Price’s well-connected family makes it clear that they are planning to hold Leo’s father (who died twenty-four years ago) responsible. Despite warnings from the Seattle police and his uncle Pat to let the past stay buried, Leo becomes determined to learn what, if any, role his father played in Price’s Fourth of July (in 1969) disappearance and eventual death.

As Leo delves into his politico father’s past, he uncovers things many people would prefer to keep buried. Pieces that don’t seem to be connected to each other, let alone connected to Leo’s father. A raid on a gay bar that was quickly covered up, a container containing 14 dead illegal Chinese immigrants on a pier, an Asian business woman and a man with no ears that attacks Leo as he pokes around on the peer, are all somehow related to Price, Bill Watterman and the early summer of 1969, and Leo is determined to fit all the pieces together.

Leo is to be admired for his tenacity in his attempts to clear his father’s name, although he is a bit sarcastic most of the time and has many contradictions about him. In an early part of the book, he fears a threat has been made on his life and is seen most places with a bulletproof vest, yet later, when he investigates the pier, he goes in virtually unprepared and gets attacked.

He relies heavily on several of his father’s old friends, now mostly destitute drunks, for odd jobs, yet lost track of his father’s driver and confidant Ed Schwartz. Leo pursues his father’s past with a vengeance, wanting to clear his name, yet from all indications, Leo and his father had a strained relationship, especially in the last few years of Bill’s life.

Last Ditch will capture the reader’s attention with its complex plot that always seems to wind full circle and end up coming back to Leo’s father or his family. The characters, however, often come up short. Readers may end up not having much sympathy toward any of them, even Leo’s longtime companion Rebecca, who ends up bailing him out of jail and sitting by his hospital bed after he and his car are pulled from the river.

However, readers who have read G.M. Ford’s three previous Leo Watterman mysteries won’t want to miss learning more about Leo and where he came from.

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry