25. Too Mini Murders by Patrick Morgan

Another book in the Operation Hang Ten series about surfing detective/undercover agent Bill Cartwright.  I am going to have to go back and check the reviews of the other Operation Hang Ten's that I read (I think two).  I don't remember them being as nasty as this one.  It really leans heavily on the pornographic mysogyny and it crossed the line for me and left a gross taste in my mouth that the redeeming features wasn't quite able to wash away.

Also, I get that Cartwright is mellow, but here he is downright negligent.  A young girl, whose life is threatened, comes to Cartwright's trailer for help.  He of course beds her (and satisfies her profoundly in a way none of her previous partners could even come close to doing).  The next day, he leaves her in the trailer and tells her to not answer the door for anybody.  Of course, the bad guys come and she answers the door.  Cartwright doesn't get back until late that evening and doesn't even do anything when he discovers her missing. He goes to the beach the next day!  She of course gets brutally raped, tortured and murdered.

There is one interesting passage where he goes to a drag strip and talks about the professionalization of drag racing, how it started out as amateurs in their garage but as the big car companies got involved, became more and more competitive and the little hobbyists slowly got squeezed out or forced to do illegal drag racing.  A lot of the philosophy of the book is the individual, free from constraints of the establishment (that is Cartwright's life philosophy to the point that he somehow justifies his violence against criminals in that they, even more than "the man" risk limiting his vagabond lifestyle). 

I went back and read the two other reviews and it does sound like the sexual violence in this one is particularily extreme.  I'll be wary but keep an eye out for these just because the cover is so cool.

Also, here is the kind of passage that I think reveals the deep-seated social conservatism at the heart of these novels (that I discussed in more depth in my review of The Freaked-Out Strangler). :

Every beach town had its share of night people. He didn't know what they did, it looked like they just cruised around when all the bars closed, crawling up and down side streets. Most were either queer or lesbian. Maybe they looked for easy marks. They sat low in the seats, holding cigarettes between thumb and index finger, dull lifeless eyes searching sidewalks.  Feminine men and masculine women.

Holy shit, that is over the top.