DEAD SAFE

Prior delivers a taut thriller about corruption and violent criminals in Los Angeles.

The stage is set for this tense and brutal novel from the opening pages: Crime boss Martin Ravian is eager to recover millions recently stolen from a private vault in Beverly Hills. Ravian questions the vault’s co-owner, Urban Lenz, at his home—he and his wife are brutally murdered, and their daughter Lois is raped, shot, and left for dead by Ravian’s men. But Lois survives, making her way to a neighbor’s house; soon, Los Angeles homicide Detective Casey Stafford and his partner Banchet Suwan are on the case. Lois saw more than she realizes, and the perpetrators are determined to clean up loose ends—namely Lois, who is still fighting for her life in the hospital. Stafford and Suwan track down leads, finding they’re up against a crew of violent gangsters as well as powerful figures pulling the strings behind the scenes. Corrupt officials, cartellike enforcers, and career criminals all have a stake in keeping the vault robbery buried. The deeper the detectives dig, the more dangerous the investigation becomes. The body count rises, and Stafford must find Ravian before Ravian finds Lois. Though the narrative is long and at times convoluted, and includes a number of characters who appear and disappear, the action and characters keep the consistently violent story compelling. Even the villains (particularly Ravian) are fully developed, which adds a depth that many books in the crime thriller genre lack. (Commenting on Lenz’s tractability to a henchman, Ravian explains, “He’s not an idiot. But social engineering, Mr. Felan, sometimes works.”) In particular, Prior has created a compelling protagonist in this work, his second Casey Stafford novel. Stafford is intriguingly flawed and heroic, and surely there will be more adventures to follow—let’s hope that Suwan is along for the ride, too. They’re a formidable team, and one readerswill want to see more of.

Violence and intriguing characters abound in this suspenseful sequel.