Genre: Book
Grade: B
Notable People: Jon Talton
Title: Dry Heat
Review: This it the fourth one (in order) that I’ve read in the David Mapstone series about history Shamus turned unwilling detective in the Phoenix heat. Good story and love the characters. I usually appreciate an authors’ devotion to place/setting and Talton, a fifth generation Arizonian, clearly is devoted to Phoenix and the desert…but I thought this one went obsessively overboard in his musings about location, it’s history and its decline from a wonderfully quirky small city in the desert to a Midwestern escape mecca..…essentially ruined by the developers and the snowbirds. I basically agree, but could do without being schooled on this every other page. The story is catchy, though, and the writing and dialog are top notch.