Good Diamond

The title of Moody's turgid seventh book in her Venus Diamond series (after 2003's Medusa) refers not to her protagonist but to the real thing. Good diamonds are those mined, processed and sold by legitimate dealers, as opposed to blood diamonds, which are extracted by slave labor, smuggled through a shadowy international channel known as the tube and traded for illegal guns. All along the sequence, blood diamonds are paid for in blood. Venus's position as an undercover agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service normally pits her against those who threaten the animals on federal lands. Here she's brought into the world of diamond smuggling when the prospector who found a 350-carat blue diamond in Canada's Northwest Territories is murdered and writes her name in his blood at the scene. Fans of the series know to expect complex plots, and they won't be disappointed. New readers may not be so forgiving, for little of Venus's usually admirable personality manages to squeeze through the dense plot layers. While the inside view of the diamond cutter's world is fascinating, this book cries out for the same kind of treatment as diamonds: someone needs to cut away the rough parts and polish the rest.