By Joe Ide; reviewed by Jeannette Hartman
Isaiah Quintabe – IQ to friends and clients – is L.A.’s answer to Sherlock Holmes.
When someone tries to assassinate rapper Black the Knife with a vicious 130-pound dog, he turns to Jannell Dodson, a sometime drug dealer and self-promoting wheeler-dealer. Dodson turns to the smartest, most logical person he knows: IQ.
Normally IQ wouldn’t take a call from Dodson, who was his former partner when they were burglars. IQ has gone straight but he needs the $50,000 fee for a charitable project he’s running.
As mismatched as chocolate and mustard, IQ and Dodson are author Joe Ide’s modern day Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. IQ has keen powers of observation and reasoning to solve the mystery; Dodson has the spin and glad-hand to balance IQ’s austerity.
This story is told in chapters that alternate in IQ’s life from May 2005, when his beloved brother and mentor was killed by a hit-and-run driver, to July 2013, when IQ investigates who Calvin’s would-be assassin is, who hired him and why.
By the end of the book, the two threads of this story tie together with the mystery solved and a reader’s understanding of how ideally suited IQ is as a private investigator complete.
IQ was succeeded (in order) by RIGHTEOUS, WRECKED, HI FIVE, and SMOKE.
THE GOODBYE COAST is author Joe Ide’s reinvention of Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe and due out Feb. 1, 2022.
Jeannette Hartman is the creator and reviewer for BookReviewsbyJeannette.com.
