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DC Doyle can't keep anything down. She has to put up with the ribbing, some in jest and some certainly not, about her very unexpected and quick marriage to CI Acton, who is not only of higher rank than she, but also a peer. He doesn't make her job any easier by being completely obsessed with her health and safety, to the point of making her job almost impossible to perform as she is expected to perform it, both by herself and by her immediate superiors. The housekeeper disrespects her if Michael isn't around. She has yet to meet her mother-in-law. Can you say, "Very Bad Day."?
Doyle's unit is currently investigating a series of murders that seem to be gang-related. There are two anomalies, murders that seem on the surface to be part of the tit-for-tat going on between the Russians and the Irish, but upon further investigation, perhaps don't quite fit. Doyle is assigned to look at pieces of these investigations. One might think this would be safer than getting into the "real" murders, but that would make for a very bad book, which RETRIBUTION is not.
Cleeland has mastered the art of the sub-plot, not an easy thing. Who is poisoning DC Doyle, and why? Who is the interesting and cosmopolitan man that Doyle's cubicle-mate Munoz is seeing? How will her new CO, Williams, deal with the fact that he loves her; how will Acton react if he finds out? And what of the cabbie, Aiki? Who killed him and why? Cleeland manages to make all of this work, seemingly without effort.
Doyle is an interesting character with a mind of her own and a mouth she is not afraid to use, especially in defense of those she cares about. It is easy, as a reader, to root for her. Her relationship with her difficult husband changes and grows over the course of RETRIBUTION; how could it not? Cleeland makes the reader want to know more about Doyle's past, Acton's past, and where they are headed - personally and professionally. One frustration was not having read MURDER IN THRALL first; we get almost enough back story but are left wanting more - more back story as well as the next book in the series.
§ P.J. Coldren lives in northern lower Michigan where she reads and reviews widely across the mystery genre when she isn't working in her local hospital pharmacy.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, June 2014
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