cover image Left for Dead: A Mark Renzler Mystery

Left for Dead: A Mark Renzler Mystery

Paul Engleman. St. Martin's Press, $21.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-312-13534-8

Set amid the paranoia of the early 1970s, this is the first appearance of New Jersey-based shamus Mark Renzler since Who Shot Longshot Sam? in 1989. Harmony Rollins, whom Renzler once watched making love on his kitchen table (with his partner) has become a big star in the bevy of blaxploitation films that followed in the wake of Shaft. She asks Renzler to find her black activist brother Harpo, who belongs to the People's Revolutionary Front. The PRF has a charismatic leader, several well-heeled white sympathizers in its ranks, two psychotic feds on its trail and an unknown informer in the ranks, who might be Harpo. The Front is closely linked to a shoot-out in Chicago, and Renzler is soon logging a lot of miles between Jersey and the Windy City, with the alluring Harmony in tow. Engleman scores with pitch-perfect pacing and some wry takes on race relations in the bellbottomed '70s, when the intricacies of political correctness weren't in place. The quixotic loyalties of his characters are less clearly drawn, and it requires careful reading to discern the levels of duplicity. Still, it's nice to see Renzler back in action after a long vacation, and in a plot that moves along smartly. (Feb.)