Author's guest post at my blog:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/02/foodfic-please-welcome-vincent-zandri.html

When two convicts, Moss and Sweet, escape Dannemora Maximum Security Prison and are not apprehended soon thereafter, New York’s governor Valente calls upon former prison warden turned private investigator, Jack Marconi, to track and apprehend the killers. Marconi recruits former inmate, Blood, to assist in the search, providing a “mind that thinks like a prisoner”. They make the long trip from Albany to Plattsburgh, meet with the town’s sheriff and two of the escapees’ accomplices who were arrested and then plan strategy. It is Marconi’s and Blood’s opinions that the escapees are holed up in the area waiting for the various police investigative agencies to focus their searches further afield. When Marconi and Blood do locate the convicts, they discover that Moss and Sweet are the tip of a very corrupt iceberg and Valente’s motive for their capture may not actually be for public safety. Verdict: Marconi and Blood mimic the relationship between Robert B. Parker’s Spenser and Hawk: snappy repartee, white P.I. with hulking, mysterious Black partner, both men with high ethical standards. The problem is Parker did it better. The plot is weak and predictable. The characters are stereotypical. The repartee is uninspired. An average guns blazing mystery. ( )