Flashpoint
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4.0 • 25 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The Boston PI tries not to get scorched when an arsonist targets her. "I'm crazy about Carlotta! More! More! More!" (Sue Grafton).
Six-foot-tall, redheaded ex-cop and Boston-based private eye Carlotta Carlyle is "the genuine article: a straightforward, funny, thoroughly American mystery heroine" (New York Post).
Carlotta Carlyle knows all about urban survival. That's why she's happy to do her neighbor, Valentine, a favor like this one. The elderly recluse needs help burglar-proofing her rent-controlled apartment. But it seems Valentine's fears are more immediate and threatening than she's letting on. Because just twenty-four hours later, the old woman turns up dead in her ransacked home.
Finding out who'd want to kill a nice old lady lands Carlotta on the heels of a hotshot music executive claiming to be Valentine's last living relative, a real-estate mogul with a knack for eviction, and Valentine's terrified healthcare worker. But when Carlotta becomes the target of an arsonist, she knows she's on to something hot: a city-wide conspiracy that Beantown's top brass want dead and buried—along with the woman who knew too much.
Delivering a "twisty plot, colorful language, and even more colorful characters" (The Dallas Morning News), "Flashpoint further cements Carlotta's place in the pantheon of contemporary P.I.s" (Chicago Tribune).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With eight appearances in the last 12 years, Barnes's PI Carlotta Carlyle has the full-bodied presence of an old friend. Like most fictional detectives, she's fearless and smart-mouthed. Unlike most, she has a social circle, an exercise regimen and an underachieving id ("I never do seem to come close to figuring out this man/woman thing"). She also has an unusually strong affection for her turf, which is Boston, a city portrayed by Barnes as imperiled by rapacious real estate developers. So when home health aide Gwen Taymore asks Carlotta to provide security advice to Valentine Phipps, an old lady struggling to keep her rent-controlled apartment, Carlotta agrees, as much out of civic duty as out of a desire for a paycheck. But Mrs. Phipps's sudden death, which may have been murder, casts suspicion on elusive Gwen, as well as on the building's possibly mob-connected landlord. And when music industry mogul Bronson Hohen hires Carlotta to investigate Mrs. Phipps's family tree, she starts to wonder why her old cronies in Boston Homicide are so intent on barring her from the crime scene. Meanwhile, Carlotta has to cope with assorted domestic crises, such as her adolescent "Little Sister" Paolina's homelessness, and her tenant Roz's onslaught of bad boyfriends. The many messy details of Carlotta's life give her character resonance, but they also bog down the rather pedestrian plot, which ends improbably with a twist of multinational intrigue. Still, Carlotta's fans will relish dunking doughnuts again with the genial investigator, a woman who knows a thing or two about urban survival ("Car keys make great brass knuckles"). Author tour. FYI: This is Barnes's first novel with Hyperion, which in September also will reissue Barnes's first Carlotta Carlyle mystery, Trouble of Fools, in mass market.
