Publisher's Weekly Review
After a chaotic start to Mack's wild third Maisie McGrane mystery (after 2015's Choked Up), the Chicago cop goes undercover to infiltrate a Mexican drug cartel. A highlight of the operation is a comic encounter at a border crossing between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, Tex., with a diarrheic bull. Meanwhile, Maisie's lover, Hank Bannon, has disappeared with no word, and her new partner, bad boy Lee Sharpe, pursues her relentlessly. Lee's behavior frequently crosses the line from sexy banter to harassment; he even gropes her in front of a DEA agent. Newcomers might be confused by Maisie's byzantine backstory and the large cast of characters, including her rowdy family, but fans should enjoy wisecracking Maisie's further adventures. The novel closes on a tantalizing note of moral ambiguity when Maisie admits that she genuinely likes most of the criminals she knows. Readers should be prepared for plenty of political snark ("I stuck out more than a constitutionalist at a DNC rally"). Agent: Laura Bradford, Laura Bradford Literary Agency. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
Picking up minutes after the action in Choked Up ends, Mack's third Maisie -McGrane adventure has the former meter maid (now deep undercover cop) getting stabbed in the thigh by boyfriend Hank Bannon, who was trying to save her from Serbian crime lord Stannislav Renko. The repercussions of this incident take Maisie deep into a criminal underworld when an assassination attempt on the Chicago mayor has the Drug Enforcement Agency and other federal organizations relying on her connections to infiltrate a cartel running drugs into the city. As always, Maisie's overly involved Irish family of cops and lawyers try to protect her from a Chicago filled with heroes, villains, charlatans, and thieves. -VERDICT This lively series outing, with its wacky capers and fast-paced plotting, brings to mind works by Lee Goldberg and Janet Evanovich. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.