This is a traditional mystery with a strong taste of noir, a female central figure written by a male author, a detective story, a few unresolved issues at the end, a highly suspenseful end, and a smooth, quick, enjoyable read all the way to it.

The detective that makes this a detective yarn isn't a detective. Nina Zero (Mary Alice Baker on her birth certificate) is a papparazza photographer for a tabloid paper that trades in sleaze, the Scandal Times. She's also a parolee and, however delicately an ex-con must hew the line with her parole officer, she's the type of driven character who just can't leave things alone when one of her favorite models gets murdered in an S&M snuff movie. Whoever the twisted, depraved pervert is who did it, and whatever his station in life might be, if Nina's compelled to do anything it's to track him down and make him pay. And, she's got the nerve and relentlessness to do the punishment part.

She's also got a weak spot or two, for a hunky guy, for her family, for those she considers her friends. The hunk in this case, investigating officer Sean Tyler, is so electrifying to her senses it's lust at first sight ("I floated toward him, not consciously moving my feet at all...") and all reservations aside when he hovers near her as she prints a picture in her darkroom for his police needs. She does it with him right there, letting the chips and her prints fall where they may. What a little moral abandonment will mean in the larger scheme of things will come out later. Or, not.

While she doesn't allow guilt over her spontaneous passion to gain any traction on her moral or personal sensitivities, her family is another matter. A father who was alcoholic and abusive when she was growing up is now seeing the grievous errors of his ways and trying to make amends with his pugnacious offspring. And then there's 15-year old Cassie, her spunky, punky niece, whom she adores and forgives even when she's a very bad, nanipulative child. It's also clear that author Eversz is using Cassie's misguided behavior as a catalyst in a formula that doesn't altogether depend on it.

Nina, following an exhibition of her serious photography, gets herself into the case with all afterburners steaming. Her two chief collaborators are her toothless, obedient Rottweiler, whom she refers to as "the Rott" (nothing more--love it) and, on the human side, her immediate boss and Honda driving writer-editor Frank whose interest is always to fulfill the promise of his rag's title.

Together, their investigative journey takes them to a (900) phone-sex operation, a "regression therapist" who treats the rich and famous to past life guilts and remedies, and a major Hollywood producer with all the money in the world to satisfy his and his sons' warped appetites for kinky sex. Altogether, she poses enough of a threat to somebody to bring on a vicious degenerate with a private investigator license, his thugs and other hoodlum trash.

Throughout all the tests of character and righteousness, we're on a ride with a camera-armed, smart-talking bastion of justice who, when her back is tightly to the wall, has a man's willingness to do what it takes to bring bad guys down. Unlike many a pansy-like so-called female investigator in the mystery literature as written by your typical crime and romance novelist, Eversz' creation of feminine-to-a-fault Nina Zero, a lady with a sufficient amount of testosterone when the threat and the damage calls for it, to make this version of a female sleuth a lesson in how it should be done.

It may not be spontaneous passion I'd be looking for in the next (and sixth) Nina Zero installment, just another mission of great, good humor and other pleasures with a babe I can call my true heroine. Jack Reacher and Dave Robicheaux, move over.