Forget the muted ending and enjoy the ride, which is as cockeyed and riotous as Carl Hiaasen on really good dope.
Take it from Smith (Salty, 2007, etc.): Winning Amsterdam’s coveted Cannabis Cup can be harmful to your health.
Miro Basinas thinks of himself as an underground botanist, with a B.A. from UC Davis, or a gentleman farmer. Once his smooth, mellow Elephant Crush runs away with top honors in Amsterdam, an ambitious entrepreneur named Vincent and his Irish/Salvadoran associate Shamus Noriega start to think of him as competition. California’s Compassion Centers, which Vincent owns and Shamus supplies with medical marijuana, is doing a brisk business they have no intention of sharing. In their haste to steal Vincent’s stash and his prizewinning seeds, drive him out of business and shoot him dead, they don’t care about knocking other pieces off the board. Their depraved indifference poses various threat levels to virginal Mormon elder Daniel Lamb, watercolorist Barry White, fading but sexy singer Aimée LeClerq and Fran, an Emergency Medical Technician who believes firmly in women on top. Several unfortunates are smoked, along with a good deal of primo weed, and everyone inhales. Meantime, Marianna, a Portuguese scientist Miro celebrated his big Amsterdam win by impregnating, jets out to Los Angeles to reunite with the unsuspecting father, wondering anxiously: “Was he stubborn? Would he convert to metric for her?”
Forget the muted ending and enjoy the ride, which is as cockeyed and riotous as Carl Hiaasen on really good dope.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8021-7076-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
A run-of-the-mill mystery that includes some welcome tips on the health benefits of chocolate.
An accountant and her lawyer husband must revisit his high school days in order to solve a murder.
Lee Woodyard is no fan of the scheme her husband, Joe, and her uncle, Hogan Jones, the local police chief, hatch to buy the Bailey house next door and flip it. But even though she’d rather be at her job as business manager at her aunt’s chocolate specialty shop (The Chocolate Bunny Brouhaha, 2016, etc.), she agrees to meet with the plumber for an estimate—a meeting that turns dangerous when plumber Digger Brown finds a bundle of rags in the cellar. When he drops them, a gun hidden in the bundle goes off, sending a bullet whizzing past Lee. No one seems to know where the old fashioned six-shooter came from, but the accident recalls a past incident in which the Sharks, a group of high school boys that included Brad Davis, Chip Brown, Sharpy Brock, Tad Bailey, and Spud Dirk, pulled a prank that could have been deadly. Years ago, when several Sharks pretended as a joke to rob a convenience store in which Brad was working, Brad pulled a real gun and fired but hit nothing more vital than the Frozen Rainbow Machine. Now Brad’s the president of the VanHorn–Davis Foundation, whose charitable donations underwrite many improvements to the Michigan lakeside town of Warner Pier. When Lee accompanies Hogan to the Bailey house to show him where the gun was, they find more than they bargained for—Spud’s corpse in a cupboard. Although Hogan’s the police chief, he must stay out of the investigation because Spud had been competing with him to buy the Bailey house. So Lee, who’d prefer to stick to chocolates, is forced to join Joe in detective work.
A run-of-the-mill mystery that includes some welcome tips on the health benefits of chocolate.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-10000-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Joe’s fifth case is his best balanced, most deeply felt and most mystifying to date: an absolute must.
Crime-fighting Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett outdoes himself during a temporary transfer from sleepy Saddlestring to fashionable Jackson Hole.
Will Jensen, the Jackson game warden, was a great guy and a model warden, but once his wife left him six months ago, he spiraled into madness and suicide, and now Joe’s been called to replace him. The transition is anything but smooth. There’s no question of Joe’s family coming with him, so he’s reduced to hoping he can get a signal for the cell-phone calls he squeezes into his busy schedule. En route to his new posting, Joe has to pursue a marauding grizzly. He arrives to meet a formidable series of challenges. Cantankerous outfitter Smoke Van Horn wants to go on attracting elk with illegal salt licks without the new warden’s interference. Animal Liberation Network activist Pi Stevenson wants him to publicize her cause and adopt a vegan diet. Developer Don Ennis wants to open a housing development for millionaires who like their meat free of additives. Ennis’s trophy wife Stella simply wants Joe—and he wants her back. As he wrestles with these demands, and with a supervisor riled over Joe’s track record of destroying government property in pursuit of bad guys (Trophy Hunt, 2004, etc.), Joe slowly becomes convinced that Will did not kill himself.
Joe’s fifth case is his best balanced, most deeply felt and most mystifying to date: an absolute must.Pub Date: May 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-399-15291-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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