Detective Ash Rashid’s teenage niece is found dead at her boyfriend’s house, seemingly from a drug overdose. After her boyfriend leaves a suicide note, accepting responsibility, the detective-in-charge declares the case closed. But Rashid, who works for the assistant prosecutor, refuses to believe it and proceeds to dig further.
And dig he does, starting at The Abbey, a club outside Indianapolis where teenage vampire wanna-be’s hang out with drug dealer and former high-level microbiologist , Karen Rea and her tattoed nephew Azrael. From there, Rashid gets mixed up with Konstantin, a Russian mobster; a giant henchmen; a pathologist who owes a bunch of parking tickets; a SWAT team; a bartender who resembles Mick Jagger; Jimmy Rollo, his murdered informant; Meyers, the high-end lawyer; Olivia Rhodes, a fellow detective who supposedly has his back and Asst. Prosecutor Susan Mercer, his boss.
Rashid is beat up, shot at, arrested, followed, and tossed out of his law school class after insulting the professor. Teens die horribly, the FBI gets involved, his wife and daughter disappear. Rashid drinks too much and in his world-weary tone, tells us exactly why. Plus, his sinuses are killing him.
“The Abbey” is riveting. Culver inhales cops and police procedure. His dialogue is a cross pollination of authenticity, no matter which character is speaking. He provides a hoard of three- dimensional supporting voices and somehow makes each distinct. Finally, Ash as narrator is irresistible. Flawed, stubborn, dead-pan, relentless, he has a strong sense of justice, bred from his Islamic background. Karen Rea, the drug-dealing microbiologist, doesn’t appear until the last section but is worth waiting for. Her scheme involves creating a deadly virus and releasing it in China, her homeland, for reasons she coldly explains. She is ice.
Reviewed by Joe DelPriore