Missing Persons

August 1, 2017

Buddy Steel reluctantly returns to Freedom, CA, when his father, Burton Steel Sr., is diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease. Buddy had built a satisfying life for himself as an LAPD homicide detective. Now Burton, the county sheriff, wants him home, so he can teach him the ropes. But Buddy's first case involving the missing wife of a charismatic preacher is trouble. A run-in with Rev. Barry Long Jr.'s staff and brother reveals that this is more than a missing-persons case. Buddy's investigation stirs up political tension, but he's determined to clean up the town. VERDICT Brandman, the author of three "Jesse Stone" mysteries based on a Robert B. Parker series sleuth and a coproducer with Tom Selleck of nine Jesse Stone TV movies, takes a cinematic approach in this laconic debut. Fans of Parker's work will appreciate Buddy, another irreverent, complex lawman.--LH

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2017
Movie producer/Robert B. Parker ghostwriter Brandman, lately spotted mostly in Paradise, Massachusetts, moves his base of operations to Freedom, California, in this series kickoff.Some people might think Rosalita Gonzalez has a sweet gig as the nanny to Barry Long III, the 5-year-old son of the Rev. Barry Long Jr., The People's Pastor. But Ms. Gonzalez makes it clear to Burton Steele Jr., Chief Deputy Sheriff of San Remo County, that she's not going back to the Long compound. Mary Catharine Morecombe Long, the pastor's wife, has been missing for a week, and the nanny is sure something very fishy is going on. When Buddy, who got his nickname to distinguish him from Burton Steele Sr., the sheriff who recruited his son from the LAPD when the old man was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, rides out to the Long place, the chilly, unresponsive reception he gets does nothing to allay his suspicions. Soon enough he's shopping among local judges for a search warrant he executes while Long and his brother, Hickham, are out. Although the main evidence he finds--three neatly maintained basement cells--isn't enough to keep DA Michael Lytell or Murray Kornbluth, the Long family's hydra-headed lawyer, off his back as he pursues the case, Buddy has a priceless advantage over his adversaries: an imperturbable megadose of attitude he clearly picked up from Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone (Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do, 2013, etc.). Buddy's laconic self-confidence powers him past a triple homicide that's treated so casually two of the victims don't even have names and into bed with runaway Long sister Maggie de Winter, whose warning that she's no good barely registers. As they're hauled off to jail, the screamingly obvious villains are still asking how likely it is that they really would have acted as they're charged with doing, and you have to admit that they have a point.

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August 1, 2017
Hollywood writer-producer Brandman is one of the writers anointed by the estate of Robert B. Parker to continue the legendary author's Jesse Stone novels. After three of them, he's turning now to his own stand-alone, a cop novel featuring LAPD homicide detective Buddy Steel. For good or ill, the book is haunted by the ghost of the late master. There's Parker's sense that criminal behavior is often a product of family pathology. Here it's a televangelist group, pompadored con men operating in Buddy's old hometown, a gilded community north of Los Angeles. When things go wrong, they turn on each other, then wreak vengeance on another con man, who fleeced them. That's where Buddy comes in, and as he banters with everybody, echoes of the Hawk-Spenser exchanges fly about. Sometimes they're funny; sometimes one wonders how to take lines like, to further fuel his perfidy. Ironic? Trying too hard? Most readers will relish this straight-ahead cop procedural, complete with an assassination attempt and a biker gang's money-laundering scheme, and will either enjoy or ignore the self-conscious pseudo-Parkerisms.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

July 17, 2017
LAPD homicide detective Burton “Buddy” Steel, the narrator of this highly readable if shallow series launch from Brandman (Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues and two other Jesse Stone novels), moves back to the small town of Freedom, Calif., to work as a deputy sheriff after his sheriff father is diagnosed with ALS. Buddy’s first case involves the town’s celebrity, TV preacher Barry Long Jr., whose wife seems to be missing and whose money has also apparently vanished. Barry’s sister, Maggie, who’s “statuesque and leggy, narrow and lithe with proper curves in all the right places,” plays the femme fatale role. Buddy faces the occasional bit of danger (he essentially shrugs off a shoulder shot from a hollow point fired from a .357 magnum), but a distinct lack of betrayals or even significant plot twists, and no examination of Buddy’s strained relationship with his father, make this book too straightforward an exercise in contemporary noir.