cover image The Devils of Bakersfield: A Jack Liffey Mystery

The Devils of Bakersfield: A Jack Liffey Mystery

John Shannon, . . Pegasus, $25 (318pp) ISBN 978-1-933648-29-3

In Shannon’s searing 10th novel to feature Jack Liffey (after 2007’s The Dark Streets ), Jack and his pregnant teenage daughter, Maeve, run into trouble in Bakersfield, Calif., after stopping there for the night on their way home to Los Angeles. When a sleepless Maeve leaves their motel for a walk, she’s falsely arrested for dope possession and jailed for a short time with Toxie, a rebellious teen with whom she discovers she shares a passion for Jane Eyre . Worried about Toxie, Maeve later returns from L.A. to Bakersfield, where Dennis Kohlmeyer, the paranoid pastor of the 10,000-member Olive Grove Evangelical Church, has incited his flock to hysteria against “devil worshippers.” Scenes of book burning, exorcism, wholesale jailings and worse may strike some as exaggerated, but Shannon cites actual examples of Bakersfield’s long history of racial and social prejudice throughout. The plot-driven action builds to an either/or ending on which readers are invited to vote on the author’s Web site. (Apr.)