Picture of David

Barrett Lake Mystery #2

by Shelley Singer

Barrett Lake, a teacher getting her degree in crime...
Soon after fourteen-year-old David was kidnapped, his distraught parents received a partially burned photo of his upper torso and terrified face. Barrett Lake didn’t say so, but she thought the chances of finding him alive were slim to zero...especially since tormenting photos and cryptic notes about an “unpaid” debt kept coming like clockwork. The Minskys, Russian immigrants who seemed to have their own mysterious past, were recent arrivals to the magnificent San Francisco Bay area. But their dream of America had quickly been shattered. Barrett Lake’s gut instinct made her head for upscale Marin County to look for some dark soul obsessed with revenge. She knew she was getting warm when her own car became the victim of a Molotov cocktail. Despite the setback, she had a slew of suspects ranging from a sculptor, to a hot-tub salesman, a kosher caterer, and some members of a rock group. But did she have the “right stuff” to spot a psychopath, save a kid, and take risks that could get a “real” detective killed...?

Genres: Mystery

255 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1993

About the author

Aka Lee Singer.

Shelley Singer is the author of a dozen published novels and many short stories. One of her mysteries was nominated for the prestigious Shamus Award of the Private Eye Writers of America. She has written mysteries, science fiction, and mainstream fiction. Singer began her working life as a reporter with UPI in Chicago. During a checkered and mercifully brief journalism career, she met such luminaries as Nikita Khrushchev, Jimmy Hoffa, Xavier Cugat, Mrs. Billy Graham, Martin Luther King, Jr., and a condemned killer on death row. She never met Joseph Stalin. She teaches fiction writing classes and does manuscript consulting.

Reviews

[Karla Huebner]

This held up pretty well for a mystery published 20 years ago (since I'm discovering how many don't really). It brings back certain aspects of the period well--the increase in Russian immigration to the Bay Area during the early post-Soviet years, the rise in anxiety about missing and exploited children (which remains a popular worry, but in different ways). And, as a former inhabitant of Marin County, I rather enjoyed the narrator's reminiscences of her hippie past there as she conducted her investigation. The portrayal of Marin County, while not detailed, was straightforward and honest, and I appreciated that from time to time the action focused on the area around San Rafael's canal, where the city's poor used to (still do?) live. I lived there for a week or two myself once, long ago.

[Sandra Strange · Rating 2 out of 5]

This series features a teacher who really prefers to work as a PI in the San Francisco Bay area. Adult themes on this one make it pretty bleak. The puzzle is well written and the protagonist is sympathetic. The villain definitely isn't (and shouldn't be, of course, but this one's particularly horrifying.)