In Flora’s middling third Joe Burgess mystery (after 2008’s The Angel of Knowlton Park), the Portland, Maine, homicide detective investigates the suspicious death of a troubled friend, Reginald Libby (aka Reggie the Can Man), whose body two young boys find near a wharf. Reggie, who was a former classmate of Burgess and a comrade in Vietnam, never fully recovered from the war. Survivors with possible clues to his fate include Reggie’s bitter ex-wife, Claire; his spoiled and abusive son, Joey; and his addled lover, Maura O’Brien. Threatening letters from Reggie’s weird cousin, Star Goodall, and hints of a part-time factory job Reggie was secretive about give Burgess more to ponder. Flora, besides belaboring the public’s poor understanding and opinion of cops, adds much extraneous drama (e.g., an almost grown son the father is unaware of) that weakens an already angst-filled story. (Feb.)
Det. Joe Burgess of Portland, ME, struggles with Vietnam War memories when his latest case involves a dead vet. The third entry (after The Angel of Knowlton Park) in a gritty procedural series that has received starred LJ reviews. [See Prepub Alert, 11/11/11.]
The discovery of a drowned corpse takes Portland's Det. Sgt. Joe Burgess deep into the past he shared with the victim. Reginald Libby had fallen a long way since his glory days as a high-school athlete. First came Vietnam, then PTSD, then a doomed marriage to Claire Fontaine, the social-work student who took their son Joey and left him when she couldn't rescue him. In more recent years Joe's former teammate and comrade-in-arms has been known as Reggie the Can Man for the scavenging habits that helped give him subsistence. Now, however, there's a rumor that he had another job, working for someone who owned a truck with an unidentifiable logo. Although Reggie was almost homeless—his most predictable domestic routine was meeting Maura O'Brien every Friday for sex—he wasn't property-less, and everyone from self-identified witch Star Goodall to predatory developer Charlie Hazen seems to have been interested in his parcel of land. So maybe it's no wonder that someone drowned him in a bathtub and then tried to make his death look like an accident, which Portland Police Chief Paul Cote is only too ready to accept. As he battles to keep his nurse lover Chris at arm's length long enough to peer deeply and painfully into his old friend's sad life, Joe (The Angel of Knowlton Park, 2008, etc.) is unaware that a shocking surprise is about to erupt in his own domestic affairs—one that will give him a great deal more empathy with Reggie, even if it doesn't make this tangled case any easier to unravel. A sensitive, earnest and densely plotted tale in which pretty much everyone ends up being guilty of something.
