October 16, 2017
In Phillips’s entertaining second Chuck Restic mystery (after 2017’s The Silent Second), Carl Valenti, who doesn’t trust private investigators, hires the L.A. HR exec to look for his missing 16-year-old granddaughter, Jeannette. Valenti has caused Chuck trouble in the past, but, postdivorce, Chuck could use the extra cash. As he starts to dig, with Valenti’s right-hand man, stone-faced Hector Hermosillo, in tow, what at first seems the case of a rebellious teen acting out starts to look more serious. Chuck must also contend with Jeannette’s parents, who are separated and have their own agendas involving Valenti’s vast wealth. Chuck’s sharp, wry insights into the absurdity of the corporate world reveal his existential need for more meaning in his life, and many scenes are genuinely funny, such as the one in which Chuck and Hector pose as building inspectors, riffing off each other with ease and breaking the ice between them. Phillips’s clever blend of the absurd and the serious will have readers looking forward to Chuck’s next adventure.
November 1, 2017
The search for a vanished teenager leads a reluctant shamus back to the powerful man who hired him.Elderly real estate tycoon Carl Valenti makes junior HR executive Chuck Restic (The Silent Second, 2017) an offer he can't refuse: $100,000 to find his missing granddaughter, Jeanette. Not till after Chuck agrees does Valenti confess that he received a ransom demand that he's already paid and that part of the deal includes the uninterrupted presence of Hector, his faithful chauffeur. In for a penny, in for a pound, figures Chuck. His investigation proceeds modestly as he gathers information via methodical interviews, beginning with the girl's parents, who are separated from each other. Valenti's daughter, Meredith, is evasive about the possibility of a genuine disappearance but mentions dismissively her daughter's Mexican boyfriend, "Nelson something." Jeanette's father, Jeff, is much franker about the dysfunction in their family and the intrusions of his powerful father-in-law in their lives. Valenti's ex-wife, Sheila Lansing, paints an even darker picture and reveals that she's afraid of Valenti. Restic has reason to be wary of both Valenti and of Nelson Portillo, who tries to run him down in a parking lot. Through it all, Hector lurks in the background, presenting a constant, simmering threat of violence. All roads seem to lead back to Valenti, but Restic is reluctant to share what he has with the police until tragedy strikes.Nuanced character portraits and slowly building suspense make this both an involving human story and a crackling crime yarn.
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January 1, 2018
HR executive Chuck Restic is bored at work, but he is promised $100,000 by real-estate tycoon Carl Valenti (whom he met during the events of The Silent Second) if he can find Valenti's missing granddaughter. But there are strings attached, with Valenti's driver escorting Chuck and reporting back to his boss. Chuck juggles corporate politics with his search for the girl, whose disappearance may be linked to her grandfather's proposed museum and his old relationships. Along the way, Chuck has a run-in with a cop, a teen is killed, and his driver indicates he knows how to use a knife in a fight. In this darkly humorous crime novel, Phillips nicely contrasts Chuck's action-packed sleuthing with his humdrum corporate battles. Well aware of the irrelevance of his HR position, the budding Philip Marlowe narrates in the same wisecracking style of so many old-school detectives. VERDICT This atmospheric mystery vividly captures a diverse, contemporary Los Angeles that will still be recognizable to readers of Raymond Chandler.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 15, 2017
A number of professions have intriguing similarities to detective worklike reporter, or psychiatrist, or even historian. But an HR executive for a megacorporation? Chuck Restic, narrator of this densely packed novel, has been absorbing what Orwell called duckspeak core deliverables, key dependencies long enough to know that if he doesn't take this quacking seriously, he'll be at the mercy of people who do. Salvation comes in the person of megabucks developer Carl Valenti, whom Chuck helped out in Phillips' earlier The Silent Second (2017). Valenti wants him to find his missing 16-year-old granddaughter, and Chuck pokes deeper into this unhappy family. It's a bit of a tangled plota battle over land use is at the heart of itand some of the set pieces require a knowledge of L.A. to be appreciated fully. But not to worry. This one's all about style, and the juicy bits are all in the evocative writing the wonderfully sad pink of an early Sunday morning and the offbeat information: to see in darkness look out the corner of your eye. For the idiosyncratic mystery reader.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)