cover image Summer's Reason

Summer's Reason

Cherokee Paul McDonald. Dutton Books, $19.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-55611-409-0

Jessie Summer is no Travis McGee, but fans of the late, incomparable John D. MacDonald will experience a nostalgic flashback as this McDonald, a former Fort Lauderdale cop (Blue Truth), revisits Fort Lauderdale/Miami venues such as the Bahia Mar Marina in this competent, if overly psychodramatic, police procedural. Spunky Jessie, a beautiful young FLPD detective, is plagued with sexual ambivalence arising from having been raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was ten. When she kills a minor hood caught in an apparent jewel-store robbery, she stumbles into a complex conspiracy involving child pornography and the selling of children into sexual slavery. As the investigation progresses, she suspects the complicity of Jack and Tiffany Eastin, a hedonistic, incestuous brother-sister duo. Confused by her near-seduction at the hands of the treacherous, bisexual Tiffany, Jessie is finally aroused to heterosexual fulfillment by gentle Sgt. Miguel Tirado of the Miami PD. Meanwhile, McDonald's writing, except for a few sentimental excesses, grows ever more sure-handed as political interference, drugs, murder and psychosexual perversion in Florida's steamy, cocaine-rich high-rise mazes keep matters moving toward a satisfying, if ultraviolent conclusion. (Oct.)