Your unlikely hero is Zack Walker, a former sci-fi author turned newspaper man.  Zack isn’t the brightest crayon in the box and seems to wander into trouble more often than not.  At some point in his previous books, Zack has befriended suburban dominatrix Trixie Snelling, who suddenly has more things on her plate than who to whip next.  Zack, though he makes a lighthearted effort to stay out of it, gets dragged into Trixie’s crisis.  He eventually lands, handcuffed, in her basement next to a dead man.  Naturally, the dead man is someone with whom Zack has had some problems, and the police are inclined to think Zack and/or Trixie are involved.  This sends Zack into a fact-finding mission to discover what about Trixie’s past is bringing murder to her home.

Turns out, Trixie is only one of many names in this lady’s past, and that past is strewn with heartache and bodies. Actually, the flashbacks into Trixie/Miranda/Candace’s life are the most interesting parts of the book.  And, since we have those flashbacks, reading about Zack’s efforts to uncover Trixie’s past is pretty dull.  That’s the “mystery” too.  There are a few little subplots.  For instance, Sarah, Zack’s wife, isn’t all that thrilled that he is not only in trouble again, but he’s hanging out with someone a step up from being a prostitute.  Also, Zack’s gotten in bad with the Eastern European restaurant faction (is there such a thing?), so he’s got a refrigerator of a woman and her linebacker daughters after him in addition to the guy that Trixie screwed over back in the day.

It can certainly be said that reading about a guy who has every day problems and isn’t a butt-kicking James Bond clone is nice.  Zack’s his career issues and his interactions with his family and coworkers lend an air of realism to an otherwise off-the-wall tale.  The writing is witty, even though the rather odd plot struggles.  The first chapter intrigues, which is good because it takes another 150 pages to dig into the meat of the story.  Readers who dislike strong language may be put off by the profanity.  At one point, it is even remarked that Zack and Sarah let their son’s swearing get out of hand.  Personally, I thought the son, Paul, and Zack’s wife were the most colorful characters in a book that, given its plotlines, should have been full of them.  Even Trixie, with her s-and-m business and shadowy past, is pale.  

Suffice it to say that this author may very well have potential; he certainly has a way with words and a frequently funny turn of phrase, but the plots and characters need a great deal of fleshing out.

--Sarrah Knight