Eye of the Gator
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
When Timothy Cross, a recent young college graduate and environmental activist working for the government, is found murdered in an alligator pond, Florida private eye Tony Lowell and his friend, police detective Lena Bedrosian, search for a cold-blooded killer.
Lowell doesn't hesitate to join the fray, for the victim was the nephew of Ernie Larson, one of Lowell's oldest friends.
As Lowell begins investigating, his array of suspects includes a baseball fanatic, a single mother, and her dangerously violent boyfriend. Soon he finds himself pitted against powerful industry types, as well as black advocacy groups concerned about jobs and backwoods racists who resent meddlers. The stakes are raised even further, however, when he discovers that the very safety of Florida's diminishing water supply is at stake. Lowell is determined to find the killer, but he's got to save his own skin while he's at it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After a pedestrian start and despite some hackneyed Floridian environmental issues, the second Tony Lowell mystery (after Hour of the Manatee) rapidly intensifies as not one but two psychopaths seize control of the narrative. Divorced, ponytailed Lowell, a Vietnam vet who's crazy for boats and doesn't like guns, is most interesting when he parks his morals and beds a killer's wife. The nephew of an old friend, a young black man investigating a phosphates-manufacturing company, is shot to death. Overworked career-cop Lena Bedrosian, another friend of Tony's and a sometime stick in the mud, asks him to help investigate. The bad guys here, Dickey Cahill and Leonard Smith, are the intriguing characters. Dickey's wife is Tony's unwise conquest. The dead youth had the bad luck to fall for Leonard's girl, who had once tangled with Dickey (and has a kid to prove it). Had Ayres given Dickey and Leonard central roles, this would have been a richer book; had he put more humor into play, he'd have entered Elmore Leonard territory. Still, the vicious twosome are unforgettably bad, providing a nice foil for Tony, who seems a little too good but remains a likable fellow.
