James Grippando has a marvelous knack for creating convoluted plot situations that somehow manage to be believable. In his most recent book, WHEN DARKNESS FALLS, a homeless man turns out to be a fairly rich man who was a sadistic torturer in a political prison earlier in his life. That was my introduction to the Jack Swyteck series, and I thought it was a great book – enthralling, exciting and entertaining.

Now we have a paperback release of the previous book in the series, GOT THE LOOK, and it’s just as involved. One of the characters, FBI special agent Paul Martinez, sums it up: “You got a kidnapper who has killed once before. You got a jealous husband who isn’t exactly making things easy for you. And your go-to guy is Jack Swyteck, who was sleeping with the victim. As if that’s not confounding enough, he’s a criminal defense lawyer who … well, he’s a criminal defense lawyer.”

And that’s only about half of it. Grippando’s signature elements are evident here: the thoughtful character development even for relatively minor characters, the natural dialogue, the insane plot movements. The author will take you down a long, swampy road and then throw a 270-degree twist at the end that forces you to keep reading and hoping that Swyteck and his friend Theo Knight will come out okay. Very fun.

The only drawback here is that the book seems bloated, perhaps reveling too much in some unseemly details. It doesn’t quite have the intensity of WHEN DARKNESS FALLS, and could have used an editorial trim, but it’s still an excellent read.

There’s something about Miami-based characters that stand out in books from the likes of Carl Hiaasen, Paul Levine and James Grippando. It may be a celebration of quirkiness, or a joie de vivre that comes from a Latin infusion, but whatever it is, it makes for fine reading. –Mark Rose

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• WHEN DARKNESS FALLS by James Grippando