{"id":11386,"date":"2025-03-18T08:24:17","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T12:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11386"},"modified":"2025-03-18T08:31:41","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T12:31:41","slug":"sunscreen-shower-by-jp-rieger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11386","title":{"rendered":"Sunscreen Shower by JP Rieger"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sunscreen Shower<\/a><\/em>, the new crime novel by Baltimore author JP Rieger takes advantage of the varied cast of characters from his first novel as they, it\u2019s fair to say, lurch through life. This group of friends who survived the horrors of high school together has managed to stay close over the decades since, despite wildly different life paths. The main character, Kev Dixit, is a South Asian police detective, who finds creative uses for his friends\u2019 varied skills in serving and protecting the citizens of Baltimore. Dixit, his friends, and his team in the police department are well-developed characters, and their occasional quirks make them believably human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this story, Dixit is confronted at the outset by a bizarre pair of killings, which at first blush appear to be the murder-suicide of a married couple named Matthiesen. The more he learns about the couple the less likely that seems. Something is off. And part of that something, he learns, is that the Matthiesens weren\u2019t husband-and-wife, they were siblings, possibly even twins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has little time to spare for the Matthiesen case, though, as he\u2019s confronted with a series of young woman attacked in their homes, each a bit more violent than the last. The women have nothing in common but impending marriage and are from different surrounding towns. The multijurisdictional complications give Dixit the chance to do what he does best, and often quite humorously\u2014figure out a way around mindless bureaucratic obstacles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a separate plot, two of his long-time friends\u2014a physician and an actor\u2014have hired an uninterested public relations agent to promote their new book. For an inkling of what the p.r. maven is up against, here\u2019s the book title: Blood Brothers: How Two Longstanding Friends Saved Themselves From The Ugly Streets Of Baltimore In the Midst Of Personal Trials and Chaotic Lives\u2014And The Bonds That Formed, Only To Be Tested, Time And Again, Within The City\u2019s Dark Cultural Wasteland<\/em>. And, if that isn’t enough, there’s this pair’s great invention: the sunscreen shower. Scenes with them are full of humor (a nice break from the crime), but not especially integrated into the rest of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already lots is going on in Dixit\u2019s world (did I mention someone is out to get him?), when he\u2019s saddled with a new straight-arrow Academy grad. She carries the notion of political correctness to extremes, and Dixit\u2019s attempts to avoid saying anything inadvertently offensive are hilarious. But not as much as the \u201csensitivity training\u201d he\u2019s required to complete. The two cases\u2014the possible murder-suicide and the attacks on brides-to-be\u2014are complicated, and watching Dixit and his team make sense of the tiny details is a lot of fun. You also get a big-picture appreciation for the competing pressures urban police departments face and will wish for common sense to win out. That\u2019s Dixit\u2019s view, in any case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His first book, Clonk! <\/em>is laugh-out-loud funny. Reviewed here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunscreen Shower, the new crime novel by Baltimore author JP Rieger takes advantage of the varied cast of characters from his first novel as they, it\u2019s fair to say, lurch through life. This group of friends who survived the horrors … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,54,1821,632,126],"tags":[2105],"class_list":["post-11386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-detective","category-humor","category-police","category-reading-2","tag-baltimore"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2XE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11386"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11390,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11386\/revisions\/11390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}