Nestor redeems himself by wrestling to the ground an enormous black drug dealer who was strangling another cop. Unfortunately, the last moments of the arrest, when he's angrily abusing the cuffed and winded dealer lying at his feet, are posted on YouTube. Rodney King lite. But Nestor will get one more redemption.

 Furious exchanges between the mayor and the chief of police have become de rigueur in all cop fiction since Dirty Harry, but Wolfe does this set piece so well that you don't mind he's rehashing familiar material. And for a writer who's 81, he's bang on about the music the kids are listening to in Miami.

Fiction gives you some leeway, but one or two things didn't convince me. Nestor's girlfriend Magdalena is meant to be an unworldly, blue-collar ingénue who is whisked away from Nestor by her employer, the hustling Dr Lewis, to go social climbing. Wolfe uses Magdalena's ignorance as a way of informing the reader. 

I could just believe that someone who grew up in Miami might not have heard of one of the following: Fisher Island, Art Basel Miami Beach or the Design District. But the idea that she hasn't heard of any of them is a bit of a stretch. Miami isn't New York or LA, it's just not that big that you could grow up there without someone at least mentioning these landmarks to you.