Trigger Point (Crazy 8 Press)
by Russ Colchamiro
This book is a wild ride through the underbelly and high-tech sides of a far-future metropolis and society. Angela Hardwike is an independent private eye, down on her luck and on probation after a wrongful death that happened on her watch–a death that saddles her with guilt. She working off her sentence by being a PI for a law enforcement officer that leaves her very little time to make enough money to survive and is now doing one case for him then one case for herself to make ends meet. She has to take what she can get, and unfortunately that’s working for a nasty pimp whose women are getting stalked and killed. This is the underbelly side of the story.
Her detective work also leaves her little time or energy for an ex and their son who are both “Patches”: a group of gifted people who can sense rents in the fabric of the universe and mend them. A visit to her ex and son ends abruptly as the Patches find things that might destroy the universe and cut her off from access to their headquarters and son. This, and a rogue amputee ex-Patch, are the high tech side.
Her most pressing issue, however, is that her former trainee and partner in the PI business has gone missing. Oh, and let’s not forget her constant recurring nightmares that make no sense but involve messages from her missing partner and excruciating headaches, how she’s asked one-too-many favors of her few friends, and that the murderer who was after the pimp’s women is now after her.
It all ties together in unexpected ways in a great whodunit mystery that sought to find out not only who was killing the women but who was intentionally tearing space-time. Can they stop these people, rescue her partner, and stay alive?
To be honest, the language, the threats, and the situations involving the pimp were very distasteful, but the wonderful mystery pulled me right along. Also, I was occasionally thrown out of the story by beautiful descriptors to admire (this is good!). The grande finale was worthy of The Dresden Files on a particularly good day.
–Wendy S. Delmater
