The Renegades (Charlie Hood Novel)

I had been reading a book by a popular author, got to around page 100 and realized I did not care if the characters lived or died. Just couldn't get into the complicated story without caring about the characters. The Renegades has great character development so similarly into the story I couldn't wait to find out what happens next.

I have discovered this writer and am now in the process of reading all his works. Holds your attention. Recommended.

T. Jefferson Parker has been writing for nearly two decades, and I've enjoyed every single one of his novels, though some perhaps more than others. I happen to believe that Silent Joe is still his best novel to date, but L.A. Outlaws and The Renegades definitely tie for second place. The Renegades is Mr. Parker's newest hardcover novel and brings back Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Charlie Hood, who first appeared in L.A. Outlaws. Still recovering from his tragic love affair with outlaw, Alison Murietta, and the arrest of a crooked cop, Hood has been reassigned to Antelope Valley, where he patrols the lonely roads by himself at night. He doesn't mind. Hood likes being alone and driving for long periods of time. Everything, however, changes on the night he's partnered with Deputy Terry Laws and they have to investigate the report of drug use and loud music at a housing project with a couple of employees from the Housing Authority. It turns out to be a set up to get Deputy Laws out there so that he can be murdered. While he's sitting in the patrol car, the assailant appears from of nowhere and kills him with a machine gun. Charlie Hood barely manages to survive the onslaught and makes him downright angry that he couldn't prevent the killing of another police officer. Because Hood is determined to find the killer of his partner, Internal Affairs taps him to help with the investigation. They want him to find out why Laws was executed and if there's anything in the dead officer's past to warrant his death. It doesn't take Hood long to find out that Terry Laws was living well beyond his means on a deputy's salary. In fact, he was bringing home an extra seven thousand dollars a week This fact leads Hood to take a closer look at Laws' former partner, a reservist named Coleman Draper, who's handsome, intelligent, polite, and also one the most evil men Hood has ever encountered. Draper, who may have murdered his parents and siblings in a house fire years before, has a unique way of manipulating those around him in order to get what he wants. He talked Terry into murdering two drug couriers so that they could take their spots and make some real money. Hood is going to have his hands full once Draper realizes that he's under suspicion and then seeks to kill the one person who might be able to bring him down. It's going to be a cat-and-mouse game with the loser paying the ultimate price--death! T. Jefferson Parker, like authors Michael Connelly and Robert Crais, knows the Los Angeles County area like the back of his hand and brings it alive with his magical prose, enabling the reader to feel as if he's actually there in sunny Southern California, dodging bullets. Parker also creates rather interesting characters, especially with regards to the villains, who always seem to breath and live like people in the real world. They're always human with chinks in their personalities that make them fun to read about. Even the secondary ch

T. Jefferson Parker is beginning to hit his stride. If you've been reading him from the beginning, you know exactly what I mean. Parker has been on my author A-list since his debut work of fiction, LAGUNA HEAT, was published. The time between each of his books has seemed interminable, though ultimately worth the wait, and each new title has appeared to take Parker, and his readers, to a whole new level. His previous novel, L.A. OUTLAWS, left you with the feeling that everything he had written before was just an introduction to what he had coming up, the goods that would really blow your socks off. And you know what? THE RENEGADES lives up to that promise, and then some. THE RENEGADES stands on its own just fine but is a nominal sequel to L.A. OUTLAWS (more on that later). Charlie Hood is back, now working for the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, patrolling the county's far northern borders and on the otherwise dusty roads. Hood enjoys the relative quiet and solitude, which serves as a balm to his own dark and troubled thoughts. All is abruptly changed, however, when he draws veteran officer Terry Laws as a riding partner. Before his shift is over, Hood will witness Laws being gunned down, assassin-style, and will vow to catch the killer. Hood is temporarily assigned to Internal Affairs to dig into Laws's background and determine what motives there might have been in the murder of an officer who was known in the department as "Mr. Wonderful." Initially, Hood is drawn toward suspecting a local gangbanger who had a grudge against Laws and who, indeed, bears a resemblance to the shooter. He casts a wider net, however, and starts eyeing an arrest that Laws made, years earlier, while partnered with a reserve deputy named Coleman Draper. As Laws begins to look into the circumstances behind the arrest, and the personal lives of Draper and Laws, he slowly comes to the conclusion that time and the desert conceal both truth and deceit and that no one is as good or as evil as they might appear to be at first blush. The last 100 pages of THE RENEGADES should come with a medical disclaimer. You run serious risk of falling off the edge of your seat or having a heart attack. But here is where Parker really takes names: he intersperses the narrative from Hood's point of view with an ongoing conversation between Draper and another party whose identity remains unknown for a good part of the book. The backstory that forms the foundation for the motivating factors behind what occurs is accordingly dealt out piecemeal, from two different places, like breadcrumbs that not only lead the reader down a particular path but also become nuggets that themselves become worthy objects of the search. And while, again, THE RENEGADES is complete in itself, my gut feeling is that with L.A. OUTLAWS and a future novel, it will form a trilogy that will stand as the high-water mark of Parker's work. In the meantime, a year seems too long a time to wait to find out. --- Review

I have been with T. Jefferson Parker since the beginning, with Laguna Heat. This may be his best novel yet. All are good, but Parker's voice has developed over time and he has slowly but very surely become one of our top crime novelists. The Renegades is a sequel to L.A. Outlaws. I expect (and hope) that there will now be a fullblown Charlie Hood series. In The Renegades Charlie has relocated to the Antelope Valley and he is working for Internal Affairs. His partner having been murdered, he is investigating an individual who may have been his dead partner's partner-in-crime. The son of his love interest from L.A. Outlaws is here as well--unbeknownst to Charlie, a young confidant and eventual partner (for how long we don't know) of the man upon whom Charlie is focusing his investigation. The young man is slightly over-the-top in his skills; let's just say that he has a strong mind in a strong body. I want to see more of him. The novel covers a lot of ground, from Charlie's home in Silverlake to his work in the Antelope Valley and his prey's running of drug money from L.A. to Baja. The atmospherics are exceptional and the procedural details very interesting. (One of the money runners is a police reservist, drawing a dollar a year, but using and abusing the powers of his office with great skill.) This 'feels' like a sweeping, drug epic such as Don Winslow's The Power of the Dog and the mixed time levels, larger-than-life heroes and villains, and physical scale add to the book's overall impact. Short on sex but long on violence, several of the more interesting characters in the book are of the canine variety. Parker is pushing all of our emotional buttons and doing so with cleverness and skill. Highly recommended.

Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs Charlie Hood and Terry Laws are driving together when the former is executed. The brass insists gang initiation or perhaps getting even with Laws who has been a veteran of the streets. Hood is a bit shook up with his new partner's death especially since he prefers patrolling by himself with his demon (the spirit of Allison Murrieta - see L.A. OUTLAWS) to accompany him, but understands why he should not investigate it. However, Hood is a bit surprised when he is assigned to Internal Affairs, but this also gives him an opportunity to look into who murdered his partner starting with inquiries into the life of Terry, dubbed "Mr. Wonderful". He soon begins to find evidence that alleges Terry that was a crooked cop delivering a personal code of justice. This is something that Hood can understand as a good cop crosses the line to convey justice like in the old west as the system often protects nasty felons not because of fundamental rights that these same hoods tale away from others, but because of those working inside of it are disguised as upright citizens. Hood is a beacon of morality in a desert of corruption in which drugs seem to own almost everyone's soul from Los Angeles to Mexico. The story line is fast-paced but driven by the throwback hero who obsesses with a need to know whether Mr. Wonderful was a bad or good cop; as defined by Hood and not some artificial law or a pompous judge with Allison inside his head as a reminder of what justice is. Fans will enjoy Hood's Old West mentality in modern day Southern California. Harriet Klausner