Maybe the first Davie Richards mystery should've been the last...

Pacific Homicide - Patricia Smiley

I happen to be someone who devours mystery-thriller novels, and if you’re going to read somewhere between fifty and 100 of them a year, you tend to have fairly loose standards. I know that not every writer can be Michael Connelly; but I certainly hope that not every writer is Tim Downs, either. My most recent read, sadly, is closer to the latter: that’s why I’m assigning a mere two stars to Pacific Homicide, the first Davie Richards mystery.

Richards, the newest detective of LAPD’s Pacific Division homicide squad, is a second-generation cop. Her dad, however, was unceremoniously drummed out of the department after he shot a teenager and paralyzed him. Unfortunately for Davie, the lawyer who lost the civil case is the newly appointed head of the police oversight board.

Not that this has anything to do with Davie’s current case, which is that of the beautiful teenaged Russian blonde whose mangled body was found in the LA sewer system. The diminutive (of course) but gorgeous (likewise) redhead with a streak of rebellion (I’m seeing a pattern here) will get the job done, though. That’s regardless of her recent officer-involved shooting (duh) while saving the life of the partner with whom she was having a fling (…). Never mind the complication of her ex's sudden reassignment to Davie's division.

You see where I’m getting to, right? Pacific Homicide is so full of tropes that it’s hard not to trip over a new one every page or so. Author Patricia Smiley (back in print seven years after the fourth Tucker Sinclair mystery) definitely didn’t go out on any creative limbs for her police procedural. Even Davie’s domicile is a trope of the female detective subgenre: she lives in a converted garage behind the house of a non-threatening older man: Kinsey Milhone, anyone?

All that derivative prose makes it hard to concentrate on the mystery aspect of Pacific Homicide, but to be truthful it’s not particularly well done, either. While the villain’s identity does come as a surprise, Smiley commits the sin of not providing clues to his identity for her readers to attempt to out-detect the detective. The bad guy’s tipoff? He’s a creep… not that being a creep is actionable in real police work.

There's also an ancillary plot: the aforementioned lawyer bears a grudge against Richards because, after he lost the case against her dad, the foxy mama of the paralyzed kid didn't spread her luscious legs for him. Give us a break, Patty! the guy hasn't managed to get laid in the past fifteen years? and he thinks it's the hero's fault?

Smiley’s pumped out a couple more books in the series, but given the snore-fest I encountered in Pacific Homicide, I’m gonna give ‘em a pass. I’d suggest you do the same.

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