ICEPICK

A tough Child Protective Services officer tangles with all kinds of miscreants in his efforts to help a pair of Seminole waifs.

Florida, 1976. CPS bulldog Foggy Moscowitz (Three Shot Burst, 2017, etc.) tells the reader right up front that Sammy “Icepick” Franks has dragged a body out of the trunk of his Lincoln and tossed it in the bay. He also shoots a barking dog, which is where Foggy comes in. The crime(s) are witnessed by Little Cloud and Wonder Girl, a pair of Seminole children whose mother, Echu Matta, has gone missing. A cleaning woman at the Benton Inn, she hasn’t come home for three nights. Battling racism from both the locals and law enforcement fills Foggy with a brittle righteousness that imbues his punchy first-person narrative. Along with Sharp and Duck, two hotheaded Native Americans, he resolves to ferret out the truth. The officious manager of the Benton offers the implausible story that a disgruntled Matta and two co-workers simply haven’t been showing up to work in protest over their discriminatory treatment. Foggy is devastated when the dead body in the bay turns out to be that of Pan Pan Washington, his old pal from Brooklyn. Not coincidentally, Foggy and Pan Pan tangled with Icepick in Brooklyn way back when. The corpses pile up as Foggy, Sharp, and Duck head to Oklahoma to untangle the twisted conspiracy behind the killings and find the missing mom.

The third installment of DePoy’s franchise, which finds a compelling anchor in its sleuth, crackles with energy and a plot as twisty as a country road.