Wild Instinct - T. Jefferson Parker
I’ve been reading T. Jefferson Parker since the days of Little Saigon and Laguna Heat, so yes – four decades now. And although I’ve never been in California’s Orange County, I sometimes feel as if I know its landscape and people from Jeff’s descriptions – the wild Pacific coast, the tumultuous border with Mexico, the deeply-ingrained Latinx culture. His latest, Wild Instinct, introduced me to a new aspect of the region; its Native heritage. For that, I thank him.
Wild Instinct, like about half Parker’s works, is a police
procedural: when the tale opens, OCSD detective Lew Gale (né Luis Gallego) is
on the hunt for a mountain lion presumed to have killed local real-estate developer
Bennet Tarlow III. But when the ME finds a bullet in Tarlow’s brain, the hunt
turns into a murder investigation. Paired with newly-minted homicide detective
Daniela Mendez, Gale burrows into the workings of OC’s richest family, three
generations of Tarlows, and Bennet III’s biggest project: a five square-mile
city he would call Wildcoast. The usual suspects abound: local NIMBYs, the
small but vocal indigenous communities, and all those politicians with their
hands outstretched.
As is frequently the case in a Parker mystery, there is also
a smidgen of the supernatural nibbling at the edges… and all the while, both
Gale and Mendez have their own dark secrets to keep. None of that will prevent
the two from the hunt.
All that being said, of Parker’s twenty-odd (I think this one makes thirty) novels, Wild Instinct isn’t quite the equal of the Charlie Hood series or, my favorites, the four books featuring Roland Ford. Perhaps it’s the Gale’s and Mendez’s dirty little secrets; perhaps it’s the highly unlikely details of the killer’s motivation (not the reason itself, the physical details). I suspect, however, that Gale and Melendez will be back; and I fully intend to give them a second read.
My thanks to the publisher for access to a galley proof of
Wild Instinct in return for my honest review.
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