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When we first meet Isaiah Quintabe (IQ for short), he has established a solid reputation for solving crimes in his East Long Beach Black community. He drives an Audi S4 with the skill of a Formula One driver, amply demonstrated as he chases a sexual predator who has just grabbed a girl off the street. Using his intellect and the detecting skills of a Sherlock Holmes, Isaiah manages to chase and catch the predator in a few short minutes.
Now we know who IQ is – a guy who goes after the bad guy, whether he is paid or not. His prices, we learn, are adjustable to the means of his clients, a problem at the moment since he is short of funds. So when an old business partner of his, Dodson, shows up with the offer of helping a rap mogul whose life has been threatened, Isaiah takes the case, against his better judgment.
Calvin Wright aka Black the Knife is rich as Croesus, drugged into stupidity and hiding out on his estate when a giant pit bull, a big black muthafucka, comes through the doggie door and straight at Cal. He survives by running and finally jumping in his swimming pool. The dog runs off but Cal has to be rescued from his own pool – he can't swim!
Viewing the tape of this event Isaiah notes a number of clues and it isn't too long before he has searched into pit bull breeding (kind of fascinating) and found the owner of this Goliath – his name, of course. So he quickly finds the instrument of Cal's attack but it takes the rest of the novel for him to unravel who hired the crazy dog handler. And this does not happen until Isaiah and Dodson have two terrifying encounters with Goliath and his buddies.
Alternating with the story of Cal's case are chapters which relate incidents in Isaiah and Dodson's teenage years, as B and E artists. Isaiah uses his prodigious intellect to plan and carry out perfect crimes, robbing stores but only taking high end, small objects that fetch high prices.
When their actions lead to an all out gang war (very complicated stuff about who respects whom), a young boy is orphaned and shot in the head and Isaiah's life of crime is over. He has spent the next eight years of his life atoning for his actions.
While some of the events in IQ are very disturbing, the fun is in the detecting, the cool way Isaiah handles himself in the tough world of Los Angeles' Black communities, the lively street talk, and the truly hair-raising scenes with the cage fighting dogs, especially Goliath, bred for size, strength and a killer instinct, surely the most frightening villain to enter the pages of crime fiction in a long time.
§ Susan Hoover is a playwright, independent producer and retired college English teacher. She lives in Nova Scotia.
Reviewed by Susan Hoover, December 2016
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