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Book Review of Merry Christmas Murdock (Matt Murdock, Bk 4)

Merry Christmas Murdock (Matt Murdock, Bk 4)
reviewed on


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.