Sunday, September 25, 2011

The Blood-Red Indian Summer-David Handler

The Blood-Red Indian Summer


David Handler

Minotaur, Oct 11 2011, $24.99

ISBN: 9780312648350



The NFL suspends volatile New York superstar linebacker Tyrone "Da Beast" Grantham for the season due to his off the field “beasted” assaults that are detrimental to the league’s image. Da Beast takes his six children from five women and his fawning horde from the Big Apple to a mansion in Dorset, Connecticut.



However, his idyllic time out of the limelight to allow civil suits against him to be settled and maybe get him reinstated ends when his teenage sister-in-law Kinitra a popular singer is rescued from certain drowning by neighbor scrawny Jewish-American film critic Mitch Berger and his moving parents on the Gold Coast; she is bloodied and battered. The cops suspect Da Beast who has a reputation for Beasted behavior. Even his pregnant wife Jamella, sister to the victim, believes her spouse battered her sibling. As the media drives north from New York to invade Dorset, two of the linebacker’s biggest critics are executed. Berger’s lover six-foot plus African-American Connecticut state trooper Desiree "Des" Mitry leads the investigation assisted by her depressed dad the Deacon recovering from heart surgery and Mitch.



The latest Des-Mitch investigation (see The Shimmering Blond Sister) is a great whodunit that combines a strong inquiry with human interest. Besides the well written whodunit, there is Da Beast’s legacy mindful of NFL stars' legal problems, another neighbor turning into a demented voyeur, and the tsuris the parents of the lead protagonists face as age is catching up to them. Readers will enjoy this engaging Connecticut murder mystery as David Handler provides a super combo of sports headline news with personal problems inside of an attempted murder and homicide investigation.



Harriet Klausner

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