Resurrection Mall by Dana King

Since March, I have barely traveled more than a dozen miles from my front door. But during the lockdown, I was happy to visit Penns River.

That small, western Pennsylvania city, not far from Pittsburgh, is the fictional setting for Dana’s King’s terrific series of police procedurals.

The third book in the series, Resurrection Mall, picks up about year after the violent shootout at the end of the previous book, Grind Joint.

Detective “Doc” Dougherty is on a new case. Five, small-time drug dealers meet their bloody demise in the food court of a rundown shopping mall. Two men with shotguns did the job.

The place of the attack, renamed Resurrection Mall, is the city’s hope to revive a poor area. A pastor, with the adopted name Christian Love, is rebuilding it as a church and center for his ministry.

The pastor has two assistants with criminal records. He also has some shady contractors with possible connections to the drug dealers.

Suspects are everywhere and Doc keeps running into more every time he turns around. Complicating matters, there is a witness who saw the killers’ faces. It is a teenager whose mother is a junkie and who Doc helped in a previous story. The kid is older and tougher now, and scared to death of the hitmen.

Resurrection Mall is fast paced and suspenseful. Two foot-chases involving Doc are vivid. Dana King also has a way of making a reader “see” and “feel” Penns River in winter.

It is always a pleasure to ride along with Doc and his partner, tough, grumpy Grabek. Also back in this book are Neuschwander, “Eye Chart” Zywiciel, and their boss “Stush” Napierkowski, the chief of police.

A few weeks ago, Dana King published his latest Penns River novel, Pushing Water, the fifth in the series.

Grind Joint by Dana King

Dana King’s first novel in his Penns River crime series, Worst Enemies, was one of the best books I read last year (reviewed here).

It would be hard to top a start like that, but King does it with his second book in the series, Grind Joint.

Detective Benjamin “Doc” Dougherty and the cops of the Penns River Police Department are back, along with a visitor from another state – and another crime series by Dana King – private investigator Nick Forte.

Forte, who is Doc’s cousin, comes to Penns River to visit his mother and gets involved in Doc’s latest case.

A new casino is about to open in an abandoned shopping mall in the seen-better-days fictional city of Penns River. Doc knows it will be a grind joint, but the powers that be welcome it as a source of income and jobs.

Before the grand opening of the gambling joint, a body is dumped at the front door. The murdered man was a known drug dealer and former associate of local mob boss, Michael “Mike the Hook” Mannarino. Suspicion falls on Mannarino who lives quietly in Penns River while committing crimes in other towns.

The casino is not an innocent victim. A sleazy real estate developer is backing it along with a silent partner, a wealthy Russian gangster. The Russian’s violent and loony son, Yuri, also has an interest in the casino and in expanding his own drug business in the region.

All these major-league criminals are more than the small municipal police force can handle. Doc recruits his visiting cousin, Nick Forte, to assist in his investigations. Soon, both of them are targets of the out of control Yuri and his mob.

Grind Joint moves at a pulse-pounding pace with Doc and Nick in serious danger all the way.

Not only is King’s plot involving, but I also enjoy his writing style. He has a way of making a reader worry and laugh at the same time. He also has a subtle way of describing characters and their actions.

When Doc is joshing with an old timer, he writes, “West did a thing with his lips and eyes that passed for laughter.” That could be interpreted in many ways by many readers. But a recollection of someone I knew who did something like that flashed across my mind and the book’s character became a real person.

There are now four novels in the Penns River series: Worst Enemies, Grind Joint, Resurrection Mall, and Ten-Seven.

(And while you are in the book-buying mood, please also check out my crime novel, Lyme Depot. Thanks.)

(For more posts on books, head over to Todd Mason’s blog.)

Worst Enemies by Dana King

Worst Enemies, the last book I read before the close of the year, is on my short list of best reads of 2018.

It is the first book in Dana King’s Penns River series and introduces Detective Benjamin “Doc” Dougherty and the other cops in this fictional city in western Pennsylvania.

Doc and his partner, Willie Grabek, a slightly burned-out detective close to retirement, are called to the scene of a brutal homicide. A woman was killed in her home during a burglary gone wrong. Or, so the cops think.

The identity of the killer is revealed in the first chapter as Tom Widmer, a knucklehead who, while boozing in a strip joint, meets Marty Cropcho. The two share their problems and Marty comes up with a great plan to solve them. He tells Tom they should each kill the other’s wife in a Strangers on a Train type plan, and no one will ever connect them because no one knows they are acquaintances. Evidently these two never read the Patricia Highsmith novel or saw the Alfred Hitchcock movie.

With complete instructions on how to get into the house and just what to steal to make it look good, Tom Widmer goes first. But Widmer quickly learns it is not easy to kill a person. Marty Cropcho’s wife puts up one hell of a fight for her life, but loses in a brutally graphic scene.

The detectives soon have Widmer in custody when author Dana King pulls the rug out from under everyone. The case goes off in an unexpected direction. His story zigs and zags and speeds along following Doc as he tries to untangle a mystery that seemed so clear cut in the beginning.

King also provides a look into Doc’s personal life – his love life, his folks whom he visits every Sunday to watch the Steelers play football on TV, and his somewhat empty home life.

At times, the book feels like non-fiction thanks to King’s natural, realistic-sounding dialogue and the unusual surnames of many of his characters, including one police officer nicknamed Eye Chart.

The small city of Penns River comes to life as clearly on the page as any real place, complete with its wealthy suburb, a crumbling poor neighborhood, local taverns, chicken wing joints, and a veterans’ hall where old timers shoot pool and drink tap beer.

There are two more novels in the Penns River series, Grind Joint and Resurrection Mall, and Dana King just announced a fourth book, Ten-Seven, due out this month.