BAD CATS: T. JEFFERSON PARKER'S WILD INSTINCT

T. Jefferson Parker often uses the crime novel to journey into Southern California society. Starting with his debut, Laguna Beach, he is at his best when he looks at the more insular communities outside L.A. With Wild Instinct, he gives us Orange County Detective Lew Gale to take us through some of its lesser known corners.

A former marine who served in Afghanistan and part of the area's Acjacheme Indian community, struggling with PTSD. Parker introduces us to him in an engaging opening when his sniper skills have him assigned to hunt down a mountain lion believed to have killed Bennett Turner, a powerful and celebrated developper. He creates a suspenseful scene while giving us a sense of GAle as he coordinated the hunt with his fellow officers.

When the autopsy shows he was killed before the lion got to him, Gale is pulled from the hunt and teamed with new partner Daniella Mendez to work the homicide. The case takes them through a labyrinth of several communities north of L.A., dealing with their cultures, class divides, and fights over land. It goes into a deep history involving Gale's ancestors.

Once again Parker brilliantly ties character to culture. The book ebook examines how much where your from makes up who you are. Turner is viewed as community savior or destroyers, depending on what part it Gale and Mendez find themselves in. He digs down to the details of Orange County where he finds a lot of devils. Gale has to deal with many of them when friends and family become connected to the murder.

Wild Instinct depicts the new millennium version of Manifest Destiny with development deals and gentrification replacing the Seventh Calvary and buffalo hunters. Still, it always causes murder and the law gets caught in the middle. T Jefferson parker plls it all together in this cop thriller that investigates both the homicide and and into bigger crimes where there is no punishment and more than one guilty party.