is plenty of sexual activity. For me, this was a very minor issue, but I know for some this can be a major issue.
As I put in the title of this review, this novel had potential, but just had too many problems. While the novel did hold my interest to the end, the problems described above really would not allow me to give this work more than a two-star rating. I could not recommend reading this novel.
I have received a free Advanced Reading Copy of this novel through NetGalley from Oceanview Publishing with a request for an honest, unbiased review. I wish to thank Oceanview Publishing for the opportunity to read this novel early.