Synopsis
Private detective Mario Balzic, whose heart is acting up, returns to investigate the disappearance of guns from a local shop and finds himself confronted with a number of dangerous and powerful suspects, including a local politician and a police chief
Reviews
In the bleak, industrial no-man's-land of central Pennsylvania sits Rocksburg, the town Constantine has put to such good use in his Mario Balzic and other mysteries (Brushback, etc.). Now, retired police chief Balzic, conscientious and cranky, is hired by an insurance lawyer to investigate a claimed loss of 40-plus handguns and 30,000 rounds of ammunition stolen from a firearms company. Bored with retirement, trying to ignore his wife's suggestions that he exercise more and they move to Florida, the self-described "old geezer" eagerly takes the job. Of course, what he uncovers is more complicated and corrupt than a simple heist. As is typical of Constantine's dark, gritty novels, the pitch-perfect dialogue carries a zigzag plot, full of idiosyncratic characters, that is beautifully developed and enigmatically resolved. Balzic's warm, often combative relationship with his wife intensifies when he suffers a "coronary event" and must face his fear of death and his guilt over unresolved cases. To compensate, he reads books by Dean Ornish, Herbert Benson and Robert Sarno given to him by his daughter, eats more veggies and practices yoga and meditation. But what really takes his mind off the "blood mud" clogging his arteries is his need to see justice served. Constantine rarely falters as he again scrutinizes a dying small town where politicians, cops and crooks divide up the diminishing spoils, and where people are still judged by their ethnic background. Balzic, meanwhile, continues to age ungracefully, cursing his deteriorating physique, hearing and memory in some very funny scenes that nearly relieve the darker doings elsewhere.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Mario Balzic, chief emeritus of the Rocksburg (Pa.) PD, likes keeping his investigative hand in, especially when there's a fat fee involvedsuch as the $50 an hour offered by lawyer Panagios Valcanas to check out a gun-shop burglary that might also be a scam involving the insurance company that Valcanas represents. Mario sets about the sleuthing in his characteristic waybrilliance disguised as ploddingwhen suddenly the bad thing hits him: a ``coronary incident,'' as he's told at Conemaugh General when he comes to after passing out on the steps of the state police barracks. Not to worry, though, his doctor reassures him, explaining about the tiny drill that will dissolve the ``blood mud'' clogging a Balzic artery. But Mario worries, all right. This quondam tower of strength, who has faced down his share of dangerous enemies, now finds himself terrified, stalked by irrationality, struggling just to get out of his house. But, emotionally off-balance as he is, he's still Mario Balzic. ``Life is movement,'' he says grimly, wrenching himself into action. The burglary, he discovers, does have ramifications. Not just a small-time hustle, it's connected to gangsterism, murder, official cover-up, and police chicanery, which of all public misbehavior is the likeliest to energize the straight-arrow Mario. Rising above a variety of obstacleshis own vulnerabilities among themhe solves the crime, but the punishment that follows is, at the very least, ill-fitting. This is Constantine at the top of his world-class game (Brushback, 1998, etc.), with dialogue to cherish as his hero contends with two intricate casesthe mystery behind a robbery-murder and the even more complex mystery of Mario Balzic. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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