Bluetick Revenge
Pepper Keane was a founding member of the law firm Keane, Simms & Mercante. Although he’s left the firm, he occasionally ghost writes a few briefs for his friend and partner, Matt Simms and does some legwork for the firm.
After dog napping a prize coonhound for one of Matt’s clients, Pepper becomes the client’s bodyguard. He’s trying to protect her before she can enter the Witness Protection Program. Her life is on the line because she’s giving testimony to the FBI about her ex-boyfriend, the head of vicious biker gang. The kicker is that she won’t cooperate until she’s reunited with Prince. Never separate a woman and her dog. Along the way he gets more involved with a drug dealing biker gang than he wants to, and continues to try to solve his cousin’s death. When not dealing with those items on his agenda, Pepper struggles with the idea of starting a family with his girlfriend, and assists in raising his nephew.
When things get crunchy, he relies on his best friend, an unemployed astrophysicist who happens to be a martial arts expert and excellent shot.
This sound slick, and sometimes it reads that way too. After all, how many unemployed astrophysicists is there that can kick butt? And have a convenient arsenal in their basement.
The dynamic between Pepper and Scott, his unemployed bud contain the same dynamics of another famous private eye and his partner; Spenser and Hawk. However, Scott is monogamous and is as prone to quips as Pepper.
While throwaway lines abound; some genuinely funny and some that make you cringe, these flaws are minor annoyances. Cohen does craft a well honed mystery. He writes about Colorado with an abiding love for it and its denizens. Slipped into the pages are quiet rants about the “mallification” of the state. The rants don’t deter from the story, but add a depth to it, buy allowing the state and its state of being to become part of the story. Don’t forget that when “progress” comes knocking, unsavory characters often ride on its coattails.
The heart of this novel is about ties; familial, associative, the abundance and lack of them in life. One’s life is just as often shaped by the others that people it, as by the ones we never know. Sometimes you can out run your past, you can reinvent yourself and become better. But, no matter what you do, you always take yourself with you on that journey.
Believably sleazy people and well-intentioned ones proliferate within these pages. All characters, even the guys in the white hats are not monochromatic. Cohen understands people, their motivations and their fears. No one in Bluetick Revenge is a stereotype; that in itself is refreshing. There is only one character, a therapist who is gorgeous. And she is deemed by some other characters as “high maintenance.” No one has rippling muscles; no one is exceptionally good looking.
This is refreshing. How many times have you picked up a murder mystery lately and everyone, even the bad guys are too damn fabulous for words. Okay, there’s one character that has brains, brawn and a closet full of technological gadgets, but he’s kept on a short leash by his girl friend.
Bluetick Revenge is part travelogue on Colorado’s lesser known spots, part character study, and of course murder and the rationalizations behind them. Rarely gory and not graphically so, any violence in the plot part of the characterization of its players and not a gratuitous ploy to titillate the reader.
There’s some sadness and regret that seems to be the common denominator for every one who lives within those pages. It’s a weariness of seeing too much and unfortunately having the coping skills to deal with them, yet not shake them off.
Bluetick is the second of the Pepper Keane mystery series. Not having read the first one, didn’t leave a gaping hole in the motivations or back story of the ensemble.
One of the worst sins a mystery, or any other type of novel can commit is not to explain the “why.” There are nemesis’s, but what makes them is sometimes never explained. Cohen, with a few nimble words gives you a peak into the “why” of what people do. You may not agree with their choices, but at least, as a reader you do understand their allegiances and actions.
Cohen, at heart is a story-teller. Not just of mysteries, but the human condition. The words he plays with flow smoothly down the page, creating evocative images of Colorado in winter, of people trying to do the right thing, of people getting through another day. When he speaks of Colorado, he is lyrical.
We can only hope that Cohen continues not only to let this series grow, but to try his hand at another genre. When he plays with words, he makes them sing.
by Mark Cohen
