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Rachel Porter is a special agent for the US Fish and Wildlife service and her New York attitude is not appreciated by her superiors. We first met her in Louisiana where she investigated the killing of alligators (GATOR AIDE). Next she was sent to Nevada to investigate the death of desert tortoises (TORTOISE SOUP); Florida for the illegal importation of exotic birds (BIRD BRAINED); the Texas/New Mexico/Mexican border for the smuggling of monkeys and other primates (BORDER PREY); the Mississippi Delta where Paddlefish caviar was being marketed (BLACK DELTA NIGHT); Montana where grizzly bears were being hunted (KILLING SEASON); Savannah, Georgia, where the endangered Manatee was being poached (COASTAL DISTURBANCE), and now in BLUE TWILIGHT, to California, where the rarest of American butterflies, the Lotis blue, has its breeding ground. It's a Saturday, but Rachel is the enforcement agent on call. She gets a phone call from a Dr Davis at Stanford University's Center for Conservation Biology telling her that someone has been digging up plants and netting rare butterflies in the San Bruno mountains. Rachel isn't too impressed, but then she is told that someone from his department had been hired by her agency to go to Mendocino to do a final search for the Lotis blue butterfly before declaring it officially extinct. Davis tells Porter that no one has heard from Harmon in over two weeks. She drives into the San Bruno mountains and finds the butterfly hunter with little trouble. Mitch Aikens hires Rachel as a part-time employee and takes her to his home, where she finds thousands of butterflies in all stages of development. Porter figures that as despicable as Aikens is, he is not the prime culprit, so she searches for evidence Meanwhile, at home, FBI agent Jake Santou, her lover, is recovering from injuries sustained in a plane crash in Florida several months before, where several other agents died and he and one other were the only ones to escape. Rachel worries about Jake because he is drinking heavily and taking painkillers. Her friend, Terri, who was once one of the most famous transvestites in New Orleans, is having trouble with his lover, and has also moved to San Francisco. And she has a strange Chinese landlady, who insists on teaching her how to cook. Speart never gets didactic when talking about endangered animals. Her recurring characters become old friends and the new characters introduced in each book, are memorable. Every book brings us to another place, which is described beautifully and becomes part of the story: "San Francisco is a city built upon forty-two hills; a sculpture of vertiginous landscape. It has eight miles of steep inclines that plummet into wide valleys, linked by roughly three hundred and fifty stairways. This whimsical package drops off at the edge of the continent and into the arms of a beautiful bay." BLUE TWILIGHT can be read as a standalone, but do yourself a favor and start with GATOR AIDE.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, July 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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