When police in Orange County, California get a radio call about wealthy Bennet Tarlow III being killed and eaten by a mountain lion, the hunt for the beast is on.
The Tarlow Company develops properties across the southwest, and handsome Bennet Tarlow III's picture......
.....usually with a beautiful woman, is often seen in newspapers and magazines.
Detective Lew Gale is sent to help track the murderous mountain lion in Caspers Wilderness Park, where Tarlow was killed.
Before the animal is found, though, an autopsy reveals Tarlow was shot in the head twice, and the mountain lion chewed but did not kill him.
So Detective Lew Gale and his new partner, Detective Daniela Mendez, have to catch a human murderer.
Detective Lew Gale, age 43, is the son of an Acjacheme Indian mother and a Spanish father. Gale was a tracker in New Mexico and a Marine sniper in Afghanistan before becoming a cop, and he has PTSD and drinks too much.
Detective Daniella (Dani) Mendez, age 37, is the single mother of 18-year-old Jesse, a senior at Tustin High School. Lately, Jesse has been hanging out with the wrong crowd, so Dani installed TeenShield on Jesse's phone, to secretly track his whereabouts, emails, texts, etc.
In the course of their inquiries, Lew and Dani learn Bennet Tarlow III was trying to get government clearance for a project called Wildcoast, outside San Juan Capistrano, California. Wildcoast would be a five-square-mile city with single-family homes, condos, apartments, schools, churches, synagogues, mosques, shopping centers, a library, public pools, shopping, dining, an equestrian center, and a small airstrip.
Wildcoast is a controversial program opposed by many people, including Californians who think of Wildcoast as a NIMBY (not in my backyard), and Acjacheme student activist Geronima Mills and her followers - who consider the area their ancestral land.
Lew and Dani follow police procedures to identify a suspect, whom they believe was a hired hitman. But who hired him? The possibilities are legion.
There are startling developments as the investigation unfolds, which (to me) stretch credulity a bit too much.
A large swatch of the novel is about the personal lives of Lew and Dani, which are just as interesting as the investigation.
◍◍ Lew lives with his Indian mother and resents his Spanish father, a philanderer who deserted the family. Lew cherishes his Indian heritage, and has a favorite book called 'Blood & Heart' (1815). The book tells the story of Luis Verdad, a 21-year-old Achacheme who's tracking the mountain lion that carried away his young sister. As Lew reads 'Blood & Heart', we get to see scenes from the book.
In a corollary storyline, Lew resents the Spanish priests who came to San Juan Capistrano in the 1700s, and decimated the Indian population with conversions, suppression of Indian culture and language, name changes, lashings, confinement, poor diet, diseases, and so on.
◍◍ Dani is an attractive woman with a secret that's affected her entire adult life. Dani is desperate to keep her son Jesse on the right track, and wants him to attend Azusa Catholic College after high school. In Dani's opinion, Jesse has been led astray by his new girlfriend, Lulu Vega, but the boy is infatuated - so what's a mother to do?
An array of interesting characters populate the story, and both Lew and Dani have admirers interested in romantic relationships (but don't worry, this book isn't a romance).
Lew and Dani make a good detective team, and it would be nice to see them in additional books.
I had a digital copy of 'Wild Instinct' as well as the audiobook, narrated by John Pirhalla, who does a fine job.
Thanks to Netgalley, T. Jefferson Parker, and Minotaur & Macmillan Audio for copies of the book.
Rating: 3.5 stars
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