Alas, this is the last Sinatra book to date. I’ll have to wait for more now. “Sinatra,” you may recall, is the code name of Manny Martinez, Puerto Rican-American super-patriot and US Marshal. Handsome enough to be a supermodel, omnicompetent and void of self-doubt, he’s a parody of the James Bond/Jason Bourne stereotype, but also a vivid character in his own right, endearing and amusing. From time to time he’s summoned for super-secret assignments by a super-secret government agency. Most of the time he brings his partner along, the sweet, innocent Mormon girl, Noelle Beck. Their relationship is fun and flirty and a little poignant. And never more so than in the book under consideration, American Woman (number 6 in the series).
The assignment this time is a spur-of-the-moment thing. The DEA has learned of a very hush-hush meeting coming up in the Florida Keys, arranged by a couple aspiring South American cocaine lords. The purpose of the meeting is to demonstrate a new form of cocaine, to raise capital for a full-scale operation. Two potential investors have been identified, and they look enough like Manny and Nicole that they can stand in for them, once the originals have been safely detained.
Manny, of course, was born to play the role of drug lord, while Beck is a little hesitant about portraying a criminal’s bimbo. Except that a sudden revelation on their arrival forces them to radically alter that scenario, with highly amusing results.
The whole Manny-Beck dynamic started out as mostly comic (as I recall), but as the series proceeds, the characters deepen and the stories acquire depth and tragedy. Manny suffered a great loss in the last book, and in American Woman it’s Beck’s turn.
American Woman was both highly entertaining and touching (though author Lee’s ear for grammar sometimes fails). Cautions are in order for rough language and sexual (though not explicit) situations.
