Review: Rhode Rides Again
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 6, 2012
Attention mystery readers:  Tired of one-dimensional characters, hare-brained plots, generic settings?  Your deliverance is at hand.  Lawrence DeMaria has written another Alton Rhode mystery --  LAURA LEE -- and in the process made Staten Island a literary destination and the ambiguities of the human heart a remarkable engine of plot development.  Dead bodies and the dead hand of the past meet in the "Forgotten Borough", where Alton Rhode eats, drinks, loves, cracks razor-sharp jokes and solves murders.  LAURA LEE opens with a bang, seven bangs if you count the six bullets pumped into the head of a sleaze-bag banker John Denton,  who's awaiting his latest installment of kinky sex.  All evidence points to his latest girl friend as murderer.  It's an open and shut case for the Staten Island DA, until Alton Rhode gets on the case and opens doors long shut.  What he finds and how he finds it make for an immensely satisfying story that will disappoint you when you reach the last page, only because there are no more pages to be read.Robert E. HuberFormer Chief Speechwriter to Mayor Giuliani