Angel in the Full Moon.

Lisa Arsenault is a high-school English teacher who is involved in
several ministry campaigns to increase literacy.

Third in the series featuring undercover Mountie Jack Taggart, this installment pits Taggart against the Russian Mafia operating in Vancouver, Vietnamese smugglers running a prostitution ring, and home-grown perversion in the form of a vicious pedophile and murderer.

The title derives from the translation of the Vietnamese name of Hang, a 12-year-old girl who, with her nine-year-old sister, is smuggled into Canada under the assumption that they are being adopted by a childless couple. In reality they are sold to a pervert who subjects them to horrendous torture. Already working undercover in vice, Taggart makes it his mission to apprehend this monster when the older sister’s body is discovered in a dumpster. We discover that he has a personal stake, as his own sisters were subjected to sexual abuse by his father.

Although his RCMP partner has complete faith in him, Taggart is often obstructed by administration, until he is granted free rein at the highest level. The story is narrated in the third person, alternating between, and highlighting the differences between, Taggart’s peripatetic activities in exotic locales like Vietnam and Cuba and Hang’s solitary confinement in a torture chamber.

As can be imagined, gritty is an adjective that can be used to describe this novel. The passages detailing Hang’s abuse at the hands of “Pops” are particularly harrowing. Certainly they serve to underline Taggart’s hatred of pedophiles and increase the reader’s ire, but those whose gorge rises at these kinds of details may want to skip over them.

Author Don Easton was an RCMP undercover operative, and his knowledge of police procedure is extensive. Many supporting details add verisimilitude to the plot, and readers with an interest in police-based novels will be engrossed. Taggart and his female partner are sympathetic characters, supportive of each other and willing to takes risks on each other’s behalf. Taggart’s rogue tendencies lead him to ultimately deal with the pedophile in a particularly final and satisfying way. One cavil is that the dialogue can be quite stilted and rings false in several key exchanges.