Blood Line: A Gabe Wager Mystery

Latino cop Gabe Wager has a trigger temper and little tolerance for street scum. High on the Wager scum-o-meter would come gangs, drug dealers and kid killers, all three of which coalesce on the hard Denver streets in this high-powered tale. Gabe is asked to speak to his teenage cousin Julio, who's skipping school and getting weird phone calls and has extra money to spend. Gabe does talk to the boy, but, days later, Julio is gunned down on the street. Also dead is an older boy. He too has extra cash-and a missing notebook. The older kid was connected to a vicious drug dealer, and Julio had connections with a guy working a construction site close to Denver's infamous new airport. Burns blasts through the narrative but fails to assign his victims, or his bad guys enough memorable characteristics, so that it becomes hard to tell who's who. Maybe there's a subtle point being made about the temptations facing the urban disenfranchised, but the lack of individual color prevents the book from being viscerally gripping, even though the plot does move like lightning. (July)