The Last Descent

The Last Descent is about a writer, Jacob Smalls, who is invited to the grand opening of a massive luxury hotel built near the Grand Canyon. Expansion of the hotel to include shops, theaters, parking lots, even a festival street in the small desert town, has riled a cadre of environmentalists who are concerned about the impact on the Grand Canyon's water sources. However, the project is backed by a family from Vegas, rumored to be connected to the mob, and they have the controversy well under control, at least up to the point where a journalist, investigating the environmentalists' claims, is found dead off a rocky canyon trail.

Was it an accidental fall? Was the victim pushed? The local constabulary may be under the thrall of the Vegas show more financiers and Jacob tries to discover the truth himself. The answer actually is not clear cut because Jacob's perceptions and thoughts on the matter are not necessarily to be trusted - his love affairs with several of the women at the event may be clouding his judgement.

Unfortunately, those love affairs diminish the potential for a satisfying and believable story because, in them, Jacob is depicted as a weak, unstable individual. Much of the story focuses on him mooning over the various women, acting like a love-besotted hormonal adolescent who has taken reality TV bachelors as role models for how one should act when in the throes of lust love. This is a complete turn-around from the character's depiction when he was introduced in Jeff Soloway's previous novel - The Travel Writer. In that book, he was portrayed as a cynical, corrupt, wise-cracking old hand who, as he went about solving a disappearance, was beleaguered by a dorky gofer who was infatuated with the missing person. In that story, the melodramatic twaddle worked because the gofer acted as a foil, providing incidents in which the hero could display his level-headedness and skill. However, in The Last Descent, while characterizing the protagonist as emotionally unstable complicates the mystery for the reader by throwing doubt upon Jacob's logic and conclusions, it also causes him to lose any cachet as the hero of the story.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. (1½ stars ) show less

Is this the second book or the third?

This is the second Travel Writer book to be released but it is the third book in the series. I don't know what that's about but I was confused by references in this book to things that had not occurred in Book 1 The Travel Writer that I reviewed in 2014.

Our hero, Jacob Smalls, a travel writer, is drawn into the story of the Grand Chalet Grand Canyon resort by his ex-girlfriend Jewel Rider, and by a sudden deep attraction to Victoria, wife of Grant Flanders, the head of the PR team for the resort. For no instantly apparent reason, Jewel, who generally has good taste in men, has taken up with Grant, who is an ass. Victoria knows her husband is an ass but loves him anyway. Jacob looks on, feeling like show more an idiot for getting caught up in this mess.

Then Jewel dies while hiking alone. Jewel's death is suspicious, especially because she was seen walking with an unidentified man earlier in the day. We learn that the Grand Chalet is a money laundering scheme of the gangster Gus Greenbaum and that the resort managers are cheating on the environmental impact monitoring program. It's possible that Jewel hooked up with Grant only to get a scoop, and was killed for it.

All this sounds like a good story and Jacob is a guy I liked in the earlier book, but this one falls flat. The travel writing parts, the description and the attention to detail, are good. But I don't like that Jacob's girlfriend dies in this and in the earlier book too. The environmentalists are poorly written. The Park Service investigator shows up only when the plot needs a nudge in an official direction. Gus Greenbaum is a caricature. Grayson, the resort's security guard, would not last 5 minutes in a real security service. No only does he ride in the back of the van where he is blocked in by passengers, he drinks with the passengers and somehow manages to get drunk on his share of a single flask that is passed around. Nonsense.

I would not recommend this book to a friend.

I received a review copy of "The Last Descent: A Travel Writer Mystery Book 3" by Jeff Soloway (Random House – Alibi) through NetGalley.com. show less