EUREKA

Another rousing Diehl actioner (Reign in Hell, 1997, etc.): the heroes are all nonpareils, the villains double-dyed, and readers will have their usual good time watching the pot boil.

It’s 1945, and Zeke Bannon has been invalided home with a Distinguished Service Medal and a badly shot-up leg. When he wakes up in the hospital, he finds his friend and former LAPD partner Ski waiting for him with a certain familiar file. It pertains to a case Zeke poured his heart into during his last days before joining up, and, though officially the case was solved and closed, both men are fully aware that a tantalizing piece of the puzzle remains missing. Ski thinks revisiting the evidence would be brain therapy for Zeke while he rehabs physically. Flashback now to 1900, to the small, hardscrabble town of Eureka, California, where 17-year-old Brodie Cullane has, accidentally enough, just become the best friend of young Ben Gorman. In Eureka Valley, the Gormans are the power family, and old Eli, the paterfamilias, takes to smart, spirited Brodie almost as warmly as his son does. Enter locals Arnie Riker and Rodney Guilfoyle, the bottom-feeders of the piece, and the stage is set for what happens so many years later. Riding in their squad car, Zeke and Ski get the late call—there’s a woman dead in a bathtub. But what at first seems an accident—electrocution by a dislodged radio—turns out to be cold-blooded murder since Verna Wallensky was dead before the radio ever touched the water. But who was this woman with what appears to be virtually no history? And why had someone in Eureka been sending her $500 every month for over 20 years? It’s when Zeke Bannon and Brodie Cullane clash over what secrets to keep buried that the fun really begins.

And it is fun—mindless, page-turning fun.