Book Review: SMOKE by Joe Ide (IQ #5)

SMOKE by Joe Ide (Mulholland Books, February 2021) Hardcover, 336 pages. ISBN # 0316531065 / 9780316531061 

Summary on the Goodreads website. . . . .

     In East Long Beach, California, the LAPD is barely keeping up with the neighborhood's high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, lost children unrecovered. But someone from the neighborhood has taken it upon himself to help solve the cases the police can't or won't touch. 

     A high school dropout, Isaiah Quintabe's unassuming nature disguises a ferocious intelligence. Most people call him IQ. Word has gotten around: if you've got a problem, Isaiah will solve it, his rates adjustable to your income or lack thereof.

     In this fifth book in the IQ series, IQ is back, with the same larger-than-life characters and pulse-pounding action fans love--all leading up to a twist even a genius can't see coming.

My Four-Star Review on the Goodreads website . . . . .

     Sometimes it's dangerous to pick up a book in the middle of a series without starting with the first entry. Even though Joe Ide employs a numerous cast of revolving characters in his IQ novels, thanks to his fluid writing style I was able to pick up on things fairly quickly. 

     He also seems to foreshadow events that will play out in the next or future novels featuring IQ. This one ends with a cliffhanger, which I sort of saw coming since it was the only one of many plot threads here that remained unresolved as the novel wrapped up. 

     End result of my dangerous reading experiment: I've added the other four IQ novels to my want-to-read list and will start in order this time. Ditto for the upcoming book that will hopefully pick up that unresolved cliffhanger plot thread.

     I'm not going to recap the many story elements here. It should suffice to say that Joe Ide writes street smart, perhaps from personal experience, urban crime with fully realized characters that you can empathize with. I've always wondered why many fictional detectives like Bosch, Elvis Cole, etc don't seem to suffer much or experience PTSD after all the crap their authors put them through. Ide deals with that subject openly and honestly here as Isaiah Quintabe almost hangs it up here. 

     He tries to escape, both from the gangs out for his head as well as his inner demons, and heads to the countryside. However, he remains a magnet for turmoil and trouble seems to find him no matter where he is. Recommended.