THE LAST GOOD GUY

A Southern California shamus pursues a missing teen who may be far from innocent.

Perfect Penelope Rideout walks into the office of Roland Ford (Swift Vengeance, 2018, etc.)—who narrates in a laconic, puckish voice reminiscent of Hammett—like the client in a vintage detective movie and hires him to find her missing sister, Daley, a 14-year-old who’s taken up with “guaranteed loser” Nick Moreno, 20. When Ford goes to Moreno’s apartment, he finds the loser dead. A neighbor reports having seen Daley leave with some men. After informing the police of Moreno’s death, Ford visits Daley’s school, the Monarch Academy, where students confirm her relationship with Moreno. Was Daley kidnapped by her boyfriend’s killers, or was she their accomplice? The trail leads Ford to Alchemy 101, a teen club, and Cathedral by the Sea, a shady church where he endures a beating. The deeper he digs, the more Ford begins to mistrust the mysterious Penelope, and at length he confronts her. She parries his thrusts but doesn’t convince him of her credibility. So a determined Ford returns to Cathedral by the Sea for a showdown with telegenic preacher Reggie Atlas, who gives “family values” a new and sinister meaning. Atlas is surely a charlatan, but does that make him a killer? Ford joins his shady flock in an attempt to ferret out the truth and find the missing wild child.

In the third case for his franchise hero, the prolific Parker summons the memory of retro hard-boiled crime yarns.