Behind the locked gates of a compound in the California desert, Benjamin Justice discovers a series of crimes so chilling, they make the blood run cold.
This fourth book in the award-winning Benjamin Justice mystery series continues John Morgan Wilson's exploration of the dark depravity that is normally hidden from the glaring California sun, and delivers a tale of suspense that is at once shocking and compellingly addictive.
Still trying to come to terms with his HIV+ status, Benjamin Justice is just resurfacing after a six-month-long romance with Cuervo Gold when he is roused from his self-induced torpor by a young woman bearing the offer of work and a handsome monetary reward.
A sleazy star biographer has just written an exposé of Charlotte Preston's late father, Rod, an actor known more for his masculine hunkiness than his thespian abilities, claiming the Hollywood he-man was not all that he seemed. Charlotte wants Justice to write the rebuttal and set the record straight. But before he can even begin, Charlotte is dead, discovered in her bedroom with a needle in her arm by none other than Justice himself.
Curiosity aroused, and with a generous advance already swelling his bank account, the journalist is determined to discover the truth--not only about Rod Preston's life but also about his daughter's death. What Justice finds hidden deep in the desert links an unlikely group of men to a history of twisted perversion and crimes almost too horrible to believe.
Former investigative journalist Benjamin Justice has decided that blue agave is a whole lot better than bleak reality, so he's spent the better part of six months trying to pickle himself in tequila. Justice has any number of reasons to be depressed. He was fired from the Los Angeles Times for fraud (and had to give back a Pulitzer Prize to boot); his lover of 10 years died from AIDS; and Justice himself was infected with HIV during a brutal rape. Money, however, is a powerful motivator. When Charlotte Preston offers him an advance of $25,000 to ghostwrite an exposé of Randall Capri, a tabloid writer whose latest sensational effort claims that Charlotte's late father, Hollywood heartthrob Rod Preston, was a sexual predator, Justice decides to come up for air. But Charlotte is found dead less than a day later, and Justice inherits both her spoiled Lhasa apso and a determination to unearth her killer. It doesn't take long for Justice to discover that Capri was right on the money. In a trail leading from the posh health spas of Beverly Hills to the seedy strip bars of Tijuana, Justice will uncover a network of pedophiles, respected citizens all, who exploit immigrant boys and who will stop at nothing to keep their secret safe. John Morgan Wilson's hero (Simple Justice, Revision of Justice, Justice at Risk) is brooding, sardonic, and deeply human. His investigation into other people's lives is peppered with moments of often unpalatable insight into his own dark existence and pangs of guilt for distancing himself from all who would befriend him. Justice's propensity for occasional ponderous asides on sex and morality slows down a plot that otherwise moves briskly along. (Perhaps a bit too briskly: Wilson can't seem to decide whether he's writing a solemn meditation on the human condition or a no-holds-barred potboiler.) However, though the denouement flirts dangerously with farce as Justice storms a desert compound populated by former Nazis, Wilson's generally adept prose will keep readers happy, and pages turning. --Kelly Flynn
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