In Deep - Hardcover

Jones, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517582058 ISBN 13: 9780517582053

Publisher: Crown, 1991

Synopsis

Detective Sergeant Eustes Tully, a beleaguered, middle-aged cop, begins an investigation when a suspected serial killer duplicates his first murder, but his own department could hamper his efforts. Reprint.

About this title

Reviews

Frequently intriguing but ultimately disappointing, this first novel opens with the discovery of a woman's nude, sexually mutilated body on a Southern California beach. Ace homicide detective Eustes Tully is assigned to the case. Meanwhile, aboard a ship somewhere at sea, a character named Mother views photos of the murder supplied by a man identified as Sonny. Then the focus returns to the middle-aged Tully, who has something of a mother fixation. So does South American drug kingpin Santiago Diaz, introduced in a second story line; he is linked to ex-cop and failed insurance investigator Mitch Spencer. After a second murder victim is found, Tully is unexpectedly switched to the investigation of Diaz's drug operation, where he meets up with Spencer, an old pal from police academy days. Tully makes extraordinarily exact deductions about the killer's motivations, based on knowledge and evidence that do not warrant his accuracy. Meanwhile coincidences pile up and plots intersect, yielding a tangle of confusion not even the particularly nice twist at the end can unravel.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Debut thriller about a serial killer on Santa Barbara's Laredo Beach. Jones's is a stylelessly routine crime novel featuring a pleasant if not very snappy hero. Female bodies are turning up on Laredo Beach and Detective Eustes Tully (a nameplay--for no clear reason--on The New Yorker's emblematic Eustace Tilly) discovers that the victims have had their vaginas savaged by a policeman's nightstick studded with nails. The victims also were divorced or separated mothers and are clothed in Fifties swimgear and have been given dark glasses. With these clues to go on, Tully--who is unmarried, going to fat, and something of a neuter--hopes to crack the case and get a promotion. He's known for his brilliant ``lateral thinking,'' but as the case heats up, Tully is yanked from Homicide, temporarily reassigned to Narcotics, and his big murder case is given to dumbbell Detective Brumeister, who detests Tully and wants the promotion himself. Why did Captain Sparrs make this switch? Do the murders have something to do with Tully's new job, to nail Medell¡n drug-cartel kingpin Santiago Dias, whose yacht is now moored at a Santa Monica dock? How can Tully get on board and investigate? Well, he runs into Mitch Spencer, an ex-cop recently fired as an insurance investigator, now separated from his pregnant wife and first child, who is a guest on the Dias yacht. It's Mitch who is ``in deep'' and who's Tully's reverse image. Mitch has been hired by Dias to keep an eye on yacht guest Claire Greely, wife of an impotent multimillionaire, but not only has Mitch fallen for her, he's also being set up by Dias to take the fall in the beach murders. So, is Dias, who has rich Oedipal problems, the murderer? The working out of all of this is quite forced and unbelievable and may alienate otherwise sympathetic readers. Not a flop but too heavy on the filler dialogue. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Screenwriter Jones cranks up this episodic, dramatized plot of grisly murder with the discovery of a mutilated woman's body on a Santa Barbara beach. The reader already knows that a psychopath has murdered--apparently with his mother's connivance--so several likely mother/son subplots quickly emerge. Coincidence and contrivance move the subplots along until they ultimately coalesce on the yacht of a dashing Colombian drug dealer. Mildly scarifying and swift moving if somewhat exaggerated, this will provide entertainment for the undemanding.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0517582058
• ISBN 13: 9780517582053
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 306