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Lieutenant Luis Mendoza #10
Death by Inches
10th Dell Shannon mystery featuring her signature character, Lt. Luis Mendoza of LAPD homicide, who must find the identify of headless female corpse fished from a Southern California lake in this one just to begin the search for her killer.
- GenresMysteryProcedural
Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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23 people want to read
About the author
Dell Shannon
154 books23 followersPseudonym of Elizabeth Linington.
Barbara "Elizabeth" Linington (March 11, 1921 – April 5, 1988) was an American novelist. She was awarded runner-up scrolls for best first mystery novel from the Mystery Writers of America for her 1960 novel, Case Pending, which introduced her most popular series character, LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Luis Mendoza. Her 1961 book, Nightmare, and her 1962 novel, Knave of Hearts, another entry in the Mendoza series, were both nominated for Edgars in the Best Novel category. Regarded as the "Queen of the Procedurals," she was one of the first women to write police procedurals — a male-dominated genre of police-story writing.
Besides crime, Linington also took interest in archaeology, the occult, gemstones, antique weapons and languages. Linington was also a conservative political activist who was an active member of the John Birch Society
Barbara "Elizabeth" Linington (March 11, 1921 – April 5, 1988) was an American novelist. She was awarded runner-up scrolls for best first mystery novel from the Mystery Writers of America for her 1960 novel, Case Pending, which introduced her most popular series character, LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Luis Mendoza. Her 1961 book, Nightmare, and her 1962 novel, Knave of Hearts, another entry in the Mendoza series, were both nominated for Edgars in the Best Novel category. Regarded as the "Queen of the Procedurals," she was one of the first women to write police procedurals — a male-dominated genre of police-story writing.
Besides crime, Linington also took interest in archaeology, the occult, gemstones, antique weapons and languages. Linington was also a conservative political activist who was an active member of the John Birch Society
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 17, 2024
Still enjoying these. Mendoza and his force of LA Homicide Detectives have a full case load. Everything from someone attacking old people in their house to steal what little they have, a fishy looking suicide, a liquor store killing, to a dismembered corpse. It's all driving Mendoza a little batty but he gets help on one case from an unexpected source, his wife.
Highly recommended, I get that they have their flaws but they do so many things well.
Highly recommended, I get that they have their flaws but they do so many things well.
April 20, 2023
As I mentioned previously, this is the very first Dell Shannon that I read, and I think that it's still my favorite. Maybe because it was the first, but also it is packed with so much.
My previous detective fiction had been mostly Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie's stuff, and my grandmother's contribution, the Cape Cod mysteries of Phoebe Atwood Taylor. In those books, usually, the police weren't overly bright, and they were basically there just to make the formal arrest, after the REAL detective did all the work.
This was so different. A policeman with a family life--wife, children, cats. (A man who likes cats--how cool!) When he arrived at work, there were so many different problems waiting...just as you would expect from real police.
They are working on the murder of a liquor store owner shot during a holdup--a man that all his friends and family say would never show fight to a robber. Sgt. Hackett is helping out the police in Sidalia, Ill, trying to track down a man wanted for a fatal hit-and-run. Sgt. Higgins is dealing with a man who apparently cut his throat in the living room of his house. Then Lt. Goldberg wanders in with a new one. He's been dealing with a string of break-ins in a poor neighborhood, all the victims being elderly people on pensions or Welfare. With the 13th break-in, he hits the woman just a little too hard, so now it is Homicide's baby.
Quite the busy workday. Fortunately, they now have some more help, with the advent of Detective (First Grade) Jason Grace.
"Mendoza was mildly pleased to have a Negro officer join them. There was a large Negro population in Central's territory, and the honest citizens among them (always, thank God, the majority in ANY population) sometimes felt a little easier with a Negro cop. Nobody at Homicide had any funny little prejudices, and in any case, Mendoza knew that on this force any man who'd made detective first grade would be a reasonably efficient officer.
"That, of course, was before they all found out how unreasonably efficient Detective First Grade Jason Grace was...."
Grace is what would probably be called a polymath today. He is not only highly competent at the expectable police skills, he speaks three languages in addition to English. He seems to have memorized the dictionary (a plus for Farrell, the crossword fan). His father being a surgeon at the General and his wife a former legal secretary, he has a basic grounding in medicine and legal matters. He is taking a course on the identification of gems and minerals, and studies anthropology in his off time. Grace does not take his cue from Sherlock Holmes, who was very careful about what information he stored in his memory. Rather, he's more like Nero Wolfe, who once said, "The more you put into a brain, the more it will hold." Grace's wife, Virginia, had recently given him a book on the history of wines and spirits (in another book, it will be called an encyclopedia) that lists the recipes for every currently known mixed drink. It will be a running joke that Grace keeps trying different drinks (and playing Stump the Barman). I was actually a little disappointed when Shannon allowed this to fade away after several books. I mean, there were so very many drinks to try out. We never even got to see the return of Grace's Delight, which he had intended to make his specialty.
Meanwhile, Alison has allowed herself to be suckered into judging an amateur art competition, held by a little casual group of hobbyists. A recent member of the group, May Tate, had essentially taken it over, organized it into a formal club with dues, arranged the competition, and actually bullied some local professional artists to judge them (no doubt to the astonishment and even consternation of the other Hobbyists).
Busily working away at the various cases, they really don't need the extra call about a body in Echo Park Lake. ("Sir? When I said it was a body--well, that's just what it is. Just.") They haven't dealt with a dismembered corpse for a while. (There will be a number of references to the never-solved Black Dahlia case. In fact, at one point, Higgins refers to some details that were "never released to the public", and I wondered, how did Shannon know about them? Were they released sometime later, or was Shannon given access to the files?)
The first order of business is to get the body identified--and it's very difficult to identify a torso that has no birthmarks. It does have an appendectomy scar, which enables them to weed out a certain number of possibles. It's a long and tedious business...until Alison arrives for the award presentation of the art competition, and finds that the bossy May Tate has not shown up, even though this had all been her own idea. Alison would never have gotten the idea if she hadn't been married to a cop....
Checking out May Tate's address, Higgins and Grace find a hungry Samoyed, an empty house, and a bathtub that is...rather dirty. Also a meat cleaver. With blood on it. This is a big help, of course, but now they have to find out how May Tate came to cross paths with a killer.
Grace keeps worrying away at the liquor store shooting, although it is bound for Pending. He finally tracks down the answer, and everyone finds it amazing, and wonders if he borrowed Mendoza's crystal ball. I didn't understand it myself, as his solution was really quite logical.
Just a few minutes after this, Hackett is finally notified of the whereabouts of his hit-and-run driver, and casually goes to collect him. A few minutes after that, and Sidalia calls with the belated information that their driver is a little more dangerous than they had thought, leading to a rather harrowing few moments and another opportuntity for Detective (First Grade) Jason Grace to shine.
Grace wonders if they will get another case solved--"never two without three"--and shortly Higgins (who has the day off) comes in with an idea on his suicide. He had previously asked Mendoza to translate some Spanish words muttered by the man's widow, and after ruminating on them a while, asks Mendoza to help him confront her. This was a case that could not have been solved by Higgins alone. Even Hackett and Grace, both Spanish speakers, would probably not have managed it. Mendoza, who understands the woman, lets fly with a rapid-fire set of accusations, and learns that George did, indeed, have a hunch. They do not go as far as to solve yet a fourth case that day, but Mendoza does have a brilliant notion about the pensioner burglaries, which will eventually point them in the right direction.
Among the personal side issues that come up in this book:
Palliser is wondering when he can ask Roberta to marry him, as his finances have been knocked for a loop by his mother's unexpected medical problems.
Higgins is doggedly doing all that he can for the Dwyer family, and wishing that he could do more. He has come up with a sneaky plan to help little Laura Dwyer, who had cried about having to stop her piano lessons, if only he can put it across her mother.
Angel Hackett, having given birth to baby Sheila, has inexplicably insisted on having her officially christened, although she did not bother to do so with her first-born, Mark.
Sgt. Hackett, recovered and back on the job after his assault in MARK OF MURDER, has dropped back to his college-age weight of 190, and is forgetting about his diet. Seemingly, Angel is doing a little at least to keep the calories down, because when he was first married, he gained weight noticeably in just the first month, and it is now three months since he has returned home to Angel's meals. In addition, while going out to buy a sensible family car to replace his totaled Ford, the first thing to hit his eye is a screaming scarlet Barracuda....
We see a bit of foreshadowing concerning a problem that will arise with the twins. Both parents tend to speak out in Spanish as well as English, and sometimes in the same sentence. Plus a little Gaelic from Mrs. MacTaggart....
El Senor is getting more direct about getting his daily fix of rye whiskey. Reaching to close a cupboard left carelessly ajar, Mendoza finds Senor sitting in it. ("It's a good thing I'm not a nervous sort of fellow.") The cupboard, naturally, is the one where they keep the rye. (It's fortunate that Senor never got the idea of pushing the bottle out the door, or he could have ended up dead of alcohol poisoning.)
Mendoza comes home one night to find that Bast is missing. He instantly drops everything to go out in search, and finally finds her in a tree in the next block. (Considering this area has only been developed in the last two plus years, how did they get a tree that big in the allotment?) Bast is Simply Too Terrified. This is in the good old days when the local firemen would come out to retrieve cats. No argument here about how you never see cat skeletons in trees. (Of course not! They would fall out as soon as they lose conciousness!)
Alison, excited about her very own murder, does a little detective work on her own, and actually does find useful information for Mendoza, including the probable identity of the killer.
They find the solution for the pensioner burglaries, but not before another victim dies of a heart attack while struggling with the intruder, and a former victim dies from the stroke she suffered. (It seems funny that there is no legal redress concerning people who surely would not have died if they had been left alone. The burglar is only accountable for the woman with her skull cracked.) Mendoza comments on something that will be seen in a lot of books--the idea that a lot of criminals have a complete lack of empathy regarding others. In this case, a burglar that goes after the elderly because they will be easy to rob, and unable to fight back.
They keep stalling on their dismemberment case, with bits and pieces (Oytch! Bad pun!) of information coming in. The final resolution is stunning. Jason Grace gets to see what everyone has been telling him about Mendoza's crystal ball.
My previous detective fiction had been mostly Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie's stuff, and my grandmother's contribution, the Cape Cod mysteries of Phoebe Atwood Taylor. In those books, usually, the police weren't overly bright, and they were basically there just to make the formal arrest, after the REAL detective did all the work.
This was so different. A policeman with a family life--wife, children, cats. (A man who likes cats--how cool!) When he arrived at work, there were so many different problems waiting...just as you would expect from real police.
They are working on the murder of a liquor store owner shot during a holdup--a man that all his friends and family say would never show fight to a robber. Sgt. Hackett is helping out the police in Sidalia, Ill, trying to track down a man wanted for a fatal hit-and-run. Sgt. Higgins is dealing with a man who apparently cut his throat in the living room of his house. Then Lt. Goldberg wanders in with a new one. He's been dealing with a string of break-ins in a poor neighborhood, all the victims being elderly people on pensions or Welfare. With the 13th break-in, he hits the woman just a little too hard, so now it is Homicide's baby.
Quite the busy workday. Fortunately, they now have some more help, with the advent of Detective (First Grade) Jason Grace.
"Mendoza was mildly pleased to have a Negro officer join them. There was a large Negro population in Central's territory, and the honest citizens among them (always, thank God, the majority in ANY population) sometimes felt a little easier with a Negro cop. Nobody at Homicide had any funny little prejudices, and in any case, Mendoza knew that on this force any man who'd made detective first grade would be a reasonably efficient officer.
"That, of course, was before they all found out how unreasonably efficient Detective First Grade Jason Grace was...."
Grace is what would probably be called a polymath today. He is not only highly competent at the expectable police skills, he speaks three languages in addition to English. He seems to have memorized the dictionary (a plus for Farrell, the crossword fan). His father being a surgeon at the General and his wife a former legal secretary, he has a basic grounding in medicine and legal matters. He is taking a course on the identification of gems and minerals, and studies anthropology in his off time. Grace does not take his cue from Sherlock Holmes, who was very careful about what information he stored in his memory. Rather, he's more like Nero Wolfe, who once said, "The more you put into a brain, the more it will hold." Grace's wife, Virginia, had recently given him a book on the history of wines and spirits (in another book, it will be called an encyclopedia) that lists the recipes for every currently known mixed drink. It will be a running joke that Grace keeps trying different drinks (and playing Stump the Barman). I was actually a little disappointed when Shannon allowed this to fade away after several books. I mean, there were so very many drinks to try out. We never even got to see the return of Grace's Delight, which he had intended to make his specialty.
Meanwhile, Alison has allowed herself to be suckered into judging an amateur art competition, held by a little casual group of hobbyists. A recent member of the group, May Tate, had essentially taken it over, organized it into a formal club with dues, arranged the competition, and actually bullied some local professional artists to judge them (no doubt to the astonishment and even consternation of the other Hobbyists).
Busily working away at the various cases, they really don't need the extra call about a body in Echo Park Lake. ("Sir? When I said it was a body--well, that's just what it is. Just.") They haven't dealt with a dismembered corpse for a while. (There will be a number of references to the never-solved Black Dahlia case. In fact, at one point, Higgins refers to some details that were "never released to the public", and I wondered, how did Shannon know about them? Were they released sometime later, or was Shannon given access to the files?)
The first order of business is to get the body identified--and it's very difficult to identify a torso that has no birthmarks. It does have an appendectomy scar, which enables them to weed out a certain number of possibles. It's a long and tedious business...until Alison arrives for the award presentation of the art competition, and finds that the bossy May Tate has not shown up, even though this had all been her own idea. Alison would never have gotten the idea if she hadn't been married to a cop....
Checking out May Tate's address, Higgins and Grace find a hungry Samoyed, an empty house, and a bathtub that is...rather dirty. Also a meat cleaver. With blood on it. This is a big help, of course, but now they have to find out how May Tate came to cross paths with a killer.
Grace keeps worrying away at the liquor store shooting, although it is bound for Pending. He finally tracks down the answer, and everyone finds it amazing, and wonders if he borrowed Mendoza's crystal ball. I didn't understand it myself, as his solution was really quite logical.
Just a few minutes after this, Hackett is finally notified of the whereabouts of his hit-and-run driver, and casually goes to collect him. A few minutes after that, and Sidalia calls with the belated information that their driver is a little more dangerous than they had thought, leading to a rather harrowing few moments and another opportuntity for Detective (First Grade) Jason Grace to shine.
Grace wonders if they will get another case solved--"never two without three"--and shortly Higgins (who has the day off) comes in with an idea on his suicide. He had previously asked Mendoza to translate some Spanish words muttered by the man's widow, and after ruminating on them a while, asks Mendoza to help him confront her. This was a case that could not have been solved by Higgins alone. Even Hackett and Grace, both Spanish speakers, would probably not have managed it. Mendoza, who understands the woman, lets fly with a rapid-fire set of accusations, and learns that George did, indeed, have a hunch. They do not go as far as to solve yet a fourth case that day, but Mendoza does have a brilliant notion about the pensioner burglaries, which will eventually point them in the right direction.
Among the personal side issues that come up in this book:
Palliser is wondering when he can ask Roberta to marry him, as his finances have been knocked for a loop by his mother's unexpected medical problems.
Higgins is doggedly doing all that he can for the Dwyer family, and wishing that he could do more. He has come up with a sneaky plan to help little Laura Dwyer, who had cried about having to stop her piano lessons, if only he can put it across her mother.
Angel Hackett, having given birth to baby Sheila, has inexplicably insisted on having her officially christened, although she did not bother to do so with her first-born, Mark.
Sgt. Hackett, recovered and back on the job after his assault in MARK OF MURDER, has dropped back to his college-age weight of 190, and is forgetting about his diet. Seemingly, Angel is doing a little at least to keep the calories down, because when he was first married, he gained weight noticeably in just the first month, and it is now three months since he has returned home to Angel's meals. In addition, while going out to buy a sensible family car to replace his totaled Ford, the first thing to hit his eye is a screaming scarlet Barracuda....
We see a bit of foreshadowing concerning a problem that will arise with the twins. Both parents tend to speak out in Spanish as well as English, and sometimes in the same sentence. Plus a little Gaelic from Mrs. MacTaggart....
El Senor is getting more direct about getting his daily fix of rye whiskey. Reaching to close a cupboard left carelessly ajar, Mendoza finds Senor sitting in it. ("It's a good thing I'm not a nervous sort of fellow.") The cupboard, naturally, is the one where they keep the rye. (It's fortunate that Senor never got the idea of pushing the bottle out the door, or he could have ended up dead of alcohol poisoning.)
Mendoza comes home one night to find that Bast is missing. He instantly drops everything to go out in search, and finally finds her in a tree in the next block. (Considering this area has only been developed in the last two plus years, how did they get a tree that big in the allotment?) Bast is Simply Too Terrified. This is in the good old days when the local firemen would come out to retrieve cats. No argument here about how you never see cat skeletons in trees. (Of course not! They would fall out as soon as they lose conciousness!)
Alison, excited about her very own murder, does a little detective work on her own, and actually does find useful information for Mendoza, including the probable identity of the killer.
They find the solution for the pensioner burglaries, but not before another victim dies of a heart attack while struggling with the intruder, and a former victim dies from the stroke she suffered. (It seems funny that there is no legal redress concerning people who surely would not have died if they had been left alone. The burglar is only accountable for the woman with her skull cracked.) Mendoza comments on something that will be seen in a lot of books--the idea that a lot of criminals have a complete lack of empathy regarding others. In this case, a burglar that goes after the elderly because they will be easy to rob, and unable to fight back.
They keep stalling on their dismemberment case, with bits and pieces (Oytch! Bad pun!) of information coming in. The final resolution is stunning. Jason Grace gets to see what everyone has been telling him about Mendoza's crystal ball.
February 5, 2019
While most of the Luis Mendoza series have multiple police investigations, this one is unusual in having as many as five (and a sixth, which looks like it will be dealt with in the next installment in this series). As has been true in all the books so far, this is a careful procedural, and it is interesting to see how each case is solved. There are lots of false starts, but in each case some special insight by Mendoza or a colleague leads to the solution.
There are, as always a lot of characters, including several new members of Mendoza's squad. Most notable is Jason Grace, the first African American character to date (or at least, the first with more than a cameo appearance). He's a lot of fun -- fluent in three languages, adept at judo, studies gemology and anthropology in his spare time, and more. The most fun is his interest in historic cocktails, the recipes for several of which appear in the text. He's easy to like, but the over-qualification made me wince. It reminds me of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," a movie from around the same time as this book was written.
Interestingly, while Mendoza's team is quite diverse, including a cross-section of Caucasian ethnicities, the rest of the characters in the book seem pretty uniformly WASP (aside from one Mexican American household). Shannon never quite seems to wrap her mind around the diversity of L.A.
Shannon is totally supportive of the difficult work police do, and it will be left to later LAPD writers (Michael Connelly, in particular) to provide a less idealized view of the force. To Shannon, "nobody in homicide had any funny prejudices." One can only wish that were true. Yet Mendoza says at one point: "The queers of either sex can get mixed into violence and generally offbeat situations rather easily."
And we get a very mid-20th century view of being female. Women who are no longer young are desperately preoccupied with marrying (or, in this plot, re-marrying). As Alison puts it: "A nice safe marriage is a major goal to a woman."
Somehow these shortcomings do not undercut my enjoyment of the series, including this one. They reflect cultural history, and to a large extent accurately depict American society in the era when Shannon wrote. They also serve as a reminder of progress which has been made since then.
There are, as always a lot of characters, including several new members of Mendoza's squad. Most notable is Jason Grace, the first African American character to date (or at least, the first with more than a cameo appearance). He's a lot of fun -- fluent in three languages, adept at judo, studies gemology and anthropology in his spare time, and more. The most fun is his interest in historic cocktails, the recipes for several of which appear in the text. He's easy to like, but the over-qualification made me wince. It reminds me of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," a movie from around the same time as this book was written.
Interestingly, while Mendoza's team is quite diverse, including a cross-section of Caucasian ethnicities, the rest of the characters in the book seem pretty uniformly WASP (aside from one Mexican American household). Shannon never quite seems to wrap her mind around the diversity of L.A.
Shannon is totally supportive of the difficult work police do, and it will be left to later LAPD writers (Michael Connelly, in particular) to provide a less idealized view of the force. To Shannon, "nobody in homicide had any funny prejudices." One can only wish that were true. Yet Mendoza says at one point: "The queers of either sex can get mixed into violence and generally offbeat situations rather easily."
And we get a very mid-20th century view of being female. Women who are no longer young are desperately preoccupied with marrying (or, in this plot, re-marrying). As Alison puts it: "A nice safe marriage is a major goal to a woman."
Somehow these shortcomings do not undercut my enjoyment of the series, including this one. They reflect cultural history, and to a large extent accurately depict American society in the era when Shannon wrote. They also serve as a reminder of progress which has been made since then.
November 2, 2018
I'm not sure why I didn't enjoy this one as much as I've enjoyed the others. Perhaps because so many of the characters were so unlikeable. Also, the 'twist' towards the end was telegraphed at least 20 pages (probably more) before it happened - I guessed it right away, and I am usually clueless. So some of the suspense was lost. However, it is still a good book!
A female body - literally, with no head, arms, or legs - is found in a lake, and obviously identification is going to be very difficult! As missing persons reports come in, Mendoza and his team, think they may have an idea of who it is. In addition, Higgins has a 'feeling' about an apparent suicide, and someone is targeting elderly people as robbery victims. When at least one of the victims dies, the case lands on Mendoza's plate as well. One of the missing persons was a member of an amateur art group whose work Alison was asked to judge, so she involves herself; calling it "her murder", she gives Mendoza several ideas that help in solving the case (at least in her opinion!) The glimpses of Mendoza's home life are always enjoyable and occasionally endearing, as are the marriages and love lives of some of his team.
A female body - literally, with no head, arms, or legs - is found in a lake, and obviously identification is going to be very difficult! As missing persons reports come in, Mendoza and his team, think they may have an idea of who it is. In addition, Higgins has a 'feeling' about an apparent suicide, and someone is targeting elderly people as robbery victims. When at least one of the victims dies, the case lands on Mendoza's plate as well. One of the missing persons was a member of an amateur art group whose work Alison was asked to judge, so she involves herself; calling it "her murder", she gives Mendoza several ideas that help in solving the case (at least in her opinion!) The glimpses of Mendoza's home life are always enjoyable and occasionally endearing, as are the marriages and love lives of some of his team.
April 20, 2024
Months after LAPD Sergeant Arthur Hackett was attacked and left for dead, he has finally returned to work. And it's not a moment too soon...for his boss, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza needs his skills to solve a series of homicides.
After losing a senior detective to murder, the force has a new and brilliant detective join them. Detective First Grade Jason Grace has transferred into LA, and Mendoza is thrilled.
When a body with no limbs or head is discovered in Echo Lake, the Homicide squad has it's work cut out for it.
When Mendoza's wife calls in a panic, he thinks Alison is overreacting. She is a judge in a contest called the Amateur Artists. One of her judges is missing. That judge just might be the decapitated body.
Meanwhile, another event happens, this one a happy occurrence. What Luis calls a new "hostage to fortune" arrives in the Hackett household.
With 13 victims piling up on the homicide roster, Hackett must also plan a christening for his second child. Life just keep getting more complicated...until the crimes are solved and the book comes to a satisfying conclusion.
After losing a senior detective to murder, the force has a new and brilliant detective join them. Detective First Grade Jason Grace has transferred into LA, and Mendoza is thrilled.
When a body with no limbs or head is discovered in Echo Lake, the Homicide squad has it's work cut out for it.
When Mendoza's wife calls in a panic, he thinks Alison is overreacting. She is a judge in a contest called the Amateur Artists. One of her judges is missing. That judge just might be the decapitated body.
Meanwhile, another event happens, this one a happy occurrence. What Luis calls a new "hostage to fortune" arrives in the Hackett household.
With 13 victims piling up on the homicide roster, Hackett must also plan a christening for his second child. Life just keep getting more complicated...until the crimes are solved and the book comes to a satisfying conclusion.
July 30, 2019
I really love this series. Unfortunately, this one is a little dated. Some chauvinism and racism is shown; product of the times, I'm afraid. However, Lt. Mendoza's home life is fun; I especially love the cats and Mairi, the housekeeper. A good read and recommended.
January 2, 2020
Not a bad book, it reminded me of EdMcbain's books,.
An old fashioned thriller, murder, and mystery, one that the reader will never guess the culprit, It's the first of Dell Shannon s books I've read,, but will definitely read some more.
An old fashioned thriller, murder, and mystery, one that the reader will never guess the culprit, It's the first of Dell Shannon s books I've read,, but will definitely read some more.
August 4, 2021
It was a good book. I didn't really form a bond with the characters, but it was an interesting plot and I liked the unexpected ending.
November 24, 2025
This one was darker than previous ones. A bit grim.
Still one of the best police series I have read. Understand the time in which the books were written.
Still one of the best police series I have read. Understand the time in which the books were written.
May 11, 2014
This was one of the first Luis Mendoza mysteries that I read back in the 80's. Always enjoyed this series.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews