Sunday 5 January 2014

Book ~ "The Fixer" (2012) T.E. Woods

From Goodreads ~ An enigmatic vigilante known as The Fixer steps into the lives of the most depraved criminals and balances thwarted scales of justice. For those who employ her, she’s their last hope. For her targets, she’s an inescapable date with righteous payback.

And for The Fixer, each contract she accepts is a futile effort to silence her own demons. In her latest assignment, she violates every rule that has kept her safe. The Fixer is trapped into serving as personal assassin for an invisible employer who strips her of the safety she’s deluded herself existed. As she begins to mentally unravel, she knows her only hope for survival is to identify and destroy her controller.

When Mort Grant, Chief of Detectives for the Seattle PD, learns the death of a prominent university faculty member wasn’t the heart attack it was designed to look like, he uncovers the dark underbelly of animal research and academic politics. Where sex is as viable a currency as a million dollar grant and power is held with an iron grasp. His search for the killer puts him on the trail of The Fixer.

Mort encounters Lydia Corriger, a talented psychologist, with a beautiful and mysterious new patient who mystifies her and tests her considerable clinical skills. Together, Mort and Lydia work to untangle a complex weave of sadistic cruelty, sexual manipulation and limitless money that finds them fighting for their sanity and their lives.

The Fixer accepts jobs that right wrongs.  She is hired to kill Fred Bastian, a chair of neuroscience at the local university, because he inhumanely killed a gorilla in his lab.  It turns out she was watched and set up so she would have to do further killings for the person who had hired her for Bastian's murder.

Lydia Corriger is a psychologist.  Savannah Samuels becomes her patient and is cagey in offering information about why she is there and what she does for a living.  This frustrates Lydia who does what she can to gain Savannah's trust so she can help her.

Mort Grant is a cop who is investigating some deaths which he eventually suspects the Fixer is behind.  Working with Jim DeVilla, the chief of forensics, and Bruiser, Jim's dog, they get closer to finding out who the Fixer is and solving the murders.

This is the first book I've read by this author and I enjoyed it.  I liked the writing style.  I thought it was well-paced and flowed well.  There is a lot going on in the beginning with lots of characters but it eventually all comes together and makes sense.  As a head's up, the language is for mature readers.

I liked the characters.  All have had tragedy in their past that still affects them today.  I liked the interaction between Mort and his friends ... how he teases Jim about his crush on their much younger colleague and in the bar with his crossword puzzle solving buddy.  Mort also has a loving relationship with his son, Robbie, and Robbie's family.

This is apparently book one in the Mort Grant series and I look forward to reading others in the future.

1 comment:

Masshole Mommy said...

Oooh, I bet this is really good.