Free Range Institution (A Mick Murphy Key West Mystery)
Haskins's second Mick Murphy Key West mystery (after 2008's Chasin' the Wind) offers more gunfights than developed characters. On their way to a romantic lunch, journalist Murphy and his sometime girlfriend, attorney Tita Toledo, see Murphy's waterfront friend, Jay Bruehl, fall to his death from the roof of six-story Hotel Key West. Bruehl, a snitch, had tipped Murphy off about a big drug deal—and Hotel Key West was the site for a meeting of some Colombian traffickers. When Rebecca Connelly, an undercover cop who infiltrated the traffickers' meeting, goes missing, a Guatemalan priest, Thomas Collins, insists that angels have told him where to find Connelly. After Connelly turns up dead in the exact spot the padre named, both he and Murphy come under official scrutiny. Readers should be prepared for a stock plot with de rigueur corrupt officials and brushes with death. (Feb.)(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC.  All rights reserved.