I have to say, with each of the books in the LA Franco series the writing, the plotting, they seem to get better.

Cry Havoc starts with the death of a semi low level guy in the drug trade, the only weird thing is that he is found with a chicken in his lap. One of the two new Figeroua Detectives, a female rookie Detective, Cheryl Lewis, catches the case and it turns into a doozy going from drugs to more of a supernaturally/spiritual story. That was really the only part of the novel that was a bit hard to get into because it was a little out there. But it was also interesting since Franco was written as Agnostic we got to follow along her path as the story went deep into the spiritual stuff.

The new characters were good. I didn't love the two women Detectives, Cheryl and Jill Simmons (Simmons had the longest maternity leave ever apparently), but I really loved the new veteran Detective Darcy James, who's been transferred. And his ex-wife Margarite was a great character too, she was fleshed out very nicely.

As for the Gail Lawless/Franco relationship, it continued, and was interesting. Even though Lawless and the relationship didn't have a big role, it was a nice backdrop fro the main plot. A solid four star book. ( )