Pier 70 was a good place for a murder.
Cry Baby by Gloria White:
"Flooded the engine," Blackie announced when the cop strolled up to the side of the car. He was a sturdy old-timer with gray hair and a pot belly. I'd never seen Blackie do jovial before, especially with a cop, but he'd called it right and did it well. It worked for the cop. It was like watching two grizzly bears bond.
Synopsis: When a friend you haven't seen since high school sticks you with a lunch tab and her two small children then disappears, what do you do?
The sixth and apparently final Ronnie Ventana mystery has her in this very situation, and she does indeed leave the kids with Blackie Cooper's poker club while trying to track down her friend, Annalise, figure out where the kids really belong, terrify a group of mysteriously linked wealthy Bay Area people and possibly cause an international incident.
I put off reading this one for a while because a) last of a series I didn't want to see end and b) plot moppets. But the moppets get very little screen-time, replaced instead by heaping amounts of SF placeporn and the welcome return of Blackie, who is terrible and awesome and I still vote should be played by Joe Penny when these books are eventually filmed. I have faith.
Annalise, of course, is up to no good and embroiled in Argentinian consulary drama, which gives Blackie some fun people to poke with a stick, and while Ronnie waxes a little too nostalgic for my tastes throughout, it's safe to say I am one of the least nostalgic people on the planet so it's probably not overkill for everyone else.
I love White's writing style and the amount of lovely SF in the book, and the plot itself is nicely twisty without tripping over its own feet. I love how stupid Ronnie can be about some things, how impossibly un-self-aware she is, and her entirely platonic relationship with Blackie warms my entirely un-romantic cold heart. She's possibly not the cleverest P.I., but she's definitely one of the hardest-working.
Faintly, through the glass, I heard the distant clang-clang of a cable car, and then, even fainter, sea lions barking over at the pier. I smiled softly to myself, pushed open the door and stepped out into the cool embrace of the sun-drenched San Francisco morning.
The last lines of the book and the series, they're a little schmaltzy, sure, but they worked on my cold and black little heart. Ronnie Ventana, you will be sorely missed.
"Flooded the engine," Blackie announced when the cop strolled up to the side of the car. He was a sturdy old-timer with gray hair and a pot belly. I'd never seen Blackie do jovial before, especially with a cop, but he'd called it right and did it well. It worked for the cop. It was like watching two grizzly bears bond.
Synopsis: When a friend you haven't seen since high school sticks you with a lunch tab and her two small children then disappears, what do you do?
The sixth and apparently final Ronnie Ventana mystery has her in this very situation, and she does indeed leave the kids with Blackie Cooper's poker club while trying to track down her friend, Annalise, figure out where the kids really belong, terrify a group of mysteriously linked wealthy Bay Area people and possibly cause an international incident.
I put off reading this one for a while because a) last of a series I didn't want to see end and b) plot moppets. But the moppets get very little screen-time, replaced instead by heaping amounts of SF placeporn and the welcome return of Blackie, who is terrible and awesome and I still vote should be played by Joe Penny when these books are eventually filmed. I have faith.
Annalise, of course, is up to no good and embroiled in Argentinian consulary drama, which gives Blackie some fun people to poke with a stick, and while Ronnie waxes a little too nostalgic for my tastes throughout, it's safe to say I am one of the least nostalgic people on the planet so it's probably not overkill for everyone else.
I love White's writing style and the amount of lovely SF in the book, and the plot itself is nicely twisty without tripping over its own feet. I love how stupid Ronnie can be about some things, how impossibly un-self-aware she is, and her entirely platonic relationship with Blackie warms my entirely un-romantic cold heart. She's possibly not the cleverest P.I., but she's definitely one of the hardest-working.
Faintly, through the glass, I heard the distant clang-clang of a cable car, and then, even fainter, sea lions barking over at the pier. I smiled softly to myself, pushed open the door and stepped out into the cool embrace of the sun-drenched San Francisco morning.
The last lines of the book and the series, they're a little schmaltzy, sure, but they worked on my cold and black little heart. Ronnie Ventana, you will be sorely missed.