The Limits of Justice: A Benjamin Justice Mystery (Benjamin Justice Mysteries)
Former investigative journalist Benjamin Justice has decided that blue  agave is a whole lot better than bleak reality, so he's spent the better part of  six months trying to pickle himself in tequila. Justice has any number of  reasons to be depressed. He was fired from theLos Angeles Timesfor  fraud (and had to give back a Pulitzer Prize to boot); his lover of 10 years  died from AIDS; and Justice himself was infected with HIV during a brutal rape.Money, however, is a powerful motivator. When Charlotte Preston offers him an  advance of $25,000 to ghostwrite an exposé of Randall Capri, a tabloid  writer whose latest sensational effort claims that Charlotte's late father,  Hollywood heartthrob Rod Preston, was a sexual predator, Justice decides to come  up for air. But Charlotte is found dead less than a day later, and Justice  inherits both her spoiled Lhasa apso and a determination to unearth her killer.  It doesn't take long for Justice to discover that Capri was right on the money.  In a trail leading from the posh health spas of Beverly Hills to the seedy strip  bars of Tijuana, Justice will uncover a network of pedophiles, respected  citizens all, who exploit immigrant boys and who will stop at nothing to keep  their secret safe.John Morgan Wilson's hero (Simple  Justice,Revision of  Justice,Justice at  Risk) is brooding, sardonic, and deeply human. His investigation into  other people's lives is peppered with moments of often unpalatable insight into  his own dark existence and pangs of guilt for distancing himself from all who  would befriend him. Justice's propensity for occasional ponderous asides on sex  and morality slows down a plot that otherwise moves briskly along. (Perhaps a  bittoobriskly: Wilson can't seem to decide whether he's writing a  solemn meditation on the human condition or a no-holds-barred potboiler.)  However, though the denouement flirts dangerously with farce as Justice storms a  desert compound populated by former Nazis, Wilson's generally adept prose will  keep readers happy, and pages turning.--Kelly Flynn