Wasteland

In the often corrupt world of California real estate, Will Dunbar finds himself framed for the murder of a publicly unfriendly colleague and resolves to determine who set him up. By the author of City of Lies.

The illegal maneuverings of an L.A. real estate company supply the prime motivation for this above-average murder mystery. Will Dunbar, a PR hack and influence peddler for Clem Real Estate, learns that his wife is having an affair with the firm's geologist. In short order, the man is killed and Will is charged with murder. At stake in the frame-up is the multimillion dollar fee the firm will gain if it can sell the city the lease to an environmentally suspect landfill site. Once past the stilted groundwork that details Will's rocky marriage, screenwriter McCabe ( City of Lies ) exhibits some deft thriller moves and the story becomes a page-turner. L.A.'s burned-out atmosphere is well portrayed, the courtroom writing is briskly paced and the suspense continues beyond Will's murder trial. Despite the deus ex machina intervention of an old flame of Will's and a slightly overexplained resolution, McCabe's tale suggests he is likely to make a mark in crime fiction.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

One ill-fated evening Will Dunbar, lobbyist and bagman for L.A. developer John Clem, punches Sam Gilmore, site manager for Clem's new Pike Mountain trash-disposal project, after catching Sam sharing a private moment with Caroline Dunbar; the next evening, accepting Gilmore's invitation to talk things over at his house, Will stumbles over his body. The cops, who can't find any evidence of the intruder Will saw fleeing, are convinced he's the perp; during the months it takes the case to come to trial--months during which Will alternates between twisting slowly in the wind and digging himself into a deeper hole--the D.A.'s office sews him up even more tightly, with help from a bulldog reporter who says Sam had leaked info to him about Will's payoffs to local politicos. Will seems destined for a long stretch up the river--until the state's case explodes with a bang that frees Will to hunt down the killer who framed him. Too many twists saved for the last fifty pages, maybe, but McCabe (City of Lies, 1993, etc.) juggles the clich‚s of the genre with a dexterity that'll have you gasping with excitement and grudging admiration. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

For eight years, Will Dunbar works for John Clem, using skills of persuasion and money to grease the wheels of Clem's many land developments. His latest, a waste dump, is about to get the go-ahead when Will jeopardizes it by publicly punching out the site geologist, Sam Gilmore, when Gilmore makes a pass at Will's wife. The next night, Will goes to Gilmore's house to talk things over but finds him shot dead. Will is charged with murder but acquitted when a witness commits perjury. Nevertheless, he must ferret out the truth to clear his name. McCabe ( City of Lies , LJ 1/93) lingers too long over Will's pretrial angst, but once the trial starts, the story takes off. Although there are too few suspects, the real murderer remains a secret until the end. Recommended for large mystery collections.
- M.J. Simmons, Duluth P.L., Minn .
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fascinating characters enmeshed in political and personal corruption, big money real-estate scams, and murder combine to produce an excellent crime novel. We follow the action through the eyes of protagonist Will Dunbar, a "fixer" for a high-end real-estate mogul. The death of a geologist in a highly speculative land-fill project puts Dunbar in the hot seat as the prime suspect. Arrested and acquitted for the crime because of perjury on the part of his wife, Dunbar resolves to uncover the true identity of the murderer. His risky venture puts him in the sights of a clever and resourceful killer. McCabe makes effective use of first-person narrative to evoke the flavor of a classic hard-boiled detective yarn, and overall, his characterization is subtle and entirely convincing. Subtle twists and turns of the plot make this a satisfying read from beginning to end. Elliott Swanson