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What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas – who doesn’t know that by now? Sheriff Milt Kovak from Prophesy County, Oklahoma, finds out that he’d rather not know how true this is. He and Jean are in Vegas so she can give a speech. Milt is looking forward to a nice little vacation, gambling a little and eating a lot. Life isn’t going to be that simple. Family has always been very important to Milt. Even so, he has no intention of looking up Denise when he gets to Vegas. Denise is Maida Upshank’s daughter; Maida Upshank is cousin to both Milt and his dispatcher, Gladys. His intentions make no difference when Maida calls him at 0-dark-thirty in the morning because Burl (Maida’s husband) is in jail. Seems he beat the crap out of Denise’s husband Larry Allen after Larry kicked a very pregnant Denise in the stomach. Unfortunately for Burl, Larry Allen’s dad is Walter Allen, who owns the hotel in which Milt and Jean are staying, and has a lot of clout with the Las Vegas police. Milt is a man who knows his duty when he sees it, so he bails Burl out. Burl repays him by disappearing right after Larry Allen is shot. The Las Vegas police are inclined to go with the obvious solution. In the meantime, Milt’s back-up in Prophesy County is Emmett Hopkins. Emmett finds himself in the simultaneously wonderful and uncomfortable position of having a sexual relationship with one of his much younger deputies. One can see where this could cause some problems, both personally and professionally. Emmett’s quite busy on the job, as all kinds of low-grade criminal activity erupts around him. One of his deputies breaks an ankle. Another gets into a territorial beef with his lover, Jasmine. All of this compounds the stress of dealing with Jasmine and coming to terms with the fairly heavy baggage he brings with him from his first marriage. Cooper has written another wonderful character-driven mystery. Milt has learned a lot about life, himself, and women since readers first met him eight books ago in THE MAN IN THE GREEN CHEVY. While the resolution of the Las Vegas family troubles isn’t that series of plot twists some mystery readers love, it works. Having personally never been to Las Vegas, I can’t speak to the veracity of Cooper's depiction, but her portrayal of family dynamics is dead on. Readers of her previous work should be delighted to have another Milt out; those who want character-driven mysteries should start at the beginning and watch Milt grow as Cooper grows in her writing skills. I think she’s one of the seriously underrated mid-list writers in the field.
Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, April 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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