Sergeant Pete Decker is driving through a housing estate one night when he discovers an abandoned toddler in blood-stained pyjamas. As Decker and his partner, Marge Dunn, hunt for the child's parents, the bee-stings they notice all over the child's arm guide them to a honey farm set in the barren scrubland surrounding Los Angeles. It's a tough landscape, populated by hard-working people with little time for city folks, so the two detectives aren't surprised when there is no welcoming party. Nothing, though, has prepared them for the incredible stonewalling from the locals, nor for the grisly sight that greets them in the farmhouse. But Decker and Dunn are professionals to the core and, delving deeper, find a gruesome mystery far more lethal than the ordinary hornet's nest...
This series is a slow one for me, I only pick one up every once in a while. I still find them interesting, if a little dated. This one starts out with a small child that is found unsupervised in the middle of the night, which of course tugged at my heart strings. The child leads Decker to a murder mystery, and along the way he’s also trying to clear a fellow Vietnam vet of some nasty charges.
The book jumped around a lot and just didn’t leave much of an impression on me. Other than the small child involved, I didn’t feel much for any of the perpetrators/victims in either plot line. Rina plays a very small part in the story, and seems to only be there as a recipient of some information about Decker’s past. It wasn’t weak enough for me to give up on the series, but I won’t be rushing out to pick up the next one either.
