This Ain't Chinatown

In this fourth murder mystery of the Joe Zuma series, Zuma and his partner Pat Vasquez have been called to examine two bodies on the shores of Santa Monica's Pacific Ocean. The story unfolds further with distraught cries from an orthodox-Islamic woman, District Attorney Avril Kouri, who sees the dead body of her orthodox Jewish- lover, Phyllis Shankman. This leads the detectives to uncover drug dealing in the city's public schools, an unforgiving orthodox parent, a principal who is less than principled and a brilliant, scheming homeless person. The adventures of the detectives also involve an Egyptian businessman who idolizes Motown singers and a few sports heroes and a murdered parent who has left a generous gift to his grown daughter who is wrestling with her efforts to overcome ethnocentrism and mistrust of males. Towards the dénouement to all these circumstances we meet a parent who falsely confesses to a murder and learn about a Las Vegas child adoption that leads us to a murderer and also brings into the storyline Zuma's wife Claudia. This eventual multiplicity of criminal inputs allows many adventures for the detective duo, a surprising conclusion based on the aggregating clues and to Claudia's effort to help Pat Vasquez understand what it means to love.