Book Review: Shooting at Midnight

Reviewed By: Carl Brookins - RAM

Shooting at Midnight     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Greg Rucka
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Series: Atticus Kodiak # 4
Bantam Books, 2000, List Price $5.99 (US), $8.99(Canada), 381 pages

Here's a thriller that holds your interest from start to finish. Rucka is one of the best writers of suspense fiction working today. Fascinating characters driven by greed, need and compelling loyalties, yes and love, populate the pages of this novel. They are energized by circumstance and guided the careful hand of a novelist who knows what Hess doing every step of the way. A gritty, frank, examination of the world of the drug dealer, the detectives who chase the dealer, and the junkie.

Author Rucka has already introduced readers to many of these characters in earlier books, Keeper, Finder and Smoker. Now he takes us inside the life of Atticus Kodiak's recovering junkie lover and sometime P.I., Bridgett Logan. Logan is a stubborn, independent woman who tries to live her own life and meet her challenges head on. To Bridgett, asking for help is a character flaw.

Years ago when Bridgett was a teenager in a recovery program in New York, she met and became friends with another addict, pregnant Lisa Schoof. It was a big-sister-small-sister relationship, soon resented by Logan's real younger sister. Now, years later, Schoof is desperate for protection from her abusive former drug supplier. She calls in a favor from Logan. Lisa wants help killing the man who beat her and addicted her in the first place, the man who may be the father of ten year old Gabe.

Logan, a recovering addict, offers all sorts of help and support to Lisa, short of murder. But when the inevitable happens, Logan's life, and that of those around her, is thrown into turmoil and many questions of moral ambiguity are raised. This one is an enthralling, highly recommended, novel, though it is not for the faint of heart.

Carl Brookins - RAM

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