Stein, Stung - Hardcover

Hal Ackerman

3.18

38 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1440533075 ISBN 13: 9781440533075

Publisher: Tyrus Books, 2012

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Last time it was stolen weed and knockoff designer shampoo. This time it is the seemingly trivial occurrence of a few pilfered honeybee colonies that propel former hippie and merry prankster Harry Stein into the multitrillion-dollar world of the honeybee industry. In the presence of six trillion bees to pollinate millions of acres of almond trees, Stein, who is deathly allergic to bee stings, discovers the natural catastrophe of colony collapse, and a corrupt grab by organized AGROBIZ for all of the available water in Southern California.

In his absence, Harry's daughter Angie and his woman friend Lila's very attractive seventeen-year-old stepson find an elephant tusk that has been carried in to Lila's pool on an underground seepage from the nearby La Brea Tar Pits. When the rest of the skeleton emerges, it turns out not to be the prehistoric mammoth they'd hoped it would be, but a human being who just might have been murdered in the 1920s. The perpetrator of the eighty-year-old murder is still alive and the most powerful man in Los Angeles and will do anything necessary to keep the secret hidden.

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Review:

An Essay by Hal Ackerman

"Four years after the bees are gone, humanity is gone." This was Einstein’s grim prediction and it may be on the verge of coming true. The inexplicable phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder is decimating healthy hives, killing millions of bees; and it is into this world, this subculture of beekeeping people, that Harry Stein is propelled in Stein, Stung, the second of the Harry Stein series of "soft-boiled" murder mysteries. In each of the existing books (Stein, Stung and Stein, Stoned) and in those that will be forthcoming (Stein, Stained is next), Harry Stein is thrust into situations that seem ridiculously trivial at first, cottage industries that are gradually revealed to be multi-billion dollar global enterprises.

Stein himself is a former 60's subversive/merry prankster, now living a tame, gelded life as a divorced single parent of a rebellious teenage daughter, and under the watchful eye of his ex who has imposed the clause into their joint custody agreement forbidding any "activity deleterious to the well-being of the child," which she interprets as his doing anything interesting or dangerous. His daughter is his kryptonite. As fervently (and humorously, of course) as he is committed to restoring the values of the sixties to this horrific world, keeping his daughter in his life is the most important thing for him. Thus he has to limit his activities to the half-weeks when Angie is with his ex-wife. Despite being divorced for ten years, Stein is still her first call in any emergency. Their joint custody arrangements are as gerrymandered as a crooked political district.

As Stein, Stoned began with the seemingly trivial theft of a small crop of weed grown specifically for an AIDS hospice and the even more trivial disappearance of a case of empty designer shampoo bottles, Stein, Stung begins with the theft of a few hives of honeybees and the bubbling up of a mastodon tusk into the hot tub of Stein’s Beverly Hills girlfriend, Lila. As in all the books, the two disparate tales weave their way together in unexpected and provocative ways.

Stein is sent into California’s Central Valley, where 80 per cent of the world’s almonds are grown. It is Valentine’s Day, the beginning of the month-long season when the almond orchards are in bloom and the largest man-made pollination event on the planet takes place. There are not nearly enough local bees to service the needs, and thus trillions (yes, trillions) of bees are shipped in to the valley from all over the country, commercial hive boxes loaded onto flatbed trucks and transported thousands of miles. Stein himself is deathly allergic, having had several gruesome bee sting experiences as a younger man. (Not unlike the Roy Scheider character in Jaws who is afraid of water and has to go after the shark.) At the same time, his daughter and Lila’s gorgeous (and possibly gay) nephew discover that the tusk is not from a mastodon, but a circus elephant, and might be the weapon of an unsolved murder from the 1920s whose perpetrator is still alive, and now the head of the largest financial empire in Los Angeles, and who, at age 95, will not hesitate to kill again to keep his legacy secure. --Hal Ackerman

About the Author:

Hal Ackerman has been on the faculty of the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television for the past twenty-four years and is currently co-chair of the screenwriting program.

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