Customer Reviews
"Old places, they remind us where we came from" - By: M. J Leonard, 10 Feb 2005 
We last met the resourceful Benjamin Justice just six months agoin Blind Justice where he suffered a terrible beating & was violently blindedin one eye. In Moth & Flame, Benjamin is on the mend, but he continues to be haunted by the scandal, which long ago cost him the Pulitzer Prize & his job as a journalist. Approaching middle age, HIV positive, & existing hand to mouth, Ben is still livingin the studio apartment behind his older friends Maurice & Fredin West Hollywood, & relying on the support of his best friend, Los Angeles Times journalist Alexandra Templeton.
Forced to rely on Prozac to give him some emotional stability, Ben has had six months of peace, but his creative drive has been dulled along with his libido. He's just "a washed up reporter who's facing middle-age, with a receding hairline & a bank account." But when Bruce Bibby, a West Hollywood city worker & paraplegic is brutally murderedin his apartment, Ben is given the opportunity of taking over his job. Bruce was writing & researching a controversial booklet on the city's historically relevant buildings, & Ben throws himself into the task of finishing the booklet with all the enthusiasm he can muster.
Initially, he is reluctant to get caught upin Bruce's murder inquiry, but as usual he can't resist delving into the mystery, & is soon drawn into an investigation that involves shady real estate deals, dirty local politics, the Russian Immigrant community, & the fate of a series of run-down cottages. Some members of the community - led by a local activist woman - think the cottages are historically worth preserving, while others,in particular a couple of wealthy local gay businessmen, want to tear them down to make way for a new condominium project.
Lots of wonderfully three-dimensional characters are woven into the narrative, as Ben, along with Alexandra Templeton, & Mira De Marco, a feisty gay cop, work against time to uncover the murder & stop the young, impressionable Victor Androvic from being framed for Bruce's murder. Author, John Morgan Wilson just keeps getting better & better with this series. Moth & Flame is marvelously structured with a terrific sense of pacing as it tells an often-enthralling story of the rootlessness of families & neighborhoods, & the sometimes-tenuous alliances that different members of the community engagein for survival.
Moth & Flame is just as violent, emotionally honest, & sexually frank as the other booksin the Benjamin Justice series, but now Justice is getting a bit too old to be beaten up & thrown around. Ben's a rough, troubled, contradictory, & sometimes complex guy who livesin a tough world, & Wilson doesn't mince wordsin writing about his life. Ben is still trying to come to terms with his violent murder of his father & also make sense of the complex web of issues that have had to do with the relationships he has fallen into.
Moth & Flame is also a novel about West Hollywood, & its often-disparate, mismatched community. Ben has been having a love-hate relationship with this city, but by the end of the novel, he seems to have come to terms with his hesitations & uncertainties. Maybein the next installment, Justice - at forty-five, who views himself as middle aged & balding - may even find true love again. But he is going to have to watch himself & stay away from the conflicted & troubled young men that have so often plagued his life. Mike Leonard February 05.
