Detective Dave Mason and his team from the Santa Monica Police Department are called to a fire in the Santa Monica College parking garage, where they find a burned car with a burned body in the passenger seat of the car. Mason’s first challenge was to identify the body, and then why was she in a car that was not hers.

Shortly after the discovery of the horrific crime, someone leaked the name of the victim starting a media firestorm that surrounded and overwhelmed the family.

The victim was Yasemin Safak, a student at the local community college, and her death threatened to cause an international incident. Her family was basically uncooperative, and soon after placed a wall around the family effectively all but shutting down the investigation.

Mason had to use alternative measures to try to get enough evidence to find out who killed her. Another stumbling block was trying to find the owner of the car and why Yasemin was in the car in the first place.

While Mason was trying to work the difficult case, a former flame blatantly intruded into his life and the investigation. He wondered why she was showing up at his crime scenes, and why now. He was also struggling with problems in his personal life.

As the powers that be put more pressure on him and his team to solve the crime no matter what, the victim’s family, through their lawyer, drew further within themselves causing Mason to wonder if it was a cultural thing, or were they hiding something. Or, was the crime totally unrelated to the family and the victim was in the wrong place at the wrong time?

On Behalf of the Family by Mar Preston is the author of three previous police procedurals featuring Detective Dave Mason of the Santa Monica Police Department. She also writes a second series featuring Dex Stafford of the Kern County Sheriff’s Department. Both series are popular with mystery fans.

The author has created a strong, hard-boiled detective who also struggles with personal issues that sometimes interfere with his investigation. Mason and the characters surrounding him at work and at home all have strong personalities and are not shy about offering their opinions. I especially like the relationship between Mason and his partner Detective Art Delgardo, whose history readers of the earlier books will remember.

There is a lot going on throughout the book, but the author keeps the many characters and subplots from becoming too confusing. Once in a while I had to check back about something, usually because I was trying to understand the cultural differences.

But for the most part the story was a steady, well-paced, clever look at the struggles people have when they are working within generational and cultural differences, and how those challenges can especially affect family and business relationships.

A special thank you goes to Pertinacity Press for providing a complimentary copy of this novel. If you are interested, Mar Preston’s novels are available at Amazon.com