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Tony Schmidt is rather older than the teenagers who customarily staff the telephone hotline at which, on the urging of his boss, he has become a volunteer. He has just broken up with his girlfriend Carol, so is in an emotionally precarious position when he meets his mentor at the helpline, 17-year-old Shahla. The two are thrown together when Shahla's best friend Joy is murdered. Tony and Shahla feel that the police are not doing enough nor are they investigating the murder in the most sensible way, so the pair decide they are better qualified to unmask the murderer. Despite being sufficiently mature to be in the process of buying his own house, Tony seems to exemplify a case of arrested development as he has as a housemate his former roommate at college, Josh. Josh's immaturity and unsanitary habits might even reverse the previous order of Tony's life since he is in danger of becoming more adult than his previous protector. Tony is the proud owner of a Porsche. He and Shahla drive to Las Vegas in this automotive pride and joy when the pair decide that a poet residing in the gambling city, a man who used to ring the hotline, could be involved in Joy's murder. Their adventures in that glitz capital disclose a new side of Shahla to Tony. They return to their base in Bonita Beach and continue their detection from there, simultaneously (from the official point of view) hindering the police activities. It is hard to know how to categorise this opus. I had thought, originally, that it was aimed at an adult readership but after reading a couple of chapters decided the target must be a much younger audience. While the idea of a telephone helpline is an excellent one on which to base a mystery (hasn't there been a story about the English Samaritans?) it seems to me that this tale falls short of the complexity required for a truly involving grown-up's crime novel. There is a sex scene which one assumes is meant to place the book within the purview of adults but it is somewhat perfunctory. The characters, too, are not as convincing as they might be. I was at a loss to see why Tony was made to be an older male whereas he might have been portrayed as only slightly older than Shahla without loss of conviction for the plot. The proof-reading might also have been carried out more efficiently (on her first appearance, Shahla was wearing a midriff bearing top). To summarise, this outing is a light, happy, sun-drenched plot which contains several realistic chases capable of increasing the reader's pulse rate but falls short of the standard which it could have achieved.
Reviewed by Denise Pickles, May 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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