On the Nickel (Jack Liffey Mysteries) - Hardcover

Previous episodes in Shannon’s consistently engaging Jack Liffey series have moved about California, but this time the “finder of lost children” stays put—literally, at least in the beginning, as the trauma of being buried alived in a mudslide (Palos Verdes Blue, 2009) has left him without a voice and unable to use his legs (doctors feel the symptoms have a psychological basis). As in previous episodes, though, Jack’s high-school-age daughter, Maeve, steps in to help her dad (without telling him, of course). This time the case involves the disappearance of teenage boy, Conor. Maeve tracks him to a flophouse in downtown L.A.’s notorious skid row (the “Nickel”). Unfortunately, Conor picks a flophouse that is due for renovation once some curmudgeonly residents can be convinced to leave. The owner has hired two loose-cannon enforcers to handle the evictions, and Maeve and Conor wind up in the crossfire. Shannon again writes about society’s disenfranchised with great power, but he never slights human relationships in the onslaught of shocking sociological detail. A couple of plot developments on the way to setting up the final confrontation strain credulity, but the finale itself is an edge-of-the-chair corker. Another winner in an outstanding series. --Bill Ott

Shannon's solid 12th Jack Liffey mystery finds Liffey, whose specialty is locating lost children, pretty lost himself. The accident he suffered in 2009's Palos Verdes Blue, the previous entry, has left him without the use of his legs or his vocal cords and dependent on teenage daughter Maeve and unofficial wife Gloria Ramirez, an LAPD sergeant. Maeve involves all three of them in a search for Conor Lewis, a16-year-old runaway, that begins in "the Nickel," L.A.'s skid row. The precariousness of skid row life collides with the greed and ambition of developers as a decrepit hotel becomes a battleground between three old tenants clinging to their rights and a pair of ruthless thugs determined to remove them. When Maeve winds up caught in the middle, Liffey tries desperately to overcome his handicaps to save her. Shannon's characters are often almost comically exaggerated, but it's easy to root for the Liffey family to succeed. An appendix lists the author's sources for life on the Nickel.
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