The Recruit

Starred review from April 11, 2022
Set in 1987, Drew’s devastating sequel to 2017’s Shadow Man finds police detective Ben Wade responding to an emergency call in Rancho Santa Elena, a planned community south of Los Angeles. Ben drives to a nearby home, where he finds a distraught mother holding a small boy who’s not breathing. Ben manages to get the boy breathing again and drives him to the hospital, where it’s determined he accidentally ingested rat poison. The heinous intent of the near-lethal incident becomes apparent after the body of the child’s missing dog is found in connection with a hate crime targeting a Vietnamese grocery store owner and his family. Ben’s girlfriend, forensic expert Natasha Betencourt, becomes involved after discovering evidence linking the murder of real estate developer Walter Brennan with the crime scenes of other targeted racial attacks. Ben believes Brennan’s killing was in retaliation for his leasing properties to immigrants, whom some view as a threat. Ben and Natasha soon get on the trail of a growing white supremacist movement. Drew takes a nuanced approach in tackling the conflicts of gentrification. This socially complex police procedural, with its issues that remain all too relevant today, deserves a wide audience. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, WME.

Starred review from April 15, 2022
Young neo-Nazis in Rancho Santa Elena, a quiet Southern California town, conduct a campaign of hate crimes against minorities, leading police detective Ben Wade to uncover a widespread White supremacist conspiracy. Set in 1987, this thriller focuses on Jacob, a 14-year-old boy who's recruited into a gang of skinheads by his 20-something neighbor Ian after Ian sees him testing out homemade pipe bombs in his backyard. Ian, the son of a corrupt councilman whose eldest son was killed in Vietnam, has terrorized a Vietnamese shop owner named Bao Phan and his family by leaving a fatally poisoned, throat-slit dog by their back door. Jacob, the abused son of a traumatized Vietnam veteran, is officially inducted as a skinhead after being pressured to brutally attack Mexican migrant workers. Shocked to discover his father is having an affair with a young Vietnamese woman--Bao's 22-year-old daughter, Linh--Jacob is overcome with rage. Meanwhile, having left the LAPD, worn down by gang wars in that city, Wade is surprised to confront an even worse form of violence in Rancho Santa Elena. In Los Angeles, there was a logic to the gang wars, which were over drugs, territory, and money. "This is just hate," he says. "Nothing rational about it." Though set in the past, at a time when the internet was first enabling hate groups opposed to the very existence of the federal government to link up via online bulletin boards, Drew's sequel to Shadow Man (2017) could hardly speak more powerfully to the present moment in the United States. A terrific crime novel with an explosive climax, the book dares to find a level of empathy with its young perpetrators, connecting the dots between being frightened and "walking around in the dark" and turning to hate. A moving, grippingly relevant mystery.

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