MIDNIGHT PASS

Still grieving over the death of his wife back in Chicago, process-server Lew Fonesca (Retribution, 2002, etc.) takes on one impossible task after another as he crawls out of exile just long enough to rescue every lost soul in Sarasota.

Not caring whether you live or die can be tonic. Lew’s indifference to life and limb allows him to get into the middle of one urgent mission—tracking down terminally ill county commissioner William Trasker in time for him to cast a deciding vote on the question of whether to reopen Midnight Pass—and then take on another—finding Janet Severtson, who left for Orlando with her husband Kenneth’s partner Andrew Stark—without worrying about time for eating and sleeping. It helps him rub elbows painlessly with misfits like homeless Digger and alcoholic Flo. It enables him to confront Kevin Hoffman, the wealthy businessman who’s got Trasker stashed in an upstairs bedroom, with assurances that’s he’s too sick to move, and his lethal henchman Stanley LaPrince even after they warn him that if he doesn’t head back north, he’s unlikely to outlive his quarry. It even lets him face with equanimity a shootout in a local laundromat. But will his shell of despair save him from the ministrations of Sally Porovsky, his social-worker girlfriend, or from the scorn of her two teenagers?

Prolific Kaminsky strikes a nice balance between dark and light in this fast-moving adventure.