Lightly comic. Tone similar to something by Donald E. Westlake. An entertaining read and never a dull moment.
Two truck drivers arrange to have their truck stolen so that they can pocket hush money. Before they abandon the truck, they steal two thousand pairs of boots from a navy warehouse where they were making a delivery. They didn't know it, but there boss was illegally transporting dangerous chemicals, and there were two barrels of waste on the truck.
Three cops, two female and one male, collaborate to find the guilty parties.
Finbar Finnegan- cop/actor/ladies man. three sisters and married three times.
Bobbie Ann Dogget (Bad Dog Dogget) Young Navy detective. Loves the job.
Nell Salter- Environmental cop in the DA's office of San Diego.
Jules Temple- GREEN EARTH HAULING AND DISPOSAL. Psychopath. Runs the company that disposes of waste illegally.
Shelby Pate- Driver/Biker. Hooked on Meth and Booze.
Abel Durazo- Mexican Driver. Arranges a Mexican fence for the boots in Tijuana.
KIRKUS REVIEW
After a so-so show in Fugitive Nights (1991), Wambaugh returns nearly in top form with a very funny suspenser about toxic waste. Finbar Finnegan, a San Diego police detective and sometime actor, has a midlife crisis at 45, his existence having been dominated by three sisters while growing up and by three ex-wives as an adult. His theme song is "Someone to Watch Over Me"--he needs a mommy/wife, has sworn off marriage, but finds himself tied ticklingly to two female detectives at once, both of whom see him as romantically interesting despite immense shortcomings: happy, cheerful, pistol-packing Petty Officer "Ba-a-d Dog" Bobbie Ann Doggett, 28, an investigator for the Navy who's looking for 2,000 boots hijacked from a warehouse; and District Attorney's Investigator Nell Salter, 43, once divorced, and looking for a stolen truck filled with supertoxic waste. The truck actually was "stolen" by its tow drivers--porky meth-head Shelby Pate and his Mexican sidekick, Abel Durazo, who lifted the boots while picking up drums of toxic waste at a naval station, took them to a fence in Tijuana, then pretended their truck was stolen while they ate lunch. The truck, however, gets sold to a Mexican pottery maker, who repaints uses it to deliver pots to San Diego. During all this, the waste drums still on the truck spill horrible Guthion over two kids, killing one of them. In their investigation, the three San Diego law folk wind up in weirdest Tijuana for some surreal surveillance duty--and have a punchy pair of drunk scenes that show Wambaugh at his cleverest in the sexy, gin-soaked Nick & Nora Department. Smart, crunchy dialogue--too topical, yes, but for now quite witty enough.
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