MYSTERY

The Player: A Carter Ross Mystery

Minotaur: St. Martin's. Mar. 2014. 328p. ISBN 9781250044082. $25.99; ebk. ISBN 9781466842694. M
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OrangeReviewStarNewark's Eagle-Examiner reporter Carter Ross smells a major story when he meets with a group of African American residents, all getting sick, who live adjacent to an old factory site being cleaned up for new commercial development. But Carter has to shift gears quickly when the slick developer, Vaughn McAlister, is murdered. Carter pauses to consider the timing and to wonder why the police appear disinterested, and then he forges ahead in pushy journalistic fashion. In quick order he comes up short against a sleazy lawyer, a well-known crime family, and details about Vaughn's checkered history. Both Tommy Hernandez, Carter's gay colleague and series staple, and the paper's latest hapless intern are deep into the chase with Carter at this point. Expect a complicated, thrilling ending with a splash of mayhem.
VERDICT Parks, a gifted storyteller (with shades of Mark Twain, or maybe Dave Barry), shows his mastery of the comic absurd behind serious journalism in his fifth outing (after The Good Cop).
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