Bad Traffic adds to the Park and Walker action series with a new encounter. This tests the prowess and relationships of police detectives Jeff Walker and Tony Park, members of the San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force. The story centers on fourteen-year-old Nayeli, who is kidnapped from her Mexican family and forced into the sex trade in San Diego. Her older brother hops on his motorcycle and roars up to San Diego to rescue her and avenge her. This is where best friends and co-workers Walker and Park enter the picture. As other agents in the task force become involved in the rescue mission, a series of violent clashes and encounters immerses a host of villains and cartel members in a test of their survival instincts and affection for firearms, drugs, and trouble.

Weill crafts a delicate interplay of personalities, alliances, and social and political conflict while following the two lead characters’ attempts to free a large group of involuntary sex workers, and to apprehend their traffickers, who operate under a cloak of connections and secrecy. The relationships between family and friends and adversaries are deftly explored through action-packed scenes. Enemies are not only heavily armed with high-tech equipment and motives for maintaining their business and status quo, but are prepared to target and kill any who oppose them.

That would be Park and Walker. Nobody is safe as limits are tested. The action-packed scenarios create satisfyingly unexpected twists, turns, and contrasts in culture and objectives. Chess-like ploys emerge as the characters clash and the cartel plans its expansion of control. Weill’s ability to mesh action with topics that embrace bigger-picture thinking and insights on sex trafficking issues creates a thriller steeped in real-world issues that places the emphasis not just on confrontation, but resolution.

Libraries and readers seeking thrillers that include a healthy degree of social inspection will find Bad Traffic thoroughly engrossing, thought-provoking, and hard to put down.