East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the high crime rate. Murders go unsolved, OAPs are getting hoodwinked, children are missing. But word has spread: if you’ve got a case the police can’t or won’t touch, Isaiah Quintabe will help you out. 
They call him IQ. He’s a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. He charges his clients whatever they can afford, which might be a set of tyres or some homemade muffins.
But now he needs a client who can pay. And the only way to that client is through a jive-talking low-life drug dealer he thought he’d left behind.
Then there’s the case itself. A drug-addled rap star surrounded by a crew of flunkies who believes his life is in danger, a hit man who even other hit men say is a lunatic, and a monster killer dog.
If he solves this case, IQ can put right a mistake he made long ago. If he doesn’t, it won’t just be the hit man coming after him…

‘IQ‘ felt fresh, cliché-free and real. It was immersive from the first page, plunging me into the life of Isaiah Quintabe, the IQ of the title, as he helped people in his East Long Beach neighbourhood with cases the police cannot or will not get involved in.

I loved the writing in this novel. The dialogue was perfect, capturing how people speak and how their conversations flow. The pace of the storytelling was compelling and the images were vivid. The possibility of violence was there on almost every page, but it wasn’t melodramatic, it was as taken for granted as traffic noise in a city.

What I liked most about the novel was that its starting point was the people and the realities of their situation, not with a clever conceit that the characters have been constructed to reveal. ‘IQ’ is constructed to reveal Isaiah’s character and history while delivering an exciting plot. I liked that Isaiah and the people around him were believably complex. They were people who were more than one thing, who couldn’t be summed up by what they do or neatly classified into Good Guy and Bad Guy.

Isaiah Quintabe is a great creation. He’s just a very bright young man who has grown up, largely alone,  in East Long Beach, Los Angeles. After some early involvement in petty crime and a brush with gang culture via his friend Dodson, Isaiah got his life together and deployed his logical mind and his ability to stay calm under pressure to help people in his neighbourhood sort out things that police won’t help them with. Locally, he is seen as a kind of poor man’s Sherlock Holmes. He still has to pay the bills so he also takes on paying clients. The plot revolves around what happens when his estranged friend Dodson, reappears and offers Isaiah a well-paid case working for a rap star millionaire who believes someone is trying to kill him.

Isaiah’s story is told in two timelines, 2013 (now) and 2005 (then). I was impressed by how Joe Ide integrated the timelines so that they worked together to build a picture of Isaiah’s character and his complicated history with Dodson that captures how both of them have become who they are in 2013.

The plot worked well. It was populated with memorable people who were sometimes linked in unexpected ways and managed to deliver a few surprises without losing touch with reality.

This was a great start to a new series. I’m just sorry that it took me so long to find this book. It won lot’s of acclaim when it came out in 2016. It wonthe Anthony Award for Best First Novel 2017, the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery 2017, the Shamus Award for Best First P. I. Novel 2017. I’ve already added the audiobook version of ‘Righteous‘, the second book in this six-book series, to my TBR shelf.

I strongly recommend the audiobook version of ‘IQ‘. Sullivan Jones’ narration is wonderful. It won him AudioFile Earphones Award 2016. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.