Ona Russel is a mystery writer. I know this, having read her three Sarah Kaufman novels. But come clean--I don't read her for the mysteries, which are workman-like enough, but for the characters, which are uniformly marvelous. In this novel I miss the well-intentioned but eminently fallible investigator Sarah, but am fascinated by her new protagonist, Andrew Martin (Andres Martinez). As the double name warns us, he's a man of dichotomies--a successful, lawyer, a handsome lady's man who hasn't a real friend besides his pet parrot. A Latino who's turned his back on his heritage, the son of a champion of his people who's taken sides against everything his father stood--and died--for, a man with a mysterious medical condition which requires a cane, who is both afraid of an seduced by the idea of disappearing altogether.
I won't go much into the plot, except to say that it involves Nazi-hunting in northern California, even while struggling with his own past which has suddenly and literally come to life again, and yet the plot is important, since it's what forces him to examine his own choices--and perhaps change them. I hope we see more of Andres.
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