(by Jonathan Ames)
When this book opens we find our narrator (Happy Doll, an ex-Navy guy, ex-cop, and current “security specialist”) in a doctor’s office in Mexico at 2 am with a bullet in his shoulder. If you read the previous book in this series (this is number three), you’ll probably remember the things that led to Happy getting shot, but if you didn’t read that one or don’t remember, don’t worry, this book catches you up on key events from that one. The action of this book starts in January 2020, which is significant: though he doesn’t know it, Happy is about to spend three years in a house on a beach in Baja California Sur, avoiding both Covid and various people who want him dead (for various reasons, including a misadventure in Mexico that happens early in the book). It’s a pretty good set-up: he swims and snorkels and takes naps with his dog George and his new cat Walter (who belonged to the house’s previous owner) and helps a neighbor with his fishing boat in exchange for part of the catch. And oh, he studies Buddhism, because he really would like to figure out how to get out of the “cycle of pain” and suffering that is tied to violence and connected to his childhood. But he can’t stay in Mexico studing the Four Noble Truths forever: his money is going to run out, so he has to get back to LA and maybe sell his house, but it’s complicated, because his license and passport have expired and he never filed the proper paperwork to legally stay in Mexico as long as he has. And as he’s trying to figure out what steps to take to untangle all of this, something else happens: there’s a murder, and he’s in danger of being framed for it, and also some of the people who wanted him dead at the start of the book still want him dead, despite how much time has passed.
All of which brings Happy back to LA, where he decides he needs to get some revenge on some evildoers (without saying too much: the dead body by the beach in Mexico isn’t the only murdered corpse Happy sees on his way home). So much for nonviolence, although maybe it’s not his fault: maybe it’s his karma and everyone else’s: “New karma. Old karma. Bad karma,” as he puts it, but maybe also some good karma too.
I really like the way Ames writes in this series, especially the atmospheric descriptions of various settings from beaches to bars to city streets. I like this, about a drive to the beachfront house where Happy ends up living: “the light was beginning to change, dusk was coming on, and the sea, to my left, was now the color of mercury tinged with violet.” And this, about Rossmore Avenue in Los Angeles: “you’re in the shadow of these beautiful old buildings, which form a canopy, an enclosed feeling, and it’s like a movie set of a lost city.” I also appreciate the noir mood, the pacing, and Happy’s Buddhist philosophizing, like when he says that “we’ve been enlightened this whole damn time and nirvana is like an all-night diner. It’s always open. You can always go there.”
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