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Pepperfish Keys: A Detective Barrett Raines Mystery (Detective Barrett Raines Mysteries)
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Product Description
So says author Darryl Wimberley, and it’s a Florida he knows. He knows, too, that in towns like Pepperfish Keys, there are those who still can’t believe that a black man could rise to a high position in the state police. But Barrett Raines has done it; his father may have been a moneyless fisherman enriching his white employer, but things have changed---a bit.
Sharon Fowler, a local television reporter, isn’t concerned with Barrett’s race---she wouldn’t have cared if he were pink and green. She just wants to use him to get him (and, she hopes, the state’s senator as well) into some kind of blazing trouble that will let her write a prize-wining story.
Senator Baxter Stanton, of course, knows how important it is that the town’s voters consider him “their man” in the upcoming election. There are activities he would like to stay hidden, and his young daughter, whom he can’t harness, is having a fling with a man whom Barrett suspects is dealing with the senator in some kind of illegal business.
But things happen that neither Barrett nor Sharon expected, throwing them into an unlikely alliance. The dead body of the senator’s daughter is discovered behind a water heater in the senator’s mansion. Can Raines pull the threads together---and find out what they mean?
Set along the northwestern coast of Florida's Big Bend, Pepperfish Keys is an amazing addition to this riveting Florida Gulf noir series.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #781488 in Books
- Published on: 2007-07-10
- Released on: 2007-07-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 336 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Special agent Barrett "Bear" Raines has some slippery fish to fry in Wimberly's cleverly constructed fourth procedural (after 2001's Strawman's Hammock), which hinges on the gruesome murder of Beth Ann Stanton, daughter of Florida senator Baxter Stanton. Raines, "a black cop in a white town"—that of Deacon Beach, just north of the Pepperfish Keys—is still smarting from his recent failure to tie the senator's wealth to dirty money. Eddy DeLeon, Beth Ann's boyfriend and a local criminal, becomes a key suspect after his tryst with Beth Ann on the day of the murder comes to light. When Sharon Fowler, an ambitious local TV reporter, offers to help Bear nail DeLeon, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent agrees despite his misgivings. The twisted killer—whose identity is a real shocker—challenges Bear to trust his gut instincts as well as standard investigative procedure. Wimberly is a top-notch writer with command of both his plot and the northwestern Florida coastal setting. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* The investigation into Senator Baxter Stanton's money laundering on behalf of local drug kingpin Eddy DeLeon ends badly for Florida state cop Barrett Raines, who becomes the Judas goat when a judge dismisses the case for lack of credible evidence. Then, when Beth Ann, the senator's daughter, is murdered, Raines improbably catches the case and finds an unexpected ally in television reporter Sharon Fowler, Raines' most virulent critic when he investigated the senator. The fourth "Bear" Raines case ranges from Florida to Los Angeles, and its melodious prose brings the same sense of paradise lost to northwest Florida that James Lee Burke evokes in his Louisiana-set Dave Robicheaux novels. Raines is indeed a bear, both in carriage and in ferocious determination. The senator is publicly grieving, but Raines senses an ambivalence about the senator's desire to see the killer apprehended. It seems the senator's alleged partner, Eddy DeLeon, is the most likely suspect, but if he's apprehended, his motive would link him to the senator and would thereby reconstitute the money-laundering charges. If not now, then very soon, Raines should join Robicheaux, John Sanford's Lucas Davenport, and Robert B. Parker's Spenser at the hard-boiled-hero head table. Lukowsky, Wes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
Customer Reviews
terrific police procedural
Florida Senator Baxter Stanton, running for reelection in the northwestern coast, knows the importance of being a good old boy to the whites, who make up most of the voters in towns like Pepperfish Keys. However, his election chances take an odd spin when his daughter Beth Ann Stanton is found brutally murdered in the family mansion.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special agent Barrett "Bear" Raines investigates the homicide and his first reaction is there is an unproven link between Stanton and criminal Eddy DeLeon, who was also the victim's boyfriend. Raines being "a black cop in a white town" gets little cooperation from anyone associated with the case except local TV reporter Sharon Fowler, who sees the cop and the senator as her ticket to Tallahassee and beyond. She offers to help him nail DeLeon; he accepts though his gut tells him to look elsewhere for the motive.
This is a terrific police procedural that returns to readers a fabulous protagonist who has been away for several years (see A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE, DEADMAN'S BAY and STRAWMAN'S HAMMOCK). The story line is fast-paced and filled with plausible twists that will stun the audience as the prime characters play a sort of cat and mouse game with each of the lead trio wanting to control their tango. Darryl Wimberley provides a superb Florida whodunit in which Bear's fans will want his next engagement soon.
Harriet Klausner
Exciting, exciting, exciting
Pepperfish Keys is set along the northwestern coast of Florida's Big Bend. The area is a little backward in some ways, it seems. Special Agent Barrett Raines, a.k.a., Bear, is the first of very few African-American investigators working for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Bear is not at a good time in his life. His wife Laura Ann who runs a local restaurant is suffering from a depression that she doesn't seem to be able to shake off. Bear and the boys are just trying to keep up a normal family life until Laura recovers.
Sharon Fowler, local newswoman, has had a hey-day with the fact that an investigation run by Agent Raines has been stopped by a local judge. Raines was in the process of investigating Senator Baxter Stanton suddenly increased funds for his election campaign. Bear was receiving information from Taylor Calhoun, a secret source, but Taylor has disappeared.
When Senator Stanton's daughter Beth Ann is found murdered in the Senator's mansion, all kinds of questions seem to surface. Eddy DeLeon, a real skudbag, and a dealer in stolen films as well as other illegal operations, seems to be a big part of the picture.
As the investigation proceeds, Bear finds that he must depend more than he would like on newswoman Sharon Fowler as a source. Dew Drop, Sharon's camera man, is tired of Sharon's overbearing ways and decides he is going to get a piece of the action when Sharon makes her goal of being a New York TV celebrity.
There are several exciting mysteries in this story and Bear has to work his way through them. The story is exciting and the characters are very real. Some you will have sympathy for and some will disgust you but the author pulls it all together to make a great story with just a few surprises at the end. I have missed Wimberley's other books in this series but I do intend to correct that.
Armchair Interviews says: Another good book in this wonderful series.
Good Book
Darryl Wimberley has created a great police procedural novel. Well written and good character development, this book keeps the reader's attnetion throughout. I recommend.
