Unsafe Harbor

After reading Jessica Speart's latest Rachel Porter mystery, I've gained new respect for the challenges and accomplishments of the US Fish & Wildlife Service. Rachel is a USFWS agent, recently transferred to Port Elizabeth in New Jersey, where she investigates illegal imports of banned wildlife products (ivory, shahtoosh wool, etc.) Speart has done her homework about the issues, the port, and Manhattan's Lower East Side, where Rachel lives with Jake, her significant other. The ending could have been stronger, but I'm still looking forward to reading Rachel's earlier adventures.

As hard as it is to believe, UNSAFE HARBOR is Jessica Speart's 10th mystery novel to feature Rachel Porter, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agent who, ironically enough, is a fish out of water. Speart has a penchant for setting her Porter novels in exotic locales, and interestingly enough it is Porter's transfer to the Port of New Jersey after 2005's RESTLESS WATERS and her residence to New York City that provides Speart and Porter with their most exotic story background to date. Speart has wisely and skillfully balanced the familiar and the exotic in each of the Porter novels, and it is the combination of these elements that makes UNSAFE HARBOR arguably the best novel to date in the series. Porter, stuck in the doldrums of Port Elizabeth, is intrigued when she arrives at her office to find that the operator of a local canteen truck --- who is also an acquaintance of Porter's --- has discovered the body of a woman who is a Manhattan socialite. The body was clad in a shatoosh, a shawl fashioned illegally from the fur of Tibetan antelopes. Porter, investigating the illegal import of the shatoosh, learns that the presence of the highly prized garment is not limited to a single body but is a status symbol among the Manhattan elite. Determined to put an end to the importation of the garment at its source, Porter follows a trail that leads from the penthouses of Park Avenue to sleazy Eighth Avenue strip clubs, from the Diamond District to the Garment District, and ultimately back to the ports of New Jersey, where Porter finds that an incident from her past is about to have dangerous and deadly implications in the present. New York suits Porter well, and given the width and breadth of the city, it will hopefully serve up enough themes for future novels in this series for some time to come. An activist who cares deeply about animal preservation issues, Speart continues her practice of incorporating facts about animal abuses into her book in a manner that contributes to the narrative as opposed to interrupting it, so that the reader comes away from the story both entertained and educated. This is a series that deserves a wider readership, and with UNSAFE HARBOR, it should get one. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub