Hell On Wheels

September 8, 2014
Early in Jaffarian’s action-filled ninth mystery featuring plus-size paralegal Odelia Grey (after 2013’s Secondhand Stiff), Odelia and her paraplegic husband, Greg Stevens, watch quad rugby, a “game played by quadriplegics in wheelchairs on a regulation basketball court,” at Balboa Park’s Municipal Gymnasium in San Diego, Calif. In the finals, a brawl between their friend Rick Henderson of the Laguna Lunatics and Peter Tanaka of the Ventura Vipers ends in Peter’s death. Earlier, an on-court remark by Peter led to a confrontation between Rocky and Rocky’s wife, Miranda, who stormed out of the gym. Later, Odelia’s difficult boss, Mike Steele, who’s been into a scrap of his own, needs her to cover for him at work while he recuperates. Meanwhile, law-firm head honcho Simon Tobin wants Odelia to do a little digging in a personal matter involving his mother and a mystery woman calling herself Eudora Fox. Jaffarian neatly pulls all the plot lines together for a satisfying outcome. Agent: Whitney Lee, Fielding Agency.