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Adam Murphy wants to be a serious journalist. Unfortunately, he spends his days writing copy about underwear and abs for a gay lifestyle magazine. When a troubled young porn star brings him a tip about a recently deceased marine's secret visit to an infamous pimp for underage boys, Adam is determined to break the story...until someone starts threatening his life.Undeterred, Adam begins to unravel a deadly conspiracy involving runaway sugar daddies, salacious A-list parties, and three handsome young men who have vanished without a trace. Now he must enter the seedy underbelly of LA to find the truth behind their disappearance, as well as the disappearance of his ex-lover, Corey--who may have some deadly secrets of his own.In this supercharged modern noir tale of sex, drugs, and revenge from New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice, getting to the bottom of a scandalous story can be dangerous...if not downright fatal.… (more)
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Adam, the hero, quits drinking (finally) and starts to unriddle the mysteries about his
This really is an interesting read for a lazy Sunday (or every other day) and Rice knows who to build up tension. The only thing I hated were those odd and silly comparisons that probably were supposed to be literary and witty. Believe me, they are not! So, the lights on a boat just don't appear as if they just came from a Rembrandt painting... How far fetched is this.... ???
But if you manage to leave out those little diversions and some superfluous descriptions, you will have a hell of a good time with this mystery story. I'm looking forward to read his next story.
On a scale of 1 to 10, a 8.5.
The New Orleans connection and the nutjob mother are both still there. Maybe in the next book, we can do without those? Maybe? Please?
It's
Children are dying so other people can party.
The protagonist sets out, with his mentor, a gruff (and straight) middle aged author of hardboiled detective novels, to find missing men, missing boys and expose a shocking secret involving a very wealthy man.
His author friend is really quite amusing, a great foil for the narrator.
The further into the plot you get, the more disturbing it becomes.
Readers also get to watch the protagonist morph from a self indulgent, drunken loser to an independent, mature man who is able to care for someone even more helpless.
Once again, Rice slips in a tiny bit of his knowledge of art history toward the end (watch for it, it's subtle this time).
I will say however, that the plot is extremely convoluted and requires your total concentration to be able to keep up with it. I've read this book twice and I'm still not sure I totally understand everything that happened.
Christopher
The writing itself is great, per usual, despite a tendency for characters to wander off and disappear for hundreds of pages at a time before wandering back in because they're suddenly important. The story of the woman searching for the cause of her mother's murder disappeared for so long that I forgot about it until suddenly the story jerks over to a convenience store somewhere far away from the bars and mansions of West Hollywood. Gay porn star Nathan gets Adam started on his horrific journey down the rabbit hole only to disappear until he's strategically needed 150 pages later. Perhaps it was due simply to the large number of characters that had a pivotal moment within the complex mystery that they couldn't all be featured regularly, but I still found myself looking back to remember who certain people were with they randomly reappeared.
Once the two apparently convergent story lines merged, the story flew by. Caroline and Adam are perfect foils of each other, her violence and aggression balancing out his fear and morbid curiosity. The outcome wasn't completely predictable, due to the culprit's motive more than his actions.
I was just left a little disappointed because Christopher Rice has written books that are still ingrained in my memory years later, and I don't think this one will be well remembered in a few months.
I was a little wary of Christopher Rice, thinking maybe there was more hype than substance here, and when I started reading it seemed my impressions were confirmed, I could see no direction or reason, just dead ends. But then it all started to come together, and soon we were involved in an intricate and perplexing plot that gradually drew all these loose ends together. Adam proved to be a plucky, intrepid and likeable investigator, ready to reassess his interpretation of the facts as they unwound and at times proved his early deductions false - as they frequently did. So too I must reassess my view of the author, I really enjoyed this, finding it involving on more than one level; I definitely will be reading more of Christopher Rice.