An engrossing account of intrigue

books:

	• The First Victim Ridley Pearson Hyperion, 2000 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 58 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Solid tale all the way.

Lou Boldt and John LaMoia of the Crimes Against Person squad of the Seattle PD are the leads in Ridley Peason's "The First Victim."

A container filled will illegal Chinese aliens goes overboard in Puget Sound, resulting in three deaths. The illegals are headed for either sweatshops or prostitution.

A Chinese/American TV investigative reporter goes undercover to locate the sweatshop. When she is captured, the station's anchor (Stevie McNeal, the reporter's sister by adoption), takes a personal interest.

She arouses the ire of the criminals and interferes with the police work. When things get very sticky, she joins the SPD effort.

The Chinese Triad, slimy INS agents, ships, containers, rendezvous, fake ID's, graveyards, brothels and sweatshops, the media, agency turf wars, SPD politics and an information leak all conspire in the SPD's mission to out think the villains.

The characters, both good guys and bad guys are credible throughout, the pace is resolute and determined (mirroring the police procedures), local color drops you into the Puget Sound area and the dialogue is realistic.

Good plot, sturdy story telling and absorbing character studies.

Maybe a little too much time spent on Boldt and McNeal's introspections on their family lives that fail to advance the plot---but that is a small objection.

for more information click here

An engrossing account of intrigue

Ridley Pearson's THE FIRST VICTIM tells of a shipping container and the discovery of a scam involving illegal aliens. Scott Rosema provides an engrossing account of intrigue, discovery and an investigation that involves Melissa in a dangerous confrontation.

for more information click here

The First Victim

Ridley Pearson's protagonist Lou Boldt has become one of my favorite characters, along with Daphne Matthews. Pearson's novels are hard to put down, twists and turns galore. I've read all of the "Boldt" suspense thrillers; I'm hoping Pearson will write many more. Kudos, Patricia Huff (author of : The Mourning Doves)

for more information click here

OK, but not great

There is much to like about The First Victim. Pearson brings his customary attention to detail to bear in this novel, with some meticulously researched scenes pertaining to police procedure and forensic investigation. Among mystery writers, he may be the best in representing the ways by which modern science can and does contribute to police work.

Topically, The First Victim is quite timely. It engages a critical issue and is very informative. The novel's depiction of illegal immigrant smuggling is vivid, particularly in the sweatshop scenes.

What got in the way of my really enjoying this novel was the character of Stevie McNeal. Since she gets basically equal billing with Boldt and LaMoia, her presence in the novel as a protagonist means that around 1/3 to 1/2 of the police work has been swapped out. It's not a fair trade. McNeal is a gratingly self-absorbed, self-righteous character (the way she is voiced in the audio version adds to her annoying-ness). Her obstinacy seems to substitute for plot strands that could have made this a far more intricate mystery - like, say, Middle of Nowhere or The Art of Deception.

By all means, if you like the Boldt series, you should read this book. It doesn't, though, make a good point of entry into the series. I'm glad that I stumbled upon Middle of Nowhere first and not this one.

for more information click here

well written . . . but . . . .

THE FIRST VICTIM is very well written; however, I can only hope that readers will not come away with the impression that immigration officers are the venal, corrupt cardboard characters portrayed in this book -- i.e., the "bad guys." The customs officers are portrayed, as they should be, as the "good guys."

This book was published in 1999, four years before the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, in which the functions and officers of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the former Customs Service (USCS) were placed in three new agencies: Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), retaining the benefits mission of the old INS; Customs and Border Protection (CBP), retaining the trade, border inspections, and Border Patrol functions of INS and USCS; and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), retaining the investigative functions of INS and USCS, and the detention/removal functions of INS.

I am no apologist for the old-and-now-abolished INS. It was a flawed and dysfunctional agency. It needed to be torn down and rebuilt.

Great respect should be accorded/given to the agents and officers of the former Customs Service. Even though their skill sets and expertise(s) were different from those of immigration agents, officers, and Border Patrol, they did their job quite well. Repeat: the agents and officers of the former Customs Service were and are deserving of praise, accolades, and recognition.

It is also useful to remember that Customs dealt with "things," while Immigration dealt with "people."

Both agencies dealt with integrity problems over the years of their existence, and both agencies fielded officers who served with dedication and valor. As long as organized law enforcement agencies have existed, their leaders have had to deal with both integrity issues AND with acts of bravery and valor.

Before the reader comes away with the view of "immigration officers as bad guys," it is worthwhile to learn a bit more.

It is now largely forgotten that a large number of the deputized U.S. Marshals involved in the effort to register James Meredith at the University of Mississippi were, in fact, officers from the border patrol component of the INS. It is also largely forgotten that well over a hundred officers of the INS died in line of duty while enforcing federal law.

One of the final, unclassified, public record staff reports of the 9/11 Commission, 9/11 AND TERRORIST TRAVEL, also sold here on Amazon.com, noted:

"Neither the White House, the Congress, the Department of Justice, nor the INS leadership ever provided the support need for INS enforcement agents to find, detain, and remove illegal aliens, including those with terrorist associations. Throughout the 1990s, about 2,000 immigration special agents were responsible for dealing with the millions of illegal aliens and related immigration crimes in the United States." (page 102)

The unclassified, public record report also stated:

" . . . the agency never received adequate support from its parent department, Justice, the Congress, the White House, or the intelligence community. It is therefore not surprising that INS entered the 1990s as a badly organized agency with a poor self-image and a troubled public reputation. Despite its mandate to secure America's borders, it was not held in high enough regard to be given an active role in counterterrorism efforts. Thus a few creative INS employees struggled to keep our borders safe from terrorists while the rest of the agency, and the government in general, remained mostly oblivious to this mission." (page 90)

Of course, merging INS and Customs, with their investigative and detention/removal functions retained by the ICE bureau, under the direction of former Customs managers, was to be a prescription for "fixing" these problems. Well, if we look at immigration enforcement statistics in the old INS and the new ICE, we can see an actual decrease in productivity from the 1980s and early 1990s to date. A public record 2006 Immigration Policy Center monograph [Jimmy Gomez and Walter Ewing, "Learning from IRCA: Lessons for Comprehensive Immigration Reform," Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration Law Foundation, 2006] states that, since 1997, arrests of undocumented workers fell from 17552 to 445, cases completed from 7537 to 2194, and notices of intent to fine issued to employers from 862 to 3. A recent public record Congressional Research Service report [CRS on Immigration Enforcement in the U.S., a presentation before the House Committee on the Judiciary, April 27, 2006] also shows a remarkable decrease in completed immigration fraud cases from the mid-1980s to the near-present. Gee, increase the size of the investigative component, and see a decrease in the productivity. It is ironic that the old dysfunctional INS Investigations Division, back in the 1980s and early to mid-1990s, actually outperformed the better funded, larger ICE bureau. Go figure.

It bears repeating: even operating at a disadvantage in terms of agent numbers and funding, it appears that the immigration officers of the abolished INS performed well when compared to today's new-and-improved enforcement component.

Jack Shaw, retired Assistant Commissioner, INS Investigations, in public record testimony before the U.S. Congress, said that the beleaguered special agents of the INS were a "special class" deserving of "recognition."

Maybe those immigration officers weren't so bad after all. :-)

Someday we may see a book that portrays immigration officers -- many of whom have served with valor and dedication in their Nation's interest, and paid the ultimate price -- in a better light than THE FIRST VICTIM does. Hope springs eternal!

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Lieutenant Lou Boldt, the Seattle cop who stars in Ridley Pearson'sdeservedly popular series, is a sharp and touching figure--perhaps the most believable police officer in current fiction. Early in this ninth book about his public and private life, Lou has to put on a bullet-resistant vest to lead a raid against some dangerous criminals. "The vest was notphysically heavy, but its presence was," Pearson tells us.It meant battle; it meant risk. For Boldt a vest was a symbol of youth. It had been well over a year since he had worn one. Ironically, as he approached the hangar's north door at a light run behind his own four heavily armored ERT personnel, he caught himself worrying about his hands, not his life. He didn't want to smash up his piano hands in some close quarters skirmish...Boldt plays jazz piano one night a week in a local bar, and despite his concern for his hands, he takes every opportunity he can to get away from his desk and into the streets. But money pressures, caused by his wife's recent illness, also make him think about the possibility of a better-paying job in the private sector. Meanwhile, some extremely ruthless people are murdering illegal Chinese immigrant women and leaving their bodiesburied in newly dug graves. An ambitious local TV journalist named Stevie McNeal and the young Chinese woman she thinks of as her "Little Sister" risk their lives to investigate the killings, while Boldt and his team round up a most unusual array of suspects. This combination of hard-edged realism and softer sentiment has become Pearson's trademark, and once again it works smoothly.--Dick Adler

for more information click here