cover image Royal Flush: A Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Mystery

Royal Flush: A Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Mystery

Shelly Singer. Daniel & Daniel Publishers, $12.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-880284-33-9

Self-effacing PI Jake Samson is understandably nervous about infiltrating the local Marin County neo-Nazi group, the Aryan Command. After all, he is Jewish. In his sixth appearance (after Samson's Deal) with brash boss Rosie Vicente, his sense of decency, keen wit and logical mind do much to carry a slow-moving, muddled narrative. Trying to save a friend's goddaughter from a ruinous romantic entanglement with Royal Subic, a disenchanted neo-Nazi who is too terrified to defect from the group, Jake goes undercover as an aspiring right-wing extremist. He begins by frequenting a skinhead bar. After meeting with some predictably loathsome habitu s--sneering racists, menacing bikers, brooding wannabes--Jake realizes that the group is indeed dangerous and might have murdered Royal's friend, who also had wanted to defect. Conspiracies abound: will the Aryan Command assassinate a talk-show host? Are members of a leftist group responsible for the murder of one of the right-wingers? Is the Aryan Command connected internationally? Are there other infiltrators besides Jake? It is soon impossible to untangle the many, thinly stretched subplots that snake through the novel. To complicate matters, Jake finds himself ambivalently attracted to one of the Command's more attractive members. Could she be an Israeli agent? Some surprising twists, and Jake's sharp-edged humor, help rescue the novel from its incessant and needless convolutions. (Oct.)