Ed Eagle continues to contend with his ex-wife, Barbara Eagle Keeler, in Woods's less than topnotch fourth thriller to feature the Santa Fe lawyer (after Santa Fe Dead). Keeler, who's incarcerated in Mexico's El Diablo Prison for Women, contrives to escape and return to the U.S. to finish off Eagle. Meanwhile, CIA agent Holly Barker, another Woods series lead, goes after renegade CIA agent Teddy Fay. Fay, who escaped Barker in Hothouse Orchid, wants to stay in Santa Fe, and figures that Todd Bacon, the young CIA agent dispatched to trace him, isn't a serious problem. In a third plot line, Eagle manages to free client Tip Hanks, a pro golfer suspected of murdering his wife, but Hanks will soon face other problems. With the bad guys at least as clever as the good guys and often more ruthless, the outcome is uncertain. Though not at his best, Woods provides plenty of not overly graphic sex and enough absurd contrivances for a slapstick comedy. (Sept.)
Stuart Woods loves to alternate the time each of his characters spends in the spotlight. In SANTA FE EDGE, the heroes are P.I. Cupie Dalton and a scary Apache Indian named Vittorio. They are easily the most fully realized characters in the book even though it’s pitched as “an Ed Eagle adventure.” Michael Kramer keeps the story rolling with his pitch-perfect interpretations of the many characters. He makes Cupie sound like he just stepped out of a 1940s black-and-white thriller. And Kramer’s voice has enough “edge” to keep listeners riveted as the detectives once again try to keep Eagle’s homicidal ex-wife from killing him. There are too many subplots, but they’re nicely woven into the cloth of the main story. M.S. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
Santa Fe attorney Ed Eagle's murderous ex-wife and assorted lesser satellites continue to hatch plots at cross-purposes, all as inconclusively as ever.
In the nine weeks since she was sent to a Mexican prison for attempted murder (Santa Fe Dead, 2008), Barbara Eagle Keeler hasn't been wasting her time. She's been using the episodes of rape by Warden Pedro Alvarez to gather information that will help her escape and work more havoc back in the United States. Assisted more directly by James Long, the film producer who's not only her lover but the prospective colleague of Ed's new wife Susannah Wilde, she hatches a plan to kill Ed and his bride. When they get a whiff of Barbara's escape despite Alvarez's insistence that she was merely transferred to another prison, Ed's longtime private eyes, Cupie Dalton and Vittorio, decide that their best defense against her is a good offense. Not enough malfeasance for you? Soon after Ed gets the murder charges against his latest client, golf pro Tip Hanks, dismissed, Tip takes on a new personal assistant, Dolly Parks, who just happens to be the serial embezzler who killed Tip's wife. Meanwhile, Todd Bacon, the CIA's station chief in Panama, is hot in pursuit of Teddy Fay, the CIA agent turned assassin who's eluded every attempt made to catch him. None of this violent, weightless intrigue goes anywhere, of course, but the dialogue, reeking with obtuse self-assurance, is full of guilty pleasures, from Ed's admonition to Susannah ("If you keep on shooting people we're going to end up in court") to Barbara's prayer entreating a disputed legacy from the Almighty ("If you'll let me have this money, I'll never kill anybody again, not even Ed Eagle!").
In retrospect, Woods's endless rounds of dead-end scheming find an uncanny echo in contemporary reality TV. Think of this as one more installment in The Real Sexed-Up Felons of Santa Fe, with all the pleasures and limitations that title implies.
