Power Slide

Darcy Lott #4

by Susan Dunlap

Stunt double Darcy Lott is on location at the Port of Oakland, positioned for a power slide — a dangerous trick in which she falls off a bike and skids under an 18-wheeler. Late getting to the set, Darcy’s intermittent boyfriend and stunt driver Damon Guthrie is forced to rush the scene. His truck malfunctions and Darcy is injured. Tensions have never been higher between them, and on top of it, Darcy’s siblings are pressuring her to search for Mike, their missing brother.
When Guthrie observes that the shipping containers headed for Asia would be a good place to hide out or stash a body, Darcy thinks with horror of Mike. Is this where her brother could be? Guthrie is no help to Darcy given their tenuous relationship, and all of her usual connections in the police department are suddenly shutting her out, so she’s on her own in a desperate quest to find a link between the port and her brother. The hunt leads her to the canyons of Los Angeles, a stunt ranch hidden in the desert, and ultimately to a horrifying discovery in San Francisco.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published June 23, 2010

About the author

Susan Dunlap is best known for her Jill Smith detective series, but she is a prolific and much loved writer of crime and mystery fiction, including award-winning short stories.

Reviews

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I'd stopped reading the book, as I was tempted to do, during the first third of it, I would have given it one star because of its unpleasantly frenetic tone. I wasn't much taken with the viewpoint character or the details of the gag she was setting up, either.

However, I kept going through the slightly better middle, and when I got to the last third of the book, I was really engaged. I'd guessed what the secret concerning her lover was, but I wanted to find out if I was right. Things came together in a satisfactory way.

[Lola · Rating 1 out of 5]

Update: I simply gave up. This just did not have enough coherence or charm to induce me to keep going.

I've just started this. I was interested in a mystery set in SF with a Zen practicing protagonist but so far I'm spending a lot of time re-reading to grasp the thread of the story. There's a strange bumpy disjointedness. There are lots of allusions to the charming SF setting, yet little detail to actually help the reader figure out exactly what is going on. It is a love letter to the city that says nothing about San Francisco itself. It's sort of like a stage set where characters appear and disappear. No one has trouble finding parking, navigating pedestrians, or getting onto freeways, and there's a LOT of driving in this book, at least so far, as the heroine dashes from one part of the Bay Area to the other.

[JoAnn Steinly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading this for over a month. And because it's a book I own (a big thing right now), I sometimes put it aside to read something else. That has more to do with my mindset during isolation than the book itself.
I've read the previous books in the series, and I enjoy the characters, and dipping my toe into Zen. This series does need to be read in order to understand the Lott family's search for Mike.

[Shiela · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is much potential - a stunt doubling female protagonist with a unique family, Buddhism, San Francisco. Somehow it seemed a lack cohesion and flow. Perhaps if I start with the first in the series. The series warrants a second chance.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

#4 in the Darcy Lott, stunt woman and student of Zen, mystery series set in San Francisco. Darcy's on and off again boy friend of several years is murdered and Dary helps solve it. In the process, she realizes she didn't really know him at all and in seeking to learn more about him, she helped solve his murder. Several twists and turns in the story.

The end wasn't bad, but through much of the story, Darcy really got on my nerves with her charging around like a bull in a china shop pushing people around and demanding they tell her what she wants to know.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Buddhist stunt double Darcy Lott investigates when her on-again/off-again boyfriend and fellow stuntman, Damon Guthrie, dies in a suspicious car accident. At the same time, she is involved in a search for her brother, gone missing for more than 20 years. The problem with the book is that it is narrated in the first person and Darcy is simply not that good a storyteller. The setting in San Francisco is appealing, especially if you are familiar with the neighborhoods in which the action is set.

[Laura Eckert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea.