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Moving Targets

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"With Moving Targets, Warren Easley delivers another humdinger of a tale featuring the City of Roses. But there's so much more to like about this story than just its evocative Portland setting. Cal Claxton is a guy worth rooting for, and the gang who aid him in solving the complex and dangerous mystery involved are a fun bunch to follow. If you're not familiar with these gems out of Oregon, now's the perfect time to give Warren Easely and Cal Claxton a try. You won't be disappointed." —William Kent Krueger, award-winning, bestselling author of Ordinary Grace and the Cork O'Connor series

When a young woman walks into Caffeine Central, Cal Claxton's law office in downtown Portland, he has no idea that agreeing to help her will turn his life upside down. His new client is the adopted daughter—"I'm brown and they're white"—of a Portland power couple famed for their real estate development firm and charitable work.

Sculptor Angela Wingate, once a wild child, and her recently widowed mother, Margaret, had grown close after years of estrangement. A grieving Angela is hesitant but nonetheless determined to learn if Margaret's recent death was a hit-and-run while out on her morning jog in her ritzy neighborhood, or something more—like murder. Angela is frustrated at the lagging police investigation and by her growing sense of something sinister at work.

As the ever-curious Cal begins to poke the principal players at Wingate Properties and to question Margaret's will, links surface between a lucrative riverfront project and a ruthless Russian ring. With a possible deadly foreign assassin in play, the threat level rises and the body count starts to grow.

Decidedly outgunned, Cal enlists his Cuban friend Nando, an enterprising investigator with an on-call hacker, and a bouncer at a strip club who knows the Russian underworld. And Cal gradually develops other allies—a skeptical police captain and a city councilwoman who opposes the massive riverfront project. In a separate battle, he recruits neighbors and officials who may help him kill the reboot of a quarry operation that threatens his beloved farmhouse home in rural Dundee, a loss that would also be tragic for his beloved dog, Archie.

Beneath this story run the narratives of several strong women connected to Cal who are learning just how powerful they can be as they change up their lives.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 9, 2018
      Angela Wingate, the grown daughter of a prominent Portland, Ore., couple against whom she rebelled as a teen, needs Cal Claxton’s help in Easley’s entertaining sixth mystery featuring the genial lawyer with a strong sense of social responsibility (after 2017’s Blood for Wine). A year earlier, Angela’s rich real estate developer father died of a stroke. Soon afterward, she began to make peace with her estranged mother, Margaret. The two bonded during the Women’s March on Washington, with Margaret returning home determined to shift the focus of Wingate Properties from luxury apartments to affordable housing. Five weeks before Angela’s visit to Cal, Margaret was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Angela now wants justice. Political corruption, collusion with foreign interests, money laundering, and so much more emerge as Cal investigates. Cal treats everyone with the respect and consideration they deserve, but wrongdoers get exactly what’s coming to them. Intelligent dialogue, evocative descriptions of the Oregon landscape, and sly pokes at the current cultural climate make this a winner.

    • Kirkus

      July 15, 2018
      A hit-and-run may be a mob play to move into a real estate venture, according to a pro bono lawyer hired by the victim's daughter.Cal Claxton, lawyer to the poor and disenfranchised of Portland, Oregon, uses the coffeehouse Caffeine Central as an ad hoc office to meet with clients. Cal's been working the low-cost circuit for a few years (Blood for Wine, 2017, etc.), having found work with clients who couldn't otherwise afford his representation rewarding to his soul if not his wallet. Former wild child Angela Wingate is not Cal's typical client. Raised in wealth by her property-developing adoptive parents, Charles and Margaret, Angela's given up her hard-partying ways only in the past few years. Angela's former lifestyle estranged her from her parents, and she was unable to make amends before Charles' death last year. But Angela and Margaret had started to rebuild their relationship when Margaret was killed in a hit-and-run five weeks ago. Now Angela pleads for Cal to investigate Margaret's death. She's sure it could be related to the leadership at Wingate Properties and to Margaret's unusual will, which cuts Angela out almost completely. To investigate, Cal connects with his longtime friend Nando Mendoza, a jack-of-all-trades who suspects that Margaret's death could be connected to Ilya Boyarchenko and the Russian mob, who have their own fingers in property development. When Cal brings his work home to his Dundee farmhouse outside the city, he finds that a mining operation has begun in his backyard, terrifying his companion dog, Archie, and thrusting Cal into legal research on his own behalf. Though he'd love the support and listening ear of his girlfriend, Winona Cloud, she's distracted by the fight of her people at Standing Rock, and her stress threatens their relationship.Though the implication of the mob in real estate isn't the most imaginative gambit, Easley continues in every installment of this series to get a better handle on his characters and the vital balance between principal and supporting plots.

      COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      August 1, 2018
      Those damned developers again. It's a perennial mystery theme: theme: greedy oligarchs overbuild high-rises that look like the boxes they came in, decimate neighborhoods, link up with folks even more unsavory than they are, and murder anyone who gets in their way. Until they cross that one person who isn't going to take it. This time it's Easley's series hero, Cal Claxton, a lawyer who settled near Portland, Oregon, after his wife's death. He'd rather occupy himself with low-voltage cases; jog with his heroic dog, Archie; and sample the local craft beers. But an heiress appears, asking him to investigate the death of her mom, who was maybe about to turn property over to charity, and Claxton is in. It's a familiar trail of crime syndicates, money laundering, and contract killers, but what's most interesting is Claxton himself?good-natured, superficially dull as dishwater, not at all deft with the ladies. He's generally slow to anger, too, but when the greedheads, on top of their international scams, crank up a loud gravel quarry outside Claxton's home, things change. They should have known better.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

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