St. Martin's Press, 1995.
Overview: Police Inspector Kate Martinelli is working in the field again after six months of pushing papers while she focused her attention on Lee, her partner, who was shot and paralyzed from the waist down when the trap for the serial killer Kate was pursuing went wrong. When she and Inspector Alonzo Hawkin are put on the case to discover who murdered a homeless man, they quickly discover that an eccentric "Holy Fool" might be connected. Unfortunately for Martinelli and Hawkin, the Fool only speaks in quotations from the Bible, Shakespeare, and other classics. That complication slows down the investigation, and is a mystery in itself.
My reaction: While I have gotten hooked on King's Sherlock Homes and Mary Russell series, this Martinelli book, like its predecessor (reviewed here), is not nearly as well-written as those. The plot of this one is much more tolerable to me--one unpleasant grown man is murdered versus a number of innocent little girls--but I felt that the book got mired down in constant analysis of the Fool's speech, and lacked the action of A Grave Talent. I also thought that the ending was somewhat anticlimactic, but I honestly wasn't expecting a thrilling conclusion after a couple hundred pages of frustration. (I'll give King that--I was definitely as frustrated as the detectives!) Unless you're already a Laurie R. King fiend and interested in seeing how her career developed, I'm sad to say that I'd give these a pass.
Kate Martinelli Series:
A Grave Talent, 1993
To Play the Fool, 1995
With Child, 1996
Night Work, 2000
The Art of Detection, 2006
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