I always look forward to a new entry in James Scott Bell’s Mike Romeo series. The latest volume, Romeo’s Truth, is (as I announced yesterday) adorned by a quotation from a review I did, on this blog, of a previous installment, placed first among the review blurbs at the front. Proving that not only is author Bell a good writer, but he recognizes fine criticism.

Mike Romeo, if you aren’t yet familiar with him, is a very big, strong man. He’s a former cage fighter and a self-educated genius. He goes about doing good in the world, kicking butt and quoting the classics.

In Romeo’s Truth, Mike is on a job for Ira, his lawyer boss, when he stops at a diner in California’s Central Valley. He observes a big guy beating up a little guy in the parking lot and (of course) steps in. This is the inciting incident that will soon have him involved in a simmering dispute between a local rancher and anti-meat agitators (in case you’re wondering, this book is entirely on the side of the carnivores). Soon his lawyer will have a new client (the little guy who got beat up, up on a murder charge), and a great need to tear the cover off a conspiracy of people who do not hesitate to blow up buildings or shoot people. No matter – getting Mike Romeo mad is one of the classic strategic errors.

Romeo’s Truth isn’t the best of the series, but it’s plenty of fun – a fine entry in a series which provides the joys of hard-boiled detective stories for audiences who prefer their fiction clean. Mike’s relationship with his new wife, Sophie, sometimes approaches the realm of the cutesy, but never goes quite that far. Self-awareness saves them from that.

My only real quibble is with a “fact” delivered in a throwaway line – Mike says that the Vikings had double-headed axes, which isn’t true.

That is, of course, unforgiveable. But otherwise, it’s a great story.