Review: Gated Prey

<Gated Prey by Lee Goldberg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Gated communities were things of TV show and movies to me until my first trip to the Southwest and West. Oh,there are gated estates along the Hudson and out on the Island but communities with gates like old west walled forts not so much. When I finally saw them for myself and even have friends who live in one, they amuse and annoy me. For one, the gate is never closed and the little guardhouse is never occupied. A little idiotic but also quite pretentious. Who are you keeping out? The Hispanic or Native American fellow residents of the area ? Probably--but who would admit that? Noooo, it is for safety from murderers and thieves.

Well, despite the undercover op in which Eve and Duncan are posing as a rich fat guy with a sexy younger trophy wife and are tooling around in an outrageously expensive Rolls Royce, the walls don't help. As a matter of fact, the crew of thieves who are robbing many of the elite homes and for whom our team is trying to lay a trap break into their pseudo domicile and two of them wind up dead! One takes a nose dive from the upstairs window into the pool and splat--the other gets it in the chest from Duncan's shot from the couch. The third makes a dash for it, Eve gives chase and destroys the Rolls. Third guy gets shot by the security guard for the grocery store in which he takes refuge from the pursuing Eve. There she goes again, acting impulsively and starting the case less than gracefully! Think that whole event of the security guard taking the shot a bit questionable.

Meanwhile, in another of the exclusive enclaves a woman seems to have had a stillborn child. Things don't quite add up and in time she admits she found the baby, dead, in her trash bin. Um, another questionable plot point.
Looks like Eve and Duncan will have their hands full and as usual, she aggravates her boss, and he tries to rope her in. But all ends well and the search for solutions to these unfortunate events in those elite compounds and the justice that drives Eve is, as ever, worth the read.

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