I’ll admit I turned down the opportunity to review P.J. Tracy’s latest book, The Devil You Know. Fortunately, Sandie Herron read and reviewed it, so I can still share a review here. Thank you, Sandie.

The Devil You Know
Written by P. J. Tracy
Detective Margaret Nolan mystery, Book 3
Kindle version
Minotaur Books (January 17, 2023)
294 Pages
ASIN: B09Y46NXKL

This tale of death is all about the characters, lushly told and styled to fit the rich culture in Los Angeles.  Each is defined by their past and current relationships.  There is action to the story, but it definitely is sidelined by who’s who.  The language is a bit too overblown for my taste, sort of like the people it describes.

Seth Lehman, agent to beloved Disney star Evan Hobbes, is looking for his pants when his phone blares a warning this Saturday morning.  Someone has produced a pornographic video of Hobbes doing hideous things.  Clearly a deepfake, Seth must perform damage control.  Seth worked for Rebecca Wodehouse at the snobby agency that he always meant to leave, and knew she’d be all over him to clear this up.

Most of LA is awakened on Sunday morning by an earthquake that sent a hilltop down onto the Pacific Coast Highway.  Detective Margaret Nolan and her partner Al Crawford meet the coroner and criminalistics at the scene, since Evan’s body spilled down with the hillside from the home of Essie Baum, sister to Seth Lehman, where she’d hosted a large party the night before that included Evan and Seth as guests.  That morning finds Seth buying caviar for his paramour of the night, Daphna Love, whom he’d convinced to change agents to him at his new agency, as soon as he quit Becca.  Little did Seth know he would be called on by Essie for help in dealing with Evan’s death.  Intertwined with doing so, Seth and Daphna decide to marry.

Nolan had noted some marks on Evan’s neck that might have indicated murder.  His broken and battered body from the fall down the cliff would need to be analyzed to determine murder, accident, or even suicide.  After the bombshell of the deepfake the day before, any were possible.  In the meantime, Essie can’t seem to find her husband David, the top Disney exec who’d been unfaithful many, many times.  It’s a shock when he’s found at their Malibu home shot to death with a young woman carrying a thumb drive full of photos of girls with David, and Evan Hobbes.  Essie is having a meltdown while drugs and alcohol flow.  David’s computer is missing, so Maggie Nolan is dealing with cybercrimes as well.  Now we wonder if that deepfake really was fake and if so who made it and who paid for it.

Another storyline about an Afghanistan war vet with PTSD is interwoven with the Hobbes/Baum story, but it doesn’t go anywhere and seems superfluous.  It may simply pay homage to the series to which this is the third entry.  All the action takes place over a long weekend and ends quite abruptly with the revelation of the killer’s identity, which is not really a surprise.  Or perhaps by then, I really didn’t care who killed whom; I just wanted the story to be over.