As a reader, I’m very grateful for the lucky chance to stumble upon some great detective novels all set in Los Angeles: The Tin Collectors, Earth Angels, It’s Not A Pretty Sight. Raymond Chandler, who was himself not originally from Los Angeles, helped create the Hardboiled Noir genre. His descriptions of the locale were accurate and poetic. His English education ultimately came into good use for his writing career. This book about the FBI Los Angeles office is stereotypical in many ways with the Department Heads taking cases based on politics which is portrayed by April Smith as being held accountable by the people, which it isn’t. It is being held hostage to the press, however. The title North of Montana gives the false impression of being about the state of Montana. It is not about that. It is about a small neighborhood enclave of the City of Santa Monica above Montana Street. In the city of Santa Monica there are several streets named after US states. Above (North of) Montana Street are nicer apartment houses and better built homes. This book has interesting characters. Every detective story has more than a few littered throughout the narrative to distract the readers from solving the crime prematurely. The protagonist is a female agent who is competent but lacking case experience as she jockeys for a promotion. This was a great read. Fast paced, accurate details, sympathetic characters who are cleverly drawn. I find it hard to believe this was a first novel, it was so to my liking. I wish all writers could look forward to having their first books be this good. Published in 1994 but set in 1990. North of Montana is where the main character victim used to work before her demise. The jacket cover photo seems to be yellow center-line stripes found on every paved road. ( )

in genre ( )

The author has created a unique character and circumstances here. I was expecting a typical woman cop has it rough because she’s a female, never given a break and has a chip on her shoulder the size of a Buick. Not so. Well, sure she has one male officer, her supervisor, who gives her a hard time, but it seems due to the fact that he dislikes her, not because she’s a woman. On the squad she has respect and has paid her dues.

The case seems straightforward; Jayne Mason accuses her doctor of overprescribing drugs and getting her hooked. Ana investigates this doctor and finds no evidence of wrongdoing. The one patient that also claimed she was overprescribed and hooked on drugs turns out to be a multiple personality head case who is totally unreliable. After a little more investigation, it is revealed that the good doctor is just that – he was the one who got Jayne into the Betty Ford Clinic and her manager that tried to keep her out. A little more investigation reveals that Jayne totally made up the story at the behest of her manager. The contract she signed with a cosmetics company has a morals clause. If she violates this clause, she will be in breach of contract and owe punitive damages. This the lady cannot afford, so the manager cooks up this scheme to lay blame and make Jayne out to be the victim.

Ana discovers the source of her drugs, initially thought to be the doctor’s housekeeper and her alleged cousin, Violeta. The source is her “wardrobe girl” Maureen. Violeta was never involved in drugs and her murder was just a case of at the wrong place, wrong time. But the complex family issues don’t stop there. Violeta’s friend insists that because Ana is family, she should do something about the two orphaned kids. Ana is in denial of her heritage. Her mother, long dead, was a secondary parent to her overbearing and aggressive grandfather, Poppy.

Poppy was a cop and a bigot. Blonde and blue eyed, he tried to ignore the Latino features of his granddaughter and made disparaging remarks about her erstwhile father whenever he could. He said that he was just a wet-back, beaner, migrant laborer who left her and her mother when she was a baby. Why should he care about another dead Mexican (he was from El Salvador)? A trip to a safe-deposit box at a nearby bank reveals a marriage license between her mother and father and it is dated 5 years after her birth. Why did they wait so long? It seems that Poppy berated and disparaged her father whenever he would come home from school (that’s right, school.). When he found that he married his daughter, Poppy beat him to death in front of Ana and her mother. The body disappeared and her mother worked the rest of her life in service to Poppy.

Ana has mixed feelings about all men because of this weird childhood. Apparently she had a borderline abusive relationship with another cop once, and now he lives to torment her in small ways. She hasn’t had a healthy functioning relationship with a man in her entire life. Her flirtatious partnership with Mike doesn’t help. In the end, she snaps and goes running to him late at night, snatching him from his family with the lame excuse that their supervisor has called everyone in. They end up outside screwing madly. She is literally blind with fear and dread and freaks out. I can’t really see why – the whole cover up about her father seems awful, but it was ages ago.

In the end, she ends up getting her transfer to Extortion and Kidnapping and seems relatively happy. Mike decides to leave his wife, insisting that Ana isn’t to blame. We shall see.

great book, I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it. ( )

Read an article where one of my favorite authors, Michael Connelly (of Harry Bosch fame), recommended this book. I can see why. Unfortunately, the second in her series seemed disappointing. ( )