Austin S.
Camacho’s third novel, Damaged Goods, in his Hannibal Jones
series, is not as successful as his debut novel, Collateral Damage, but is
much better than The Troubleshooter.
Millionaire
Benjamin Blair hires PI troubleshooter Hannibal Jones to find the psychopath
who seduced his Black maid Anita Cooper and stole from her a formula worth millions of dollars
that her pharmaceutical chemist father left her. Although Benjamin is generous
toward his maid, he also wants the formula for his company.
Vernon Cooper, a
Black pharmaceutical chemical genius, came up with a formula for curing
addictions but kept it from his employer, a large pharmaceutical company. While
serving time in prison for a hit and run accident, he meets Roderick Mantooth
to whom he reveals the existence of the formula and the fact he left it with
his daughter.
Rod creates the
“damaged goods” of the title, women he seduces using BDSM, (bondage, discipline
or domination, submission, masochism) to make them his slaves. The problem
Hannibal faces is how to get into Rod’s group to find where he has hidden the
formula. The case takes him into the unfamiliar, unsettling, and dangerous
world of BDSM. Hannibal as a bad dude into kinky sex games while maintaining
his integrity is the force driving the plot toward an unexpected and
disappointing conclusion.
I enjoyed the
humor of Hannibal posing as a bad dude into BDSM, and his attempt to make a rap
CD to impress his young teenage friend Monty, the grandson of Mother
Washington, the matriarch of the neighborhood where they live. He wants to save
Monty from a life on the mean streets of Washington DC.
Hannibal has in
his pocket an engagement ring and plans to ask girlfriend Cindy to marry him,
which makes for pleasant suspense of will he or will he not pop the question. A
married hardboiled PI would be a nice departure from tradition.
Although Damaged
Goods is a routine crime story with no surprises (the ending ,though
unexpected, isn’t a surprise), it is still an exciting novel with plenty of the
usual fisticuffs and gunplay characteristic of Camacho’s other novels, and well
worth your time if you like the action of watching the hero take down the bad
guy as I do.
