City of Strangers

Starred review from April 7, 2003
Shannon's superb sixth book (after 2002's Streets of Fire) to feature L.A. PI Jack Liffey explores the complicated ethnic mix of Los Angeles's Iranian community. Hired by psychiatrist Dicky Auslander to find his missing teenage daughter, Rebecca, who disappeared with four Iranian boys from an exclusive private school, Liffey learns a lot about this virtually invisible minority while discovering dangerous links to a fanatic Muslim sheik and a brutal Mexican drug family. Liffey is also forced to take a hard look at himself—part of the condition of his employment being regular sessions with Rebecca's father. Just dumped by his longtime ladyfriend, who became a born-again Christian, and not allowed to see his own teenage daughter, Maeve, because of unpaid child support, Liffey finds himself even more lost and depressed than ever, breaking into tears at inappropriate moments. He's somewhat consoled by two promising new women he meets during the course of the investigation, and Maeve's mother eventually relents and lets Maeve both help and hinder Jack in the search for the missing teens. Liffey also has to shoulder a lot of physical pain in the course of his search—though Shannon is shrewd enough to lighten the reader's load with a sharply observed gallery of pompous adults and touching children. As his fans well know, reading a Jack Liffey novel is no day at the beach. But then again, neither is life in Southern California.