Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Kill the Messenger - Tami Hoag - 4 stars

This is a stand alone book by the author with a great synopsis, so I had to read it. It also makes up my letter 'K' for the A-Z challenge this year.
Synopsis
At the end of a long day battling street traffic, bike messenger Jace Damon has one last drop to make. But en route to delivering a package for one of L.A.'s sleaziest defense attorneys, he's nearly run down by a car, chased through back alleys, and shot at. Only the instincts acquired while growing up on the streets of L.A. allow him to escape with his life—and with the package someone wants badly enough to kill for.

Jace returns to Lenny Lowell's office only to find the cops there, the lawyer dead, and Jace himself considered the prime suspect in the savage murder. Suddenly he's on the run from both the cops and a killer, and the key to saving himself and his ten-year-old brother is the envelope he still has—which holds a message no one wants delivered: the truth.

In a city fueled by money, celebrity, and sensationalism, the murder of a bottom-feeding mouthpiece like Lenny Lowell won't make the headlines. So when detectives from the LAPD's elite robbery/homicide division show up, homicide detective Kev Parker wants to know why. Parker is on the downhill slide of a once-promising career, and he doesn't want to be reminded that he used to be one of the hotshots, working cases that made instant celebrities of everyone involved. Like the case of fading retty-boy actor Rob Cole, accused of the brutal murder of his wife, Tricia Crowne-Cole, daughter of one of the most powerful men in the city, L.A.'s latest "crime of the century."

Robbery/Homicide has no reason to be looking at a dead small-time scumbag lawyer or chasing a bike messenger...unless there's something in it for them. Maybe Lenny Lowell had a connection to something big enough to be killed for. Parker begins a search for answers that will lead him to a killer—or the end of his career. Because if there's one lesson he's learned over the years, it's that in a town built on fantasy and fame, delivering the truth can be deadly.

I did not think I was going to like this book when I first started it mainly because of our main protagonist Kev Parker, which was a pretty disappointing thought considering I love Hoag's writing. He seemed a lot like Lucas Davenport, a character written by John Sandford that I really did not care for at all. A very over the top egotistical guy. But despite that, I liked the plotline so I kept on reading. The book got a lot better the further I went in the story. A lot of great mystery with a twist that I would never have guessed and it flowed really well. It was a pretty engaging story.

Now for the characters, all I can say is that they definitely will grow on you. Each one with their own little quirks that annoyed the hell out of me, but somehow it ended up that I could relate to them in one way or another. There was quite the mix of characters, from orphans to Chinese fish marketers to bike messengers. All of them were quite unique and well developed. Kev Parker, the main detective, just really bothered me for the first quarter of the book, and then he kind of shifted to a point where I got to see the real him and ended up liking him a lot. So that made me happy. Not all that flawed, but he had that potential. I am sure our Author could right a prequel/sequel to this and bring out all sorts of issues he may have.

I can recommend this to anyone who likes a good mystery, or to anyone who is a Hoag fan and wants a stand alone to read. Well written with plenty of action and excitement.

No comments:

Post a Comment