Anything for You
By Saul Black
St. Martin’s Press, 2019

Saul Black’s third thriller featuring SFPD homicide detective Valerie Hart (after The Killing Lessons (2015) and Love Murder (2017)) is best described as an intricate puzzle. It begins when a mysterious blond woman named Sophie shoots an unnamed man on July 31, 2017.

Fast forward to August 5th. Adam Grant, a well-known San Francisco lawyer, lies dead, stabbed multiple times, and his wife, Rachel, is barely clinging to life. An insomniac neighbor glimpsed a masked intruder fleeing the scene and alerted the police, who arrive in the form of homicide detectives Valerie Hart and Will Fraser. They get to the Grant’s house just after the CSI team have begun their work. Rachel was rushed to the ER at California Pacific and word was she was recovering. Until three years ago Adam had been a star prosecutor in the DA’s office. Then, to the vocal disappointment of his employers, he’d made the switch to private practice. Obviously, his career made him an easy target, and he has no lack of enemies.

Without skipping a beat, Valerie breaks one of the cardinal lessons of homicide: Don’t investigate the murder of anyone you’ve slept with. Four years ago she had a one-night stand with Adam Grant; now she was determined to ignore that. Actually, nothing happened because they were both too drunk. All the more reason to keep her mouth shut and carry on:

She and Adam Grant had glimpsed each other a couple of times since then, professionally, shared a smile, conceded the moment had passed—and that was all. It had been more than a year since she’d last seen him…. There was absolutely no reason to think that an abortive one-night stand from four years ago would have any bearing on Adam Grant’s murder. The overwhelming likelihood was that the investigation would reach its end without ever surfacing.

The murder weapons (a knife and a hammer) are covered with fingerprints that forensics 

rapidly identifies as those of Dwight Jenner. He’s a felon whom Adam in his former role prosecuted and got sent away. Recently paroled after six years in San Quentin, Jenner is nowhere to be found. Rumor hath it among his friends that he left town with his new girlfriend, Sophia.  As Valerie digs deeper into the case, she tracks down CCTV footage showing Jenner and a beautiful blonde woman. Sophia! Yes, the shooter in the opening scene. After all, too many blondes spoil the scenario! When Valerie finds provocative photos of Sophia locked in Adam’s desk, the investigation tilts toward uncovering her connection to the murder.

As the tension escalates, a parallel narrative opens up giving us a picture of Sophia from childhood (no surprise – plenty of abuse) to what turns into her final retribution. Warning, don’t jump to any conclusions, as nothing is as it seems. Anything for You is a thriller filled with hair-raising twists and turns, fueled by haunted characters, graphic violence and raw emotions. Black deftly transforms this rawness into a strength through the character of Valerie. He bares her wounded psyche and the self-deprecating awareness of her own darkness:

Snooping was what she was paid for. Being Police was a backstage pass to the world behind the world, the people behind the people, the lives behind the lives. The dirty thrill of it had never diminished. Finding what was hidden. The dark secret. The awful treasure. That was the force that drove her. Justice was an incidental byproduct…. Being Police was learning to find room for everything—even yourself.

The core of the novel is that actions fueled by love are not always attractive or even right but they are always meaningful. Secrets rarely stay hidden—Black has a bucketful of them, each one more terrifying than the last—and this was not, after all, a world in which the good were rewarded and the wicked punished. Beauty and evil exist side by side (think Auschwitz and the Sistine Chapel).

Albeit elegantly crafted, the climax of this novel comes with a final sleight of hand that might make you feel played. Forgive Mr. Black, it’s one more canny bit of mischief that makes Anything for You such a splendid read.

—Irma Heldman is a veteran publishing executive and book reviewer with a penchant for mysteries. One of her favorite gigs was her magazine column “On the Docket” under the pseudonym O. L. Bailey.