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Title: Dirty Laundry: A Charlotte Justice Novel by Paula L. Woods, Karen Kelly ISBN: 0-7927-2935-8 Publisher: Sound Library Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 7 List Price(USD): $59.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (6 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Honestly...
Comment: I'm not a mystery buff but from the back summary, this book sounded good. I got to about page 40 and was tired of hearing the main character whine about her loved ones and co-workers. The only person who was interesting was the murdered person's brother. I wish the story would've been from his perspective. I don't even care how the story ends, I'm taking the book back!
Rating: 4
Summary: Those Who Live in Glass Houses Should Not Have Dirty Laundry
Comment: Paula Woods has brought back the sharp-edged, tough-talking detective, Charlotte Justice, in her latest mystery, Dirty Laundry. As always, readers can expect a supporting cast of a diverse group of detectives from all walks and cultures of the greater Los Angeles area on duty, getting the job done and putting their own twist on the murder case involved. When Vicki Park, a Korean-American woman is found dead behind a Laundromat it becomes symbolic of the dirty laundry that is thrown around throughout the novel. The murder is immediately counted as a celebrity murder as Vicki is an assistant to the Latino candidate for mayor, Mike Santos, a charismatic guy, who has some dirty laundry of his own. This is a year after the Rodney King riots in 1992 and relationships between Koreans and the Black and Latino residents of the neighborhoods where they have businesses are tenuous, to say the least. They also feel they have not been supported by the police department and the city, in general.
Charlotte is at the best place in her life as she approaches her fortieth birthday-in fact she has never been better. After the devastating, violent deaths of her husband and baby daughter fourteen years prior, she has finally found happiness with a great man, Aubrey and has made peace with her manipulative mother, who is a snob. In fact, Charlotte calls the family home where her upper-class African American family congregates, the Nut House. As a detective in the highly regarded Homicide and Robbery division, she has gone through more than her share of drama in the department. She comes into the Park murder after a particularly rough year when she brought accusations against her former superior while she was required to appear before a police commission for questionable conduct while on duty.
It is known nationally that the Los Angeles Police Department has their share of problems with countless cases of victims' abuse and corruption amongst their personnel. Woods does an effective job of demonstrating the nuances of a city under a microscope without over dramatizing the details or pointing fingers at any one issue or group. Additionally, this author does an excellent job, as in her previous novels, of giving readers a view of Los Angeles (also her home) history interwoven throughout the narrative. When Woods was here in Oakland for her book signing, she said she wanted to weave a multicultural tale that would depict the diversity of the city. In doing so she also manages to create realistic three-dimensional African American characters from different walks of life. Her characters, including the protagonist, are flawed and Woods delves deep into the psyche of these people as if they are real people. The first fifty or so pages moved a little slowly but picked up momentum and made for an evenly-paced, satisfying read. I look forward to meeting up with Detective Charlotte Justice in her next assignment.
Dera Williams
APOOO BookClub
Rating: 4
Summary: A Gritty, Haunting and Intriguing Work
Comment: Police work involves quite a bit more than fighting crime. There is, and always has been, a political and cultural element to it, as well as the tide of different ethnicities that ebb and flow into and out of a city. This is hardly a recent development; Irish police resented the influx of Italian officers into the New York City and Chicago police ranks during and after the turn of the 20th century; the New Orleans Police Department for years roiled with the uneasy mixing of Italian and French South Louisiana officers, who in turn, had to adjust to the inevitable but overdue influx of black officers into the ranks.
The race of the officers is not the only factor that affects a police department, however. Nor is the size of the city the department patrols. There is a municipality within spitting distance of my residency that has made national headlines by virtue of the fact that it exists solely to support its police department, which writes traffic tickets by the handful, in order to support its police department, which writes traffic tickets by the handful, in order to...well, you get the idea.
Most police procedural novels lead the reader painstakingly through the evidence-gathering process, and while they may touch on the internal and external politics of the department, that touch is light and almost incidental. That is not the case with the Charlotte Justice novels.
Justice is a black homicide detective in the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division. Her creator, Charlotte Woods, has carved out a series in which Justice and her supporting characters are constantly evolving, making mistakes, paying for them, and moving on. The crimes that are investigated usually take place off the page, though the violence that is transmitted through the crime scene description to the reader is certainly graphic enough. Woods's major accomplishment, however, is to nicely balance her description of the crime-solving procedure against the backdrop of the political and social factors that affect how, and in some cases whether, the crime is investigated and the wrongdoer apprehended.
DIRTY LAUNDRY, the latest of Woods's Charlotte Justice novels, begins with the grisly discovery of a murder in a transient area of Koreatown. The victim is quickly determined to be Vicki Park, an up-and-coming political assistant to mayoral candidate Mike Santos. There is no lack of suspects, from Park's fiancée to members of Santos's campaign staff to, surprisingly enough, members of the Los Angeles Police Department. Park, it seems, was a bit of a maverick, a Korean working on the campaign of a Hispanic mayoral candidate and, as it turns out, did not approve of some of his campaign tactics. Yet, there were other mayoral candidates who also did not approve of his work.
Justice finds that her investigation is hamstrung by opportunists in the police department, political realities (she can investigate candidates, but not too closely) and even, to some extent, her personal life. It is almost a foregone conclusion that solving Park's murder will have some effect on the mayoral campaign. When the identity of the murderer is revealed, it should not be a surprise, but it is a very big one.
DIRTY LAUNDRY even contains echoes of some of Raymond Chandler's best work, in the sense that Woods, like Chandler, utilizes her well-crafted storylines as a vehicle for commenting on the culture of Los Angeles. Reading Woods is like walking down the sidewalk of a neighborhood that you would, at best, only drive through, if you knew that it existed at all. The difference is that, once you take one of Woods's tours, you will keep coming back.
Given the fresh publicity that accompanies the publishing of DIRTY LAUNDRY, Woods can begin getting the attention her work needs and so greatly deserves. DIRTY LAUNDRY is a gritty, haunting work that is intriguing the first time through and that will no doubt stand up to repetitive readings.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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