The various components of the 11th Jack Liffey novel are so dysfunctional and bewildering that it is almost impossible to summarize the plot. Liffey’s family includes an ex-wife who yearns for him (or someone), a daughter who has just had an abortion after a brief, intense affair with a gang leader, and a girlfriend-op who can’t make up her mind about their relationship. Other characters are even more dysfunctional.
As Gloria, the girlfriend, describes him: “Jack is a piece of work. When you/re with him, it’s always a matter of adapting to the circumstances on some Mars mission, one that’s just about to go totally out of control.”
A “finder” of lost children, Jack is asked by his ex-wife to help a friend locate her missing daughter, called “Blue.” She’s a lovely, talented and smart young woman deep into ecology, the saving of the Palos Verdes Blue butterfly, and helping to feed Mexican illegals, as a result of which she gets mixed up with a bunch of neo-Nazis. As he delves into the investigation, Jack witnesses the changes and disparities in the area among the “haves” and “have-nots,” the rich kids, surfers and “illegals.”
The writing is good and entertaining, but somehow the novel tends to drift from topic to topic, complicated by the introduction of new (and sometimes extraneous) ideas without explanation and the insertion of letters from a few of the characters which are intended to move the story forward, but, instead, tended to slow this reader down. That said, the writing is inventive, and the author’s story-telling abilities shine.
lot of talk out there about “surf noir” but for me this novel clicks in higher than the rest. outstanding.