Gated Prey is the third in the series of Eve Ronin Mysteries by Lee Goldberg. At 26, Ronin is the y
oungest homicide investigator in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD). She leapfrogged over more senior detectives after becoming famous for knocking out a wife-beating action star known as “bloodfist.” Now, Eve is “bloodfist,” and is nearly universally reviled in her department.
She’s a complicated character, because her unearned promotion doesn’t make her particularly sympathetic. She makes no apologies for it, either, which further reduces your admiration for her. Eve proceeded to make even more enemies in the department by exposing corruption—leading to a scandal that resulted in arrests of fellow deputies, a suicide, a serious attempt on her life, and the trashing of her condo and car.
This book finds Eve living in a hotel as her condo is restored after a gunfight and fire that nearly killed her in a previous book in the series. And, all of this and she’s barely a year into her new job.
The story starts with Eve and her partner, the almost retired Duncan “Donuts” Pavone, undercover and posing as a rich married couple intent on luring a home invasion gang into a “honey trap” McMansion the LASD has set up in a gated community. This is to address a series of home invasion robberies that’s terrorizing the area’s wealthy residents. The trap works, and Eve and Pavone find themselves confronting a trio of robbers who storm in dressed as gas company technicians. Eve triggers the alarm, which will bring LASD deputies in as backup within minutes.
Except, the backup never shows up. Eve and Duncan each kill one robber apiece. A third escapes, carjacks a woman and takes refuge in a supermarket, where he is shot to death by an armed security guard. The Sheriff, a sleazy politician in uniform, slaps the guard with a medal for valor and makes a big media event out of the story—all with an eye to avoiding a scandal as to why the backup never showed up to protect Eve and Pavone. Because… there’s a serious reason they didn’t show up. The backup waited because they wanted Eve to be killed.
The Sheriff also declares the home invasion robbery problem solved, which Eve doesn’t believe is true. There are many unanswered questions, and she’s going to keep asking them even if the higher ups want her to move on.
This is the essence of the Eve Ronin character. She’s dogged. She’s not afraid of conflict, and certainly will not be intimidated by powerful men who want her to stop because it might make the department look bad. Her position, which is that the truth is always better than a lie when it comes to the department’s image, doesn’t seem to land with these people. Nevertheless, she persists.
As I mentioned in my review of Movieland, the next book in this series, Goldberg seems to be addressing a quirk of male fiction writers who create female leading characters. The standard approach involves “softening” a woman cop by giving her insecurities and making her lack self-confidence. Eve lacks these deficits. She’s hard edged and brooks no bullshit from anyone for any reason. Goldberg appears to be daring sexist male readers to dislike the character. If you’re intimidated by an attractive, unapologetic 26-year-old woman with a badge, well that’s your problem.
It mostly works. These books are all good reads. Goldberg crafts an effective mystery and police procedural. That’s a given with him. The character is compelling, and Goldberg delivers comic relief along the way. This takes the form of Eve’s stressful relationship with her aspiring actress mother, Pavone’s disgusting eating habits, and Goldberg’s brilliant take on the TV obsessed population of Southern California. Everyone wants to be in pictures, except Eve, but she’s got a TV deal in the works which she hates, but she needs the money.