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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  amf0001 | Dec 4, 2009 |  A follow up to "Big City, Bad Blood," P.I. Ray Dudgeon reluctantly accepts a case to find out what is behing Joan Richmond's recent murder by Stephen Zhang. Joan's father, Isaac Richmond, a retired army colonel, tells Ray that he needs closure. He had been talking to Joan when she went to answer her door and was murdered. Joan's prior employer was H.M.Nichols, military contractors. Ray finds out that the company is shady and is subject of a congressional inquiry on their billing. Since Joan ran their billing, she was scheduled to testify. Ray speaks to the person in charge of H.M.Nichols and is given a smoke screen interview. He's also introduced to Blake Sten, VP of Security who attempts to intimidate Ray, without success. What Ray and his buddy, Gravedigger, surmise is that Steve Zhang found something in the company's computer files. Sten fires Zhang with a fabricated story and soon but Zhang and Joan are dead. I was totally captivated by the story. Not only is Ray a good detective, but he shows his human traits in not being able to give up his girlfriend, being afflicted with a bad shoulder from an injury in the last novel, and by making mistakes that have a fatal restul for one character. The author gives a nice plot twist and provides excellent character development. Critics agree: "Trigger City" has received the following: Agatha Award nominee 2009 Barry Award nomination 2009 Crimespree Award, Favority Book of 2008 Dilys Award. (  ) mikedraper | Oct 21, 2009 | Very enjoyable, read over the course of just a few days and was the kind of book you're anxious to get back to. I usually try to read series books in order but although I have "Big City Bad Blood" sitting in my to be read pile I actually read "Trigger City" first and there were occassions in which references are made that relate back to events in the previous book that made me wish I had followed the order but this doesn't actually hurt the narrative of this book. All told I like the character of Ray Dudgeon and will soon go back to read "Big City Bad Blood" and hopefully further novels. In the meantime I'll just have to go out and pick up the various short story collections "KILLER YEAR" and "CHICAGO BLUES". Story itself involves a military contractor Hawk River (Blackwater anyone?) various alphabet soup intelligence agencies as they are referred to by the author and in the middle of all this one PI trying to solve the mystery of why the murder has taken place because everyone knows who did it...... (  ) johnbsheridan | Apr 17, 2009 | When Isaac Richmond, a retired army colonel, asks Chicago PI Ray Dudgeon to look into his daughter's murder, he reluctantly agrees to take the $50,000 case. Joan Richmond's death looks straightforward: a deranged co-worker, Steven Zhang, shot her in her home and then committed suicide. Never one to accept the simplest answer, Dudgeon starts digging and discovers that Joan's former employer was a military contract company that is currently under congressional investigation. Quite predictable story line and outcome. (  ) dianestm | Mar 28, 2009 | #2 Ray Dudgeon mystery set in the Windy City of Chicago. In the first book, Ray takes on the mob and in this one, he seems to be tackling the US Government and their covert military operations. Battered, bruised and barely holding things together (physically and psychologically) after his torture and near death some months previously, Ray is hired by a retired military man whose daughter was brutally murdered—shot to death by one of her employees who then turned the gun on himself. Her killer had apparently been suddenly psychotic and paranoid and believed Joan was ‘out to get him’ and thus he ended both their lives. Of course nothing is ever that simple—the fact that Joan was set to testify for a Congressional hearing on defense contract spending had *nothing* to do with her death, I’m sure, right!?—and the fact that that information was kept hushed up is even more telling. Ray ends up in a tangled web of deceit, trying to sort out the good guys from the bad while trying to keep himself alive and mend his broken relationship with ex-girlfriend Jill, and also trying to protect Steven Zhang’s widow and daughter—he being the man who killed Joan and then himself. I like Ray, despite his foibles, and the author’s writing style make the reading of his story easy and appealing. Ray lives in a world of realism where things are never perfect and exist in multiple shades of gray, not ever simplistically black and white or right and wrong—much like real life, I suppose. I hope he lives a long and prolific life and I will be eagerly awaiting the next in series to see which major player he goes up against next. ( ) Spuddie | Mar 6, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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Fact: A lonely woman was murdered by her disturbed coworker.
Fact: The police have investigated.
Fact: The case is closed.
But facts are not truth. And the truth was supposed to stay buried with the dead. . . .
From acclaimed author Sean Chercover comes the relentlessly gripping follow-up to his award-winning debut novel, Big City, Bad Blood
Trigger City
Still suffering the physical and emotional consequences of going up against the Chicago Outfit, PI Ray Dudgeon needs an easy gig. A routine investigation of an open-and-shut case sounds perfect. The job is a loser, but the pay is good, and maybe Ray will bring some peace to a grieving father who yearns to learn the truth about the daughter he never really knew.
But what begins as routine soon spirals out of control. The victim was not simply a quiet, shy, unassuming single woman whose luck ran out. She lived a double life, working in the shadowy realm of covert intelligence. In a world built on secrets and lies, she fought bravely for truth—and gave her life in the fight.
Suddenly, Ray finds himself caught in a war between private contractors and the darkest sectors of our own government—a war that stretches from the closed-door hearings of Congress to the frontlines of Iraq.
Ensnared in a conspiracy of darkness that weaves its way through the very fabric of the nation, Ray must discover who's really pulling the strings before he becomes collateral damage in America's war on terror.No peril Ray Dudgeon has faced in the past could've prepared him for this. The stakes couldn't be any higher, and no enemy could be more powerful. Ray is in way over his head.
And his greatest enemy may be himself.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400)
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I realize t hat this review is really generic, with no particulars about the plot - Ray is recovering from the incidents of the first book. He is hired by a distraught dad to look into the case of his daughter's murder. It's all murkier than it first appears. Ray stands up to the evil empire and saves the girl... but not his girl. He does kill one man, and who that man was and where he came from was the weakest part of the book for me, but I'll spend time with Ray again. (