A fellow LTer recommended this series, and now I have another favorite author to add to my list. This is the first book in Bruce Zimmerman's series about Quinn Parker, who is, in his own words, a "former three-piece-suiter" who came into a bit of money and took early retirement. Now he works as a phobia counselor, and in between stints of helping people confront and conquer their deepest fears, he lends a helping hand to friends in trouble. In this book, Parker finds a former lover and good friend dead in horrific circumstances, and has to convince the police that he didn't kill her. There's much more to the story, of course, but half the joy of the book is in watching Parker puzzle out the various clues.

If this all sounds a bit like the late John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee, you're right. But Parker is more down-to-earth than McGee, less bloodthirsty, perhaps, and certainly less hedonistic. Parker seems more like the in-shape guy who works in the next cubicle, who likes a ball game or three, goes out drinking with his buddies, and just happens to get drawn into some difficult situations when he tries to help out a friend.

That's what makes him so darned likable. Quinn Parker is no superhero -- no iron man with thews of steel. When Parker is beaten up, he stays down, and it actually takes him the normal number of days to recover. His friends are no world-beaters either -- just ordinary, pleasant people with lives as regular as lives get in the San Francisco Bay area. People I wish I knew and could hang out with.

And Zimmerman is a master wordsmith. There are no awkward metaphors, no ridiculously strained figures of speech. His prose flows as naturally as his dialogue -- and every character speaks with her or his own voice. His plots are engaging, but without the end-of-the-world scenarios that so many authors feel it necessary to include in their books these days. Mind you, Zimmerman's plots are not in any way "cozy mysteries" involving pots of tea, and cats, and a body or two in the library. There's a realistic amount of blood and death in these books, but Zimmerman avoids both the excesses of true noir and the banality of most domestic mysteries.

Best of all, for me as a female reader, is that not every woman in these books is a drop-dead gorgeous, sensuous beauty. The women are just as real as the men -- and in today's crime fiction, that's a great compliment.

There's sex and violence in these books, but neither are very graphic -- Zimmerman doesn't dwell with gruesome relish on every drop of blood and every fleshy move. In this, the resemblance to the McGee series is quite noticeable, in that acknowledgment is given to the fact that we're all adults here, and adults engage in physical relationships, but as adults, we don't need to dwell on every pornographic detail.

And I guess that's what I like so much about these books -- they're adult books in that the author assumes that his readers are mature enough to fill in some of the blanks for themselves. Very highly recommended. ( )