Review: On My Top Two or Three List for Police Procedurals This Summer
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 21, 2014
I am sparing with five-star reviews.  On reflection 'Diablo Nights' deserves its ratings.  Carmen Amato is a fine fresh voice in the police procedural genre.  Her heroine, Emilia Cruz is completely believable and engaging and her settings very effectively evoke its non-North American culture.  In this case, the action is in Acapulco and its environs.  Readers get a non-stereotypical look at family life, personal aspirations, the Mexican food culture and, of course, fine police work and investigative imagination.  The suspense is palpable.  The reader is seldom sure of who to trust as this investigation into drugs and murder and police corruption plays out.  While these themes may seem familiar, this is an original work and not a retread.  An author has to have a gifted mind to enter this ground and to produce something subtly new and freshly compelling.  Whatever the gender of the reader, this book stands up and delivers believable entertainment.Well, 'fresh' is the adjective to sum this up.  It is one of the two or three best books in this genre I have read this summer.  And as a Vine Voice, I get asked to read quite  a few of them.  Put this series on the top of your list for airplane and hotel reading or for that 'reading' weekend of escapism.