“Implicated” is an entertaining police
drama with a fresh look at an old storyline and the best novel about crime
scene clean up since Charlie Huston’s “The
Mystic Arts of Erasing all Signs of Death.”
It is also the first book I ever read with a Cypriot as a protagonist.
Erdogan and his partner Emilio stumble
into a nightmare, as if cleaning up crime scenes of the human offal wasn’t bad
enough, when they unwittingly step into a conspiracy involving cops-for-hire as
assassins.
Southern California suddenly is not so
warm after all, and when Emilio is shot by these rogue cops right in front of
him, Erdogan has to go into hiding—not so easy for a man running from his past
anyway. Not even the peaceful Ojai in Ventura County can shelter him as
Azerbaijani mobsters and cops battle it out.
In a gritty drama with forensic details
galore, Erdogan turns for help to the widow of a slain reporter, another victim
of the bad-cop hit squad. They make an unlikely pair of detectives, but fueled
with righteous indignation and a little luck, they begin to put the pieces
together.
Rosenberg, a film writer as well as
novelist tends to insert his own heavy-handed view-points on Erdogan’s
character, but if you can shake them off and ignore them, then the body of the
novel stands on its own as a well-written suspenseful mystery with plenty of
twists and turns, leaving you second-guessing yourself until the final pages.
