I don't hate it when I'm right; it just makes me feel a bit more cocky. A few weeks back I pimped this surf-noir asskicker on my blog and, goddamn it, I love being ahead of the curve and having my instincts verified. Shannon just rips. From the NY Times:"Jack Liffey, the private investigator in John Shannon’s mysteries, works the roughest territory in the genre — the subculture of the Southern California teenager. “I’m not really a detective,” the big-hearted P.I. explains in PALOS VERDES BLUE (Pegasus, $25). “My practice is limited to looking for missing children.” That doesn’t begin to describe the harrowing rescue job he undertakes when he begins searching for a schoolgirl with a passionate commitment to protecting butterflies and other endangered species, including the illegal Mexican workers camping out on the cliffs above Lunada Bay. Unaware that his own impetuous teenage daughter is endangering herself by trying to help him, Liffey patiently excavates the area’s social strata, uncovering layers of antagonism among the privileged rich and their anonymous day laborers, rival surfer gangs and a racist militia group prowling the hills — hostility that bounces right back at parents from their alienated children."