Edgar-winner Wilson (Simple Justice) was certainly ahead of the news curve when he invented a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter disgraced and fired for inventing sources. Now, in his fifth book about Benjamin Justice, Wilson again mines recent headlines, sending his wounded hero on a quest for the Catholic priest who molested him when he was 12 years old. It's a viable idea, and the HIV-positive Justice has some interesting edges, but the author seems determined to test him—and his readers—with so much high-impact paranoia that the story quickly goes over the top. The trouble starts when Joe Soto, the ace Los Angeles Times columnist engaged to Justice's friend Alexandra Templeton, shows Justice an outline for a book he plans to write about an infamous assassin who works for various drug cartels. Then Joe obligingly writes a story about Justice's missing priest and is promptly murdered by a hit-and-run driver outside a restaurant. Was it the assassin? Or could it have been a suspicious-looking police detective who lusts after Alexandra? How about a hit man hired by the increasingly edgy Los Angeles archbishop and his chief aide, who offer Justice a million dollars to drop his investigation into the pedophile priest? Long before the frantic ending in a new cathedral being built at vast expense in downtown L.A., most readers will have concluded that the point of wretched excess has already been achieved. Agent, Alice Martell. (Oct. 6)
FYI:Wilson is the coauthor with Peter Duchin of Blue Moon (Forecasts, Sept. 23, 2002).
