Richard Paladin returns with a new boss and a new assignment, tracking terrorists threatening a power plant in Pennsylvania. What he finds, though, is...well, read the book!
When terrorists threaten the U.S. power grid, it's time to send in Richard Paladin, America's top Environmental Protection Agent. At least, that's how Paladin's new boss, Frank, describes the assignment. But when Paladin starts digging through the personnel files at a Pennsylvania coal-fired power plant, he finds a lot more than the EPA bargained for—like a partner who's not playing straight with him, a security guard who appears more spook than goon, a stripper who's a little too interested in him, and an old flame he knows is a professional agent. And even though someone really is leaking security information about the plant, his fellow government thugs are more concerned with something else, something that smells a whole lot like corruption on a congressional scale. But Paladin's in Pennsylvania to do a job, and despite the distractions of temptresses and thugs, he damned sure plans to find the leak—and plug it.
Excerpt
Chapter I
Good Works
JOSEPH FORRESTER was quite the prominent citizen of Scranton, Pennsylvania. A native son, he'd spent his whole life close to home, excelling in high school as an honors student and track and field star, studying pre-law at the Jesuit University of Scranton and then spending his only significant stretch away from home getting a law degree at Penn. He moved back to town after passing the bar, but he didn't hang up his shingle and start chasing ambulances. Joe Forrester went to work for the city legal department, serving the good people of Scranton. In fact, he worked for the city for twenty years, acquiring a reputation as a stand-up guy who worried about making sure the city always did the right thing, not merely concerning himself with what the city legally could get away with.
Joe left city government when a local TV station offered him a position doing consumer affairs reporting—such was his reputation for honesty and serving as a voice for the little guy. For the last ten years he'd roamed the city with a camera crew making sure restaurants were clean—and outing corrupt inspectors who were responsible when the restaurants weren't—exposing questionable business practices when some consumer wrote in with a plaintive story, generally just doing his best to make Scranton a place where people could live decent. There were probably people in Scranton who didn't like Joseph Forrester, but you'd have had to search pretty hard to find them. Most everybody in the place thought he was about the nicest guy on earth.
What I was able to pull together about him from his file and a lot of Internet research at the public library certainly painted a picture of a guy who deserved a testimonial dinner and a big good-citizen medal. Certainly nothing in his biography suggested he should have come to the attention of someone like me. Of course, if scumbags were easily identifiable by having 'bad person' pop up when you Googled their name, our entire Congress would be in serious trouble. The bad guys know better than to make it obvious.
Still, learning about Forrester, watching him for a few days, I couldn't help but remember an old movie I'd seen years before, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. This isn't an action film, which makes it surprising I'd ever watched it. The story is about a deaf guy who helps people because he is just a really decent fellow. He spends afternoons taking a retarded guy from a local asylum to amusement parks and ice cream shops. He helps an awkward teenage girl break out of her sad life and discover something of the world around her. He just does good deeds for about two hours. Then he kills himself because people are so ungrateful that they let him be nice to them and never pay enough attention to see that his life is pretty fucking depressing.
Hunter turned out to be food for thought. Joseph Forrester was exactly the kind of Good Samaritan who gets tragically taken for granted. If Joe turned up in his sparsely-furnished home with a bullet through his head and a handgun lying next to him, people would assume that poor Mr. Forrester had been sad and lonely all these years and just kept it to himself because he's such a nice guy. After all, he'd remained unmarried through the years—I suspect because he's one of those rare people who gets so much joy from helping lots of folks that he never really took time to carve out a home life. People are actually relieved when someone like him commits suicide; it's the only chance they get to feel superior to the truly good people of the earth. If there are any.
"Clean Coal Killers" by David E. Manuel is a rewarding 'sequel' to the first Richard Paladin book "Killer Protocols". Instead of serving us the same dish twice with nothing more than a variation of the approved formula (and nothing would have been wrong with that may I hasten to add) we get treated to a development of the character and his professional career from serial killer to undercover government agent and detective.
The plot is cleverly set up and developed, complex and unpredictable, leaving us in the dark about everyone's motives and keeping the suspense until the last minute. Yet the book is very entertaining and uses a lot of humour that lightens the description of the criminal investigation which in so many books ends up being dry and wooden. Richard Paladin has a somewhat foul mouth and comes out with a lot of politically incorrect opinions but in this case that makes him actually more likeable. See for yourself.
I am more than impressed by this second instalment in the series which continues to give importance to character development and detail to the narrative.
Manuel is a talented writer of whom we will no doubt see a lot more.
Boom! Pain! Blackness!
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