Publishers Weekly
In Ray's fourth Murdock novel, teenager Heather Blasingame is comatose after a hit-and-run ``accident'' at a glitzy California shopping mall. Her mother, a Texas state senator, gets no satisfaction from local police and hires the semi-scruffy Murdock to dig into a possible coverup. Murdock also helps poor-little-rich-girl Cindy of the powerful Duke family to find her missing father. Uncovering a connection between these cases, and also Cindy's uncle's penchant for child molestation, Murdock is threatened, his house is torched and one of the girls is murdered. (He also has a fling with ``Senator Jane.'') The body count is high at the melodramatic end after we meet a Mafia don, Murdock's flashy Vietnam-vet buddy Blazer and the tough, not unsympathetic Duke patriarch. Hard-boiled, soft-centered Murdock approaches sentimentality and some characters are shallow but Ray ( The Hit Man Cometh ) keeps the story moving smoothly. (Dec.
In Ray's fourth Murdock novel, teenager Heather Blasingame is comatose after a hit-and-run ``accident'' at a glitzy California shopping mall. Her mother, a Texas state senator, gets no satisfaction from local police and hires the semi-scruffy Murdock to dig into a possible coverup. Murdock also helps poor-little-rich-girl Cindy of the powerful Duke family to find her missing father. Uncovering a connection between these cases, and also Cindy's uncle's penchant for child molestation, Murdock is threatened, his house is torched and one of the girls is murdered. (He also has a fling with ``Senator Jane.'') The body count is high at the melodramatic end after we meet a Mafia don, Murdock's flashy Vietnam-vet buddy Blazer and the tough, not unsympathetic Duke patriarch. Hard-boiled, soft-centered Murdock approaches sentimentality and some characters are shallow but Ray ( The Hit Man Cometh ) keeps the story moving smoothly. (Dec.
