After reading The Fallen by T. Jefferson Parker because it was listed in the Wall Street Journal as a good mystery, and enjoying it, I checked out Black Water and Silent Joe from my local public library. I whipped through Black Water — good; sad about that young deputy — but for some reason the title and cover combination of Silent Joe put me off.
Once I started, though, I also enjoyed it.
The story is narrated by the title character, whose daytime job is a jailer and deputy sheriff with a nighttime job as driver, bodyguard and aide to his own (adoptive) father, an Orange County supervisor who likes to know everybody’s secrets and isn’t too shy about using those secrets to further his own projects.
The first chapter describe the latest nighttime escapade, which ends with the narrator unable to prevent the murder of his father in a foggy alley on Lind Street.
The rest of the story follows the narrator’s efforts to understand what was going on in that foggy alley and bring his father’s killer to justice.
The action ranges from the richest of private clubs to the barrio of Santa Ana, from an orphanage run by Orange County to a nightclub in Little Saigon. Gangbangers, real estate developers, shifty bureaucrats and politicians, a police psychiatrist distrustful of the hero’s response to murder, a high-profile Protestant minister, a low-key Public Radio host.
The hero ends up with the girl, a better understanding of his father, a clearer understanding of his own history, and feeling in need of a cleansing baptism.
