House of Corrections - Softcover

Jack Flippo's biggest claim to fame is his loyalty. That's what lures author Doug Swanson's series hero into a hare-brained scheme to help an old friend and mentor, attorney Wesley Joy, who's landed in jail. Wesley was stopped while driving a car in which someone made a getaway after killing two drug dealers in a Texas motel. But he has an alibi, and he wants Flippo to track her down: the beautiful Angelique, who's sunning herself on the deck of Joy's boat somewhere off Galveston. Jack has his own reasons for wanting to find Angelique, and it's guilt over his earlier affair with her rather than fealty to Wesley that sends him in search of her. But there's plenty of double-dealing here, apparent to the reader when Joy busts out of jail and teams up with an ex-con he once defended, even though it takes Flippo several more chapters to figure out that his old friend isn't who he thought he was. The pacing isn't quite as slow as the hero, who hangs out looking up old girlfriends and nursing hangovers in Galveston for so long that you're glad no one's paying him by the hour. Add an ex-prosecutor, a washed-up reporter, and a psychotic ex-wife into the mix, and you end up with a million-dollar yacht in flames, a missing bag of drug money, and a mildly amusing romp through the seedier shores of the Gulf Coast. -- Jane Adams

Doug Swanson is a Pulitzer-nominated journalist for The Dallas Morning News currently enjoying a fellowship at Stanford University. The author of three other Jack Flippo mysteries, Big Town, Dreamboat, and 96 Tears, he lives in Dallas, Texas, and Palo Alto, California.