{"id":7349,"date":"2018-07-10T07:35:17","date_gmt":"2018-07-10T11:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7349"},"modified":"2018-07-10T07:35:17","modified_gmt":"2018-07-10T11:35:17","slug":"righteous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7349","title":{"rendered":"*****Righteous"},"content":{"rendered":"
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photo: Telstar Logistics on Visualhunt, creative commons BY-NC license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Joe Ide, narrated by Sullivan Jones \u2013 <\/strong>Second in Joe Ide\u2019s series about Isaiah Quintabe, a young black man living in tough East Long Beach, California, who\u2019s really good \u00a0to have around if there\u2019s trouble. Not that he\u2019s a crack shot or a kung-fu warrior. Quintabe gets people out of jams large and small by sheer brainpower.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve read his earlier book<\/a>, IQ<\/em>, you\u2019ll happily see the return of a number of its characters. None is more welcome than Quintabe\u2019s sometime partner Juanell Dodson. The fast-talking, wise-cracking Dodson is forever hoping yet failing to outthink the younger man. Ide writes the Dodson character with much humor and affection and gives him girlfriends with attitude. With impending fatherhood, he\u2019s adopted a veneer of responsibility that crumbles under the slightest pressure.<\/p>\n

Quintabe was seventeen in the first book when his adored older brother Marcus, killed in a hit-and-run, left the teenager on his own. This book takes place eight years later, and he\u2019s still a solitary soul, alone except for his dog, and emotionally isolated. His neighbors gladly call on him to help him solve their problems\u2014missing jewelry, a threatening ex-husband\u2014which helps him make ends meet, barely.<\/p>\n

He gave up his obsessive search for the car that killed Marcus some years ago, but in a short prologue, he finds the car and with the few clues inside, rethinks the events of that deadly afternoon. His conclusion? Marcus\u2019s death was not a random traffic fatality, it was a hit. But why? And who?<\/p>\n

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photo: Mariamichelle, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

In Las Vegas, \u00a0a young Chinese woman and aspiring DJ Janine Van and her deadbeat boyfriend Benny are gambling away money they don\u2019t have. He\u2019s behind on the vig with some rough characters more than willing to hurt him and Janine too. Benny is a whiner, and not very appealing, though the sassy Janine loves him. As a flavor-enhancer, here\u2019s her exit line after jockeying a club set: \u201cWhassup my people! This is your queen kamikaze, the heat in your wasabi, the gravy train in the food chain, the champagne in the chow mein, I\u2019m DJ Dama, baby, that was my set, and I\u2019m gettin\u2019 up outta heeerre, PEACE!\u201d<\/p>\n

Out of the blue, Quintabe is contacted by Marcus\u2019s ex-girlfriend, Sarita, now a lawyer at a high-priced law firm. Quintabe had quite a crush on her, still does, and she wants to meet. His hopes raise (the one illogical thought he pursues), but what she wants is for him to find her younger half-sister, in trouble in Las Vegas where she hangs out with her screw-up boyfriend. You guessed it, Janine and Benny.<\/p>\n

What sounds like a simple rescue operation becomes terrifyingly complicated, as Ide deftly sets several crisscrossing plots in motion. Quintabe has a run-in with a Mexican gang, the Sure\u00f1os Locos 13, and they\u2019re out to get him. Janine and Sarita\u2019s father seems a respectable business man, but somewhere in the background are human trafficking, prostitution, and the murderous Chinese triads. The ethnicities vary but the characters are alike in their mastery of the entertaining verbal insult.<\/p>\n

And Quintabe still searches for his brother\u2019s murderer. His prime suspect is Seb Habimana, a dangerous East African man who lost a leg in the Hutu-Tutsi wars. He uses a cane he made from the legbone of the man who maimed him.<\/p>\n

As with the previous book, Sullivan Jones\u2019s narration of all these muticultural, crosscultural and anticultural characters is flawless. You get Benny\u2019s whine, Dodson\u2019s jive, his girlfriends\u2019 attitude, and the Chinese black-gangster rifs. Jones hits every comedic and ironic note, making music out of it all, and never missing a beat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joe Ide, narrated by Sullivan Jones \u2013 Second in Joe Ide\u2019s series about Isaiah Quintabe, a young black man living in tough East Long Beach, California, who\u2019s really good \u00a0to have around if there\u2019s trouble. Not that he\u2019s a … 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":"*****Righteous - a follow-up crime thriller as entertaining and lively as the award-winning debut. You'll love Isaiah Quintabe and his pal Dodson.","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":[1335,77,52,40,126,359],"tags":[1130,1129,388,307,1355,1356],"class_list":["post-7349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-audio-books","category-crime","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-review","tag-i-q","tag-joe-ide","tag-las-vegas","tag-los-angeles","tag-righteous","tag-sullivan-jones"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Ux","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7349","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=7349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7352,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7349\/revisions\/7352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}