Night Vision: A Jake Lassiter Novel

From Publishers Weekly In contrast to his taut, punchy first novel, To Speak for the Dead , Levine's second is characterized by excess--an outlandish plot, too many characters and too many soggy wisecracks. But the blistering running commentary of hero-lawyer Jake Lassiter on drug dealers, developers and life in murder-a-day Dade County, Fla., plus a horrific denouement, easily makes up for the tale's shortcoming. With his Latin-spouting, bonefishing sidekick, retired coroner Charlie Riggs, the former Miami Dolphins linebacker tracks a serial killer and runs up against political corruption. The killer's first three victims are women who belong to Compu-Mate, an electronic network whose members talk dirty to one another. Jake, dragooned into becoming a special prosecutor, turns for guidance to Pamela Metcalf, an icy British psychiatrist in Miami on a book tour. As the body count mounts, suspicions fall on ambitious state attorney Nick Wolf, with a shadowy past in Vietnam; detective Alejandro Rodriquez; drunken drama professor and failed actor Gerald Prince; and the owners of Compu-Mate, ex-jockey Max Blinderman and his gorgeous spouse, Bobbie. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal The second psychological thriller pairing lawyer Jake Lassiter and retired coroner Charlie Riggs ( To Speak for the Dead , Bantam, 1990).Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter is deputized special prosecutor to investigate the murder of Michelle Diamond, ambitious TV newscaster strangled minutes after she signed off her program detailing the probing questions she planned to ask about her sometime lover D.A. Nick Wolf's role in a suspicious engagement back in Vietnam--and while she's in the middle of a conversation over a computerized sex line. As if Vietnam, the whiff of political corruption, and hi-tech sex weren't enough, evidence in the apartment links the murder to Jack the Ripper, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Tennyson-spouting professor Gerald Prince; and there'll be more murders--as beautiful, remote British serial- killer expert Dr. Pamela Metcalf predicts--involving Wolf's ex-wife, the head of Miami homicide, and the loopy, dangerous couple behind Compu-Mate. Too many subplots and guilty parties--this entry lacks the dazzling tightness of To Speak for the Dead, Jake's brilliant debut last year--but Levine's fiendish ability to create 20 patterns from the same set of clues will have you waiting impatiently for his next. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Read more