Rating: 
Summary: What a Terrific Debut Novel--Loved it!
Review: Having read all T. Jefferson Parker's current novels and loving them, I decided to check out his earlier stuff. Laguna Heat arrived and I started it late one afternoon. Immediately, I was drawn into the storyline; but, even more importantly, I was drawn into the mind and character of Tom Shephard. What a well-developed character Parker has given us here. So much is going on in the life of the former-LA cop...trying to live with a righteous shooting from his early-cop days and coping with a new position and murder spree in his hometown, quiet Laguna Beach. And all his father's old friends are involved someway. Too, he is dealing with the heartbreak of divorce, hanging on for dear life. This was just a great read and one I'm so glad I found. I'm only sorry that some of the other early Parkers are out of print and I can't get them. T. Jefferson Parker has become one of my favorite mystery writers and I look forward to starting his latest, Red Light.
Rating:
Summary: What a Terrific Debut Novel--Loved it!
Review: Having read all T. Jefferson Parker's current novels and loving them, I decided to check out his earlier stuff. Laguna Heat arrived and I started it late one afternoon. Immediately, I was drawn into the storyline; but, even more importantly, I was drawn into the mind and character of Tom Shephard. What a well-developed character Parker has given us here. So much is going on in the life of the former-LA cop...trying to live with a righteous shooting from his early-cop days and coping with a new position and murder spree in his hometown, quiet Laguna Beach. And all his father's old friends are involved someway. Too, he is dealing with the heartbreak of divorce, hanging on for dear life. This was just a great read and one I'm so glad I found. I'm only sorry that some of the other early Parkers are out of print and I can't get them. T. Jefferson Parker has become one of my favorite mystery writers and I look forward to starting his latest, Red Light.
Rating:
Summary: A classic "Who done it?"
Review: I actually purchased this book by accident at a used book sale. After I started reading it I couldn't stop. Mr. Parker's writing style let the whole story portray in my mind. I could picture the characters and even smell the salt air. Sometimes I would stop and read an entire paragraph over because it was so beautifully poised. The plot has some twists and turns and about three quarters of the way through I had a hunch on solving the mystery and I had to keep reading to see if I was right, but there was a surprise at the end. The only flaw that I saw was from a legal standpoint. In real life it would not have ended this way because of the way our justice system works. I won't give it away but it has to do with correct police interrogation procedure. Of course I'm probably just being picky because of having a law background. After I finished this book I went out and purchased "Little Saigon" and "Pacific Beat". I think that this book would make a heck of a good movie. Keep on pumping out the books Mr. Parker and I'll keep reading them.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Debut!
Review: I really enjoyed Laguna Heat. T. Jefferson Parker knows Orange County, where I've lived forever. This book has a top of the line story, great characters, and a real ambience. I am slowly reading through all of Parker's titles. I expect to be thoroughly entertained for quite a while.
Rating:
Summary: Great Debut!
Review: I really enjoyed Laguna Heat. T. Jefferson Parker knows Orange County, where I've lived forever. This book has a top of the line story, great characters, and a real ambience. I am slowly reading through all of Parker's titles. I expect to be thoroughly entertained for quite a while.
Rating:
Summary: Can a noir be comfortable?
Review: It can when it's as well written as this one. Nothing happens that shouldn't; everything that should happen, does. This is one of the best first books that I've read. There is an inevitability to events, but it's not routine. It's just the way things should be.
Rating:
Summary: Superior detective story
Review: It pains me to see only 1 other review in this space. I'm fairly new to T. Jefferson Parker, but to my mind he's better than John Sandford, Jonathan Kellerman, and James Patterson, much better than Robin Cook and Patricia Cornwell, and nearly the equal of Michael Connelly. Obviously he needs some better representation. Laguna Heat is a well plotted mystery with plausible twists and ironies. The characters, especially Tom Shepard, are authentic and finely nuanced, full of human frailties and intriguing historical baggage that unfolds along with the murder investigation. This book never overwhelmed me with its power, but consistently impressed me with its competence. Not a sentence rang false. I will eagerly seek out other Parker titles, and recommend this to any fans of the mystery/detective genre.
Rating: 
Summary: The Author is just learning to flex his Writing Muscles
Review: Laguna Heat was a decent book, but I have found later works by the author to be better written as well as better organized, and more suspenseful. It definitely worth reading if you like T. Jefferson Parker... I am merely stating that he has gotten better with practice :-)
Rating:
Summary: Parker's first
Review: T. Jefferson Parker is one of today's very best crime writers. Plotting, character, dialogue, all play out in a balanced and believable fashion in any given novel. "Blue Hour," "Silent Joe," take your pick. Parker is the kind of writer that makes other "name" writers jealous, simply because he's better. It's a shame his work has not found its way to the screen. But even fine writers have their beginnings, and for Parker "Laguna Heat," is his."Laguna Heat," is not a bad novel. In some ways it's a good one, but it is a first novel. Tom Shephard, the police detective hero of the novel is in an incomplete man. He has his demons - perhaps too many, since it seems like some sort of noir checklist. One demon in particular, his anguish over shooting a teenager, seems way overblown, given that same teenager had just opened up another cop with a knife. Then there's the divorce, the drinking, the dominating father, the missing mother, the murderer of the missing mother, and a whole can of Laguna worms, etc. Despite all of this, or because of all of them, Shephard's damaged state never really translates into a character one could care much about. In constast, look at "Joe," from "Silent Joe," another damaged figure of good, who is complex and cared for by the reader. More interesting are the various secondary characters, though even they have, by novel's end, a "stock" feel to them. But "Laguna Heat" does have its moments. The best is perhaps Shepherd's night time swim in the ocean with his lover, Jane Algernon. This is a gorgeous passage, and alone make "Laguna Heat" worth a read. It also reveals perfectly the dark romanticism of noir: "He kicked hard and pulled deeply to keep up with her, careful to leave a few meters between them.. Past the waves he felt the bottom falling away and knew that even a few yards from shore the ocean was much the same as it was many miles out: strong, unfathomable, unforgiving of all that is not part of it. And just as the first lappings of the waves had seemed to draw little parts of him away with them, he could now feel larger portions leaving too. He recalled that he had been married once but wasn't sure to whom. He believed that he rented an apartment somewhere in the town behind them but couldn't quote an address. He knew he was a cop on a murder case but couldn't remember the specifics. He wondered why he had ever quit surfing. But the regret soon vanished. He didn't know why and didn't want to know. Was it possible to continue this way to Hawaii, or perhaps to an uninhabited tropical island where he and Jane could live on fish and fruit, procreate, wildly, found a race? It seemed a possibility. Then ahead of him, Jane Algernon's face collected in the darkness and it was smiling. "Are you scared? The rocks are under us, not far," she said. Shephard could feel the churning of her legs as she kicked to stay afloat. Her hair was slicked back and the bones in her face caught the moonlight." The above is just a portion from an extended passage. And it's such moments as these in "Laguna Heat," that signal, like lightning flashes, the writer Parker is to become.
Rating:
Summary: Parker's first
Review: T. Jefferson Parker is one of today's very best crime writers. Plotting, character, dialogue, all play out in a balanced and believable fashion in any given novel. "Blue Hour," "Silent Joe," take your pick. Parker is the kind of writer that makes other "name" writers jealous, simply because he's better. It's a shame his work has not found its way to the screen. But even fine writers have their beginnings, and for Parker "Laguna Heat," is his. "Laguna Heat," is not a bad novel. In some ways it's a good one, but it is a first novel. Tom Shephard, the police detective hero of the novel is in an incomplete man. He has his demons - perhaps too many, since it seems like some sort of noir checklist. One demon in particular, his anguish over shooting a teenager, seems way overblown, given that same teenager had just opened up another cop with a knife. Then there's the divorce, the drinking, the dominating father, the missing mother, the murderer of the missing mother, and a whole can of Laguna worms, etc. Despite all of this, or because of all of them, Shephard's damaged state never really translates into a character one could care much about. In constast, look at "Joe," from "Silent Joe," another damaged figure of good, who is complex and cared for by the reader. More interesting are the various secondary characters, though even they have, by novel's end, a "stock" feel to them. But "Laguna Heat" does have its moments. The best is perhaps Shepherd's night time swim in the ocean with his lover, Jane Algernon. This is a gorgeous passage, and alone make "Laguna Heat" worth a read. It also reveals perfectly the dark romanticism of noir: "He kicked hard and pulled deeply to keep up with her, careful to leave a few meters between them.. Past the waves he felt the bottom falling away and knew that even a few yards from shore the ocean was much the same as it was many miles out: strong, unfathomable, unforgiving of all that is not part of it. And just as the first lappings of the waves had seemed to draw little parts of him away with them, he could now feel larger portions leaving too. He recalled that he had been married once but wasn't sure to whom. He believed that he rented an apartment somewhere in the town behind them but couldn't quote an address. He knew he was a cop on a murder case but couldn't remember the specifics. He wondered why he had ever quit surfing. But the regret soon vanished. He didn't know why and didn't want to know. Was it possible to continue this way to Hawaii, or perhaps to an uninhabited tropical island where he and Jane could live on fish and fruit, procreate, wildly, found a race? It seemed a possibility. Then ahead of him, Jane Algernon's face collected in the darkness and it was smiling. "Are you scared? The rocks are under us, not far," she said. Shephard could feel the churning of her legs as she kicked to stay afloat. Her hair was slicked back and the bones in her face caught the moonlight." The above is just a portion from an extended passage. And it's such moments as these in "Laguna Heat," that signal, like lightning flashes, the writer Parker is to become.
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