She scanned the room and landed on Johnny and just stayed pinned on him, like waiting for the heat from her stare to set his shirt on fire and get his attention.

This one surprised me pleasantly. When I got to reading and realized that Kevin Wade’s Johnny Careless was a story about a middle-class boy moving among the privileged kids of Long Island’s North Shore, I prepared myself for an homage to The Great Gatsby, with maybe a little Marxism mixed in. But it wasn’t like that. Or not mostly like that.

“Jeep” Mullane is the son of a policeman, but the circumstances of his childhood threw him together with the wealthy Johnny Chambliss and his girlfriend (later wife and ex-wife) Niven, so he began to live in two worlds. Johnny had all the irresponsibility of his class, but was aware of it, and kept Jeep close – in part – to ground himself. He could be a jerk, but was always a good friend.

Now Johnny is dead, washed up on the beach with what appear to be contact wounds from a marine engine prop on his body. But what was he doing in the water at that time of night, in that place? Johnny’s powerful father wants it explained, and Jeep wants to understand too.

There’s also pressure from the mayor for the police to stop a string of thefts of high-end automobiles in their supposedly crime-free community.

Jeep will learn – to his shock – that the thefts have a connection to a secret out of the late Johnny’s past.

The writing in Johnny Careless was very good (though author Wade, who’s been a writer for the TV show “Bluebloods,” uses “flaunt” when he means “flout” at one point). An interesting narrative device was employed – the whole story is told from Jeep’s point of view, but events in the present are given in the third person, while flashbacks are in the first person. The characters were interesting and layered. The mystery intrigued me. And it all worked out entirely differently than I expected.

Jeep is an admirable character, though (no surprise here) his morality is not quite Christian as far as sex is concerned. I recommend Johnny Careless, with only the usual cautions.