Don't Look Twice

Lieutenant Ty Hauck and his daughter stand in line at a gas station when a drive-by shooting happens. They get away alive, but the man behind them is killed. Hauck and his team start with the investigations...

I found Don't Look Twice a mediocre crime novel. The start was promising and well written, but the rest didn't convince me: the middle part was boring and the plot felt too constructed.

Quotes from the book

"If we brought in everyone who was part of some gang" – Artie Ewell laughed – "we'd have more kids in jail than in school. Everyone connects to the gangs up here."

"What's a big, brave boy like you, in some macho gang, hiding like some scared poodle in the shower for?"

It was a look she had seen only in films – dull, fixed, implacable. [...] The smirk of someone capable of hacking bodies apart or shooting up people [...].

"I don't think I have to say how incredibly nice that was of you. It probably doesn't come as a surprise that I don't regularly get three-thousand-dollar tips on the job." - "It was his money", Hauck said. "Your charming boss."

"Ninety percent of what I do" – the chief winked with a modest grin – "is just not pissing the right people off."

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens", he always said, quoting Jefferson. But privately, for thirty years, in his heart he laughed at the lie.

When did he become someone he didn't even know?

Warren grinned and made the kind of defensive, deep-in-the-throat chuckle that comes when someone's brain is desperately groping for what to say.

"You stubborn, stupid, pigheaded shit!"

Hauck pulled his brother's face to his shoulder. He had no idea what to do. Arrest him? Send his own brother away for the rest of his life? Destroy whatever was left of their family?