King City - Lee Goldberg

Tom Wade, the hero of Lee Goldberg's new novel KING CITY, is an honest cop, and that's what causes him huge problems and may cost him his life. It's already cost him his marriage and caused him to be transferred to an isolated substation in the very worst part of King City, the fictional town in Washington that's the setting of this book. You see, Wade testified against the other members of the Major Crimes Unit, all of whom are crooked and corrupt, and now the rest of the department, from the chief on down, hates him and wants to see him dead. Putting him in charge of the Darwin Gardens substation and giving him just two rookie cops to help him is the department's way of accomplishing that end.

Wade has other ideas, though, which include standing up to the thugs and the drug kingpin who rule the neighborhood and winning over the honest citizens of the neighborhood. And if he solves several murders and uncovers a serial killer along the way, so much the better.

As usual, Goldberg gives the reader a fast-moving story, some fine characters, great action scenes, and nice touches of humor, all conveyed in some of the smoothest prose you're going to encounter. The setting is very well realized, and I love the fact that Goldberg named several of the neighborhoods in King City after various TV writers, most of whom are probably pretty obscure by now.

KING CITY is the first book in an ongoing series, and I'm glad. I'm ready to read the next one right now. This one gets a high recommendation. I thoroughly enjoyed it.