I'm reading through this series by Les Roberts. I was lucky enough to hear Les Roberts speak quite a few years ago.

Unlike the last few books in the series where it seemed like a bit of time had passed in Milan's life between books, this book seems to pick up shortly after the last book in the series ended.

K.O. is still around. I think this is the first book where chapters alternated between the two characters. It was a bit confusing because Milan's chapters are in first person and K.O.'s are written in third person. I kind of felt like each should have their own first person chapters.

WARNING: SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW. READ ON AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION:
*****

This almost reminds me of a "ripped from the headlines" idea about political corruption. Sadly, it's probably still rampant--as one character says, everyone does it, the goal is just to not get caught doing it.

Once again, it's not clear whether Tobe will become a recurring character or a new love interest for Milan or if that will be a one book thing. K.O. seems to be having more luck with Carli--but given Roberts's writing history, I hold little hope that it will be a long term thing, even though I'd like it to be so. ( )

“I don't read detective novels; I live them." — Spoken by Milan Jacovich in “Whiskey Island” by Les Roberts

Cleveland private investigator Milan Jacovich has lived quite a few detective novels since his first, “Pepper Pike,” in 1988. His last, “Speaking of Murder,” came out in 2016, however, and that one had a co-author (Dan S. Kennedy). Les Roberts, once a force in Hollywood when he produced “Hollywood Squares” and wrote for such shows as “Candid Camera,” “The Jackie Gleason Show” and “The Lucy Show,” is now 81 and no longer able to produce one novel a year as he once did.

Roberts supposedly moved to Cleveland from Southern California after visiting the city to produce a TV show for the Ohio Lottery. He liked the city so much he made it his home and began writing a series of murder mysteries featuring a certain ethnic investigator named Milan Jacovich. In the Cleveland area at least, those novels, most recently published by a Cleveland publisher (Gray & Company), are a very big deal.

One wonders how his 2012 effort, “Whiskey Island,” was received by Clevelanders, however, especially those who run the city, for Roberts paints municipal and Cuyahoga County officials in a dim light. Most of them are on the take, as becomes clear when Jacovich is hired by a city councilman to discover who is try to kill him. Bert Loftus is under indictment after an FBI investigation exposed enough buying and selling of favors to give any number of people, many of them other public officials, a reason to want him dead now that he seems willing to tell all in exchange for a lighter sentence.

Jacovich, like Roberts himself, is getting older and needs help, so he has hired a fiery young military veteran named Kevin O'Bannion to handle some of the duties, preferably the rough stuff. Also new is a Cleveland police detective named Tobe Blaine, whom Jacovich finds attractive enough to make him feel years younger.

This is a fine entry in the series, full of lively dialogue, hot sex, furious action and nail-biting suspense. The killer — and there is a murder along the way — won't be as much a surprise to readers as it is to the investigators, but that doesn't detract from an excellent book. ( )

This is the first Milan Jacovich mystery I've read and it'll probably be the last. On the plus side, it's well written, I liked the banter between Milan and his new lady interest, and I appreciated that this wasn't one of those private investigators who gets into a brutal fist fight every time he speaks to someone. On the minus side, it's one of those stories where the detective, or in this case, detectives, plod from interview to interview, learning practically nothing that moves things forward, until the bad guy gets bored and does something unnecessarily stupid, providing the clue necessary to find him. Disappointing, considering that this was otherwise a very competently written book. ( )

This is another very enjoyable addition to this long-running series. To me, this book was a lot more about the relationships than the plot. The plot revolves around political corruption in local politics and the twisted ways in which people with money and power are intertwined. But the story covers more ground around the relationships between Milan and his new assistant, KO, and Milan and KO's relationships with the new women in their lives. We also learn more about KO's background and how he came to be what he is. The author does an excellent job of balancing out the more hard boiled parts of the plot and Milan's personality, with the more complex aspects of the character's lives and the reasons for their actions. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I recommend it. ( )

This is the second book in the series that I've read (and the second I've received in the Early Reviewers program). I enjoyed it for the most part, but think I would like earlier books better where the focus is more on Milan. I found a LOT of repetition in the descriptions of his assistant, K.O. Bannion, and honestly found quite a few of his character traits and actions unrealistic and implausible. But the mystery portion and the Milan sections were enough to keep me interested.