Fri 30 Mar 2012
Reviewed by Allen J. Hubin: REX BURNS – The Killing Zone.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[4] Comments
Allen J. Hubin
REX BURNS – The Killing Zone. Viking, hardcover, 1988. Penguin, paperback, 1989.
Rex Burns’ latest about Denver homicide detective Gabe Wager is The Killing Zone. I’ve muttered before about Wager, a gloomy, morose, irascible chap with a recently acquired payload of guilt to boot.
But this one has a strong contemporary plot, with good suspense and character dynamics, and I was well swept along with the flow. A kid finds the city’s latest corpse in a vacant lot. It’s Horace Green, city councilman, black, hero and defender of the black community. Now wearing a bullet hole in the back of his head.
Racial motives spring to mind, and the city gathers itself for explosion. Wager’s boss wants him to look only in one white place for a killer, for a tension-defusing solution. Wager, who rarely takes orders from anyone and routinely works sixteen-hour days, will look everywhere.
Vol. 11, No. 1, Winter 1989.
The Gabe Wager series —
1. The Alvarez Journal (1975)
2. The Farnsworth Score (1977)
3. Speak for the Dead (1978)
4. Angle of Attack (1979)
5. The Avenging Angel (1983)
6. Strip Search (1984)
7. Ground Money (1986)
8. The Killing Zone (1988)
9. Endangered Species (1993)
10. Blood Line (1995)
11. The Leaning Land (1997)
Rex Burns also wrote four books with PI Devlin Kirk as the lead detective. All 15 books have recently been published as ebooks by Mysterious Press.
March 30th, 2012 at 7:00 am
I have a special affinity for Rex Burns and his first Gabe Wager novel, THE ALVAREZ JOURNAL, as that was the first book I reviewed for the HARTFORD COURANT way back in 1975, which seems like an entire lifetime ago.
There is a confession I need to make along with this statement, as I did not care for the book all that much, nor have I read many of Burns’ other novels. But as Al Hubin also discovered, one of the later ones in the series was more to my interest more than that first one.
Unfortunately, I do not know which one it might be. From the plot description of KILLING ZONE, I do not believe it is the one, but it might have been.
March 30th, 2012 at 8:10 am
In recent years Burns has had an interesting series of stories in AHMM featuring an aboriginal detective in the Australian outback.
March 30th, 2012 at 8:18 am
Leonard Smith stories.
There have been two or three published since this list.
March 30th, 2012 at 8:42 am
Thanks, Jeff. It’s good to know that Burns is still active. I’ve found it all but impossible to keep up with the digest magazines for several years now, even though there are only two of them. I guess I should count THE STRAND as a third, since I can’t seem find time to read it either.