Psychopaths on the Warpath

 Never Saw Me Coming - Vera Kurian

If Vera Kurian is to be believed – and apparently, she has the proper training to make this statement – there’s about a 2 or 3 percent chance that whoever’s reading this right now is a psychopath. That’s not to say that you are, as popular fiction might have it, a serial killer. No, you’re merely antisocial and/or empathy-impaired and/or egotistical. Based on that description, 2 or 3 percent of the population seems rather low…

…but the main characters of Kurian’s debut novel, Never Saw Me Coming, are pretty close to 100% psychopathic. That’s because they’re members of the seven college students enrolled in a study run by renowned psychologist Leonard Wyman; youngsters who’ve received full-boat rides to a DC-area college so he could study them in the wild. Well, actually, one’s faking it – a rather strange twist given that psychopaths usually fake being “normal.” Anyway, protagonist Chloe Sevre – 18, gorgeous, smart, psychopathic coed – is really there so she can murder Will Bachman. Truth be told, he kind of deserves it…

The Pot Thief Who Couldn't Spell "Chile"

The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras - J. Michael Orenduff

Meet Hubert Schuze (pronounced, I believe, “shoes”). Hubert runs a pot shop in Albuquerque’s Old Town – no, New Mexico hasn’t legalized marijuana, he sells Native American pottery. Hubert’s a pot thief, at least according to the Feds, since he has no problem with digging up old pottery on public land and selling it in his shop. That’s not legal, but since he thinks the law is wrong, he engages in civil disobedience that just happens to fatten his bank account. Hubert’s forty-something, was kicked out of UNM’s archaeology program for – you guessed it – stealing artifacts, and keeps a great deal of company with a lovely Basque by the name of Susannah.

Hubert also likes to read non-fiction… and while he’s reading a collection of essays on Pythagoras (the eponymous theorem guy), he becomes embroiled in a bit of theater involving the theft of not one but two valuable pots. In fact, they’re the only two known complete pots attributed to the Mogollon culture – and both are (or were) in museums. Weirdly enough, two people end up dead over this caper, which means one per pot.

Of course, Hubert’s up to his bolo tie in the mess, since some guy offered him a tidy sum to steal one of the pots – and the other one turned up stolen just hours later. Add in a couple of dead bodies, and the pot’s… errr, the plot’s afoot. It’s a good thing Schuze is smarter than the average museum curator, or he’d be in a lot of trouble! When all is said and done and Hubert’s Miss Marple-style lecture to the suspects is over, he’s left a hero and had picked up enough to pay his quarterly taxes to boot. Not bad for a margarita-swilling slacker, eh? The first in J. Michael Orenduff’s series, The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras was first published in 2007 by the former president of the University of New Mexico. Orenduff draws on his personal knowledge of his native city for this entry in the series, although he has precious little to say about anything beyond restaurants and shops except for an occasional reference to sunrise over the Sandia Mountains. More’s the pity, since the landscape deserves far more attention. But I digress…

As a mystery, The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras is no great shakes, mainly because Orenduff fails to leave the clues necessary for a reader to track along with the amateur sleuth. Hubert solves one of the two murders via a series of deductions in which the crucial deduction is decidedly weak, while the second murder is completely lacking in motivation. I hope that the author improves in this sense through the next six books in the series – it was interesting enough that I will probably take a look at a second installment some day.

I might not, though: I found the character of Hubert to be rather unsympathetic. For one, there’s the endless rationalization of his law-breaking; for another there’s his constant companionship (and heavy drinking) with his friend Susannah. And while he bitches constantly about being broke, he eats almost every meal in restaurants and drinks four or five margaritas each night. And he listens to jazz… of course.

Most of all, though, Schuze peeves this reader because he keeps talking about “chilies.” I sure hope that he got stuck with that spelling by an editor, because a real New Mexican knows there’s only one I in “chiles” – and the proper spelling is preserved in The Congressional Record…

copyright © 2017 scmrak

It Would Have Been Better with *Less* Magic

Bone Gap - Laura Ruby

The people around town called Finn O’Sullivan a lot of nicknames, most of them because of how he seemed so… distracted. Finn had plenty of reasons to be distracted, reasons like being deserted by his mother and the simple fact of being seventeen. But right now, he was distracted because Roza had disappeared: Roza, the beautiful Polish girl who’d just suddenly appeared in the O'Sullivan's barn one morning and had subsequently captured the hearts of everyone in Bone Gap, Illinois – especially the heart belonging to Finn’s older brother, Sean. And then she disappeared, and Finn simply couldn’t describe the man who had taken her, the mysterious man who moved like corn stalks waving in the wind.

Finn also found himself distracted by the beekeeper’s daughter, Priscilla Willis (who vastly preferred the name "Petey"). He thought her beautiful, even though everyone else thought her… strange-looking; homely, even. Petey was, however, the only one in Bone Gap who understood Finn’s distraction and his confusion, perhaps because Finn distracted and confused her, too. 

Joanna Brady's Back, Dealing with the Sad Remains of Innocence

Remains of Innocence - J. A. Jance

Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady’s morning began with one of those phone calls she dreaded: a child was missing. This case was a little different, since that particular child was chronologically well into his fifties. Within hours, the developmentally-disabled man’s body had been found; the remains of small, tortured animals beside it.

Had the man everyone in Bisbee believed a gentle giant been keeping a dark secret? Or was the artsy former mining town home to an incipient serial killer? The first answers would have to wait until the coroner performed an autopsy. But there was a little problem: he, too, was dead - murdered, in fact. On the opposite side of the country, Liza Machett had her own problems: while cleaning out the family home her dying mother had turned into a hoarder’s dream, she made a fascinating discovery. Mama had been hoarding more than old magazines; she’d been hoarding old hundred-dollar bills. Hundreds of hundreds, in fact. But when that old money began circulating after its long rest, Liza’s life became complicated. In the extreme: people around her began dying.

So Liza ran west toward the only family member she had left, her half-brother Guy Machett, MD, the coroner of Cochise County, Arizona... uh-oh.

1960s Noir or an Extended Male Sexual Fantasy? Much More the Latter...

Dark Blonde: A Mike Angel Mystery - David H. Fears

In the old days if a publisher wanted to sell a book by a new or unknown author, the company would send galley proofs to a newspaper’s book reviewer and lift complimentary lines from ensuing reviews for the dust jacket. They’d hope for a rave from the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle, but would settle for a positive mention from the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel or the Sacramento Bee, if that’s what they could get. Too few newspapers have their own reviewers now, so publishers began to prevail on established authors to pen a blurb for the cover, most of which turned out so generic as to be curiously uninformative. Now, they simply cite the number of five-star reviews at amazon.com. That’s how Dark Blonde (David H. Fears) came across my desk – that, and it was free.

Now I happen to think that Amazon’s reviewers have little or no taste, and it’s rather hard to trust reviewers like the infamous Harriet K, whose daily review output was often in double digits (one reason I have my own collection of reviews that pan books…). And, as usual, I was right: no matter how many five-star reviews (38) or the average star count (3.6 of 5), this book is definitely a stinker.

Veronica Mars Goes Literary - Sort of - For "The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line"

The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line - Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you know that Veronica Mars lives, thanks to a Kickstarter campaign to fund Kristen Bell’s return as a slightly older version of the sassy high schooler whose hobby is being a private eye. The diminutive blonde made it back to Neptune, California, for the movie – and stayed for the book. According to the cover blurb, The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line is “the first book in a thrilling new mystery series”!

Kristen Bell at San Diego Comicon, by Gage Skidmore

Your reviewer begs to differ: first in a series, yes; mystery, maybe; thrilling, decidedly an overstatement. Read on…

It’s March, and hordes of spring-breaking college students have descended on seaside Neptune, filling the motel rooms, jamming the bars and leaving the village streets littered with dead soldiers and pools of vomit. You know the drill… When one party girl disappears, however, national attention is focused on the annual three weeks of hedonism. Everyone in Neptune knows their elected sheriff is a corrupt buffoon, so the local Chamber of Commerce quietly turn to Mars Investigations – and right now, that’s Veronica.

Anna Pigeon Channels Ford, Butler and Willis to Become a "Destroyer Angel"

Destroyer Angel - Nevada Barr

Four years have mellowed Heath Jarrod, onetime ice climber turned paraplegic by a tragic fall. Some of that mellowing is definitely due to the influence of her adopted daughter, Elizabeth, whose presence in her life is a gift from Anna Pigeon. So it’s not unexpected that those two women and the fifteen-year-old would take a week for a long canoe trip off the grid in Minnesota. They’re joined by wealthy wunderkind engineer Leah Hendricks and her adolescent daughter, Katie. The first night in camp Anna heads for the river for some private time with her canoe, but when she returns, her companions are not alone: four men have invaded the campsite, and mayhem is on the menu. 

The four thugs are there to kidnap Leah and her daughter, intending to deliver them to an airstrip some ten miles away through the North Woods. The belief that Heath and Elizabeth can command a handsome ransom too means that they will come along; the trek complicated by the thugs’ lack of wilderness savvy and Heath’s condition… not to mention Anna. Informed that the fifth camper backed out at the last minute, the four men remain unaware that one small, middle-aged female Park Ranger is plotting their demise.

Harlan Coben Goes Fishing for Red Herrings and Catfish: "Missing You"

Missing You - Harlan Coben

Kat Donovan is third-generation NYPD, having followed in the footsteps (and bar stool) of her father and her father's father. Nearing forty, Kat's still single and not looking very hard. When her best friend gives her a free membership at an on-line dating service, Kat’s underwhelmed at first; underwhelmed by the long roster of shallow, needy men with digital versions of bad singles-bar come-ons. But that’s before she stumbles over Jeff’s profile…

Eighteen years ago Kat’s life had changed forever the moment her father’s partner appeared at her door: Dad was dead, murdered. Weeks later, her fiancé had dumped her and left, never to be seen again – until tonight, when his all-too familiar face appears on her laptop screen as she scrolls through JustMyType.com profiles. After one too many shots of Jack, she reaches out to him…

A New Leaphorn-Chee Novel from a New Hillerman: "Spider Woman's Daughter"

Spider Woman's Daughter - Anne Hillerman

The death, in 2008, of New Mexico author Tony Hillerman left fans of his Leaphorn-Chee mystery series bereft. The eighteen Hillerman novels featuring Navajo tribal policemen patrolling the vast, dusty emptiness of the Four Corners region sold millions of copies over more than thirty years, terminating with the publication of The Shape Shifter in 2006. Hillerman passed from pulmonary disease two years later.

After five years, Hillerman's daughter Anne picked up his pen - and his characters - with the release of Spider Woman's Daughter.  Fans will be glad to know the younger Hillerman continues the setting and the sensibilities of her father's story-telling, a gentle treatment of the native American elements. As one might expect, however, Tony's daughter chooses to emphasize a different character; Bernadette Manuelito.

For Navajo Tribal Policewoman Bernie Manuelito, there will always be "what-ifs": what if she'd been a few seconds earlier? What if she'd been a few steps faster? But she will never know: all she knows is that she saw a man she respected shot down in cold blood: the Legendary Lieutenant, Joe Leaphorn. All she saw was the shooter's hoodie and the escape vehicle

Although placed on leave while her husband, Jim Chee, leads the investigation, Bernie can't help picking at the case like a kid with a scab. While visiting Leaphorn in the hospital, she follows up on a consulting case the retired cop had undertaken for a museum in Santa Fe. Meanwhile, Chee and his team are tracking down leads related to the car used by the shooter; all dead ends.

These Navajo cops are a canny bunch, though, prone to contemplation and insights beyond those of city cops. They will get their man: count on it…

Charlie Hood Reaches a Conclusion... Or Does He? T. Jefferson Parker's "The Famous and the Dead"

Charlie Hood is finally back on the border after mounting that harrowing rescue mission in the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula, the LASD deputy still assigned to the ATF's Buenavista, California, office. The hostage he snatched free, Erin McKenna, is hugely pregnant and living at his adobe near the border. Erin's husband, super-dirty deputy Bradley Jones, makes the occasional visit Erin is righteously pissed at him after being kidnapped by a rival cartel. It's a complicated situation…

That's the home front: at work, Charlie's infiltrating a trio from Missouri (two of them dirty cops) who've arrived in town with a truck full of weapons they've diverted from a seize-and-destroy program; tipped off by the gutsy Mary Kate. On the opposite side of town, a mysterious "Dr. Strenn" has a sit-down with bipolar drifter Lonnie Rovanna, who's currently off his meds, apparently to return his confiscated firearms - or at the least to give Lonnie one of the infamous Love 32s. Lonnie, it's a safe bet, is about to make trouble for Hood, not to mention a passel of innocent bystanders; trouble that will reach not only into local hospitals but all the way to Congress. Mike Finnegan is in town, but this time Charlie may have an Angel on his side: I kid you not…

Scarpetta Develops Clairvoyance for Patricia Cornwell's "Dust"

Over almost a quarter of a century, Kay Scarpetta (MD, Attorney, would-be chef at a posh Ristorante Italiano) has seen her career steam merrily ahead, crash and burn, turn into a gun for hire, and - finally - culminate in her appointment as chief of a high-tech crime lab (associated with what? one wonders) in the middle of metropolitan Boston. Nice work if you can get it.

In the same twenty-four years, Scarpetta's relationship with Benton Wesley (or is it Wesley Benton? I always forget) has progressed from "the other woman" to lover to quasi-widow to a print version of Pam Ewing waking up to find Bobby in the shower to who's-his-face's happily-married spouse. She's dragged her anti-authoritarian lesbian paranoid genius niece, Lucy, and the brutish cop Marino every step of the way.

To all that, I say, "Give it a rest, Kay!"

Promise Me You'll Leave Us Alone: Harlan Coben's "Six Years"

Every romance novel on the face of the earth would have you believe that there is “one true love” out there somewhere, a fated meeting just waiting for two pairs of eyes to lock together across a crowded room. It didn’t quite happen that way for Jake Fisher – Natalie Avery was wearing sunglasses the first time he laid eyes on her – but it was damned close. The two spent a couple of delirious months together at adjacent artistic retreats in upstate Vermont, long enough for Jake to decide Natalie was the fabled “one.” And then she dumped him – dumped him hard one day and sent him an invitation to her wedding the next. When the ceremony was concluded, she made Jake promise that he would never, ever contact her and her new husband.

Robert Sawyer's Red Planet Blues: Neither Fish nor Fowl

 Robert J. Sawyer - Red Planet Blues

It’s hard to track a person if you don’t know what body he’s in. He could look like anyone –his own self, a movie star, your best friend… Alex Lomax, greatest private eye in all of New Klondike, Mars (in large part because he’s the only private eye in all of New Klondike, Mars) pretty much has a system, however. He kills ‘em all and lets God sort ‘em out. 

No, to be fair, he doesn’t kill them all: if they’re female, he beds them and then kills them (or tries, anyway). In the finest noir detective tradition, Lomax chases every skirt that comes his way and whips out his other rod for the men. Mike Hammer on Mars? Maybe… 

Owen Laukkanen, Criminal Enterprise: The Sophomore Slump Strikes Again

Criminal Enterprise - Owen Laukkanen

Like many a man, Carter Tomlin defined himself by his profession - a profession in which he was successful; so successful that he and his gorgeous wife and two daughters could live in a St. Paul mansion and he could tool around in an $80K Jaguar. When the middle-aged accountant was handed a pink slip, however, life took a turn for the worse. As weeks turned into months and the bills mounted, Tomlin started getting desperate. 

The reason bank robbers get caught, some claim, is that they're stupid: they make mistakes, they brag to the wrong people, they flash the cash in the wrong place. Carter Tomlin, however, was smart. He robbed again. And again. And after a year or so, he'd assembled a crew of three and perfected his method - a method that, naturally, brought him to the attention of the local office of the FBI.

Enter Carla Windermere... the day Windermere showed up on his doorstep was the day the wheels started to come off Carter Tomlin's little Criminal Enterprise. It would only get worse... 

That's when he robbed his first bank. 

Snow White Must Die? Kill the Bitch Already!

Tobias Sartorius spent a decade in solitary confinement in a German prison, convicted at seventeen for  murdering two seventeen-year-old classmates in his home town, the  village of Altenhain near Frankfurt. Unlike most convicted murderers, Tobi never claimed innocence: he didn't know if he was the killer, since he'd been in a drunken stupor. He was awakened by the police investigating the simultaneous disappearances of Laura and Stefanie - the first his ex-girlfriend, the second his current sweetie. Without bodies, the case was entirely circumstantial, but there was plenty of  evidence and enough witnesses to send the manchild away for a decade.

Gillian Flynn dissects an imperfect marriage: Gone Girl

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

The scenario hits the tabloids every couple of years. You know the one: you’ve seen it, if only because the images seem somehow unavoidable with those faces plastered everywhere. Sure, you remember: a photogenic young blonde wife (preferably pregnant) gone missing… a hapless husband, eyes bruised-looking from exhaustion, reading a statement begging for her return under the hot glare of the klieg lights… professionally-outraged talking heads on cable TV dialing up the accusations and the high dudgeon… legions of bonbon-gobbling house -wives (and –husbands) instantly experts in their own minds on blood spatter, rip tides, and undetectable poisons. Sure, you know the scenario: there’s a Gone Girl out there. 

Sue Grafton's "U is for Undertow" - It Has Nothing to do with Water

U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton

Kinsey Milhone returns for episode twenty-one in Sue Grafton’s alphabet series. The irrepressible Milhone still lives in fictional Santa Teresa, owns that single all-purpose black dress, trims her hair with fingernail scissors, and – most importantly – still lives in 1988 where (or is it when?) she's about to turn thirty-eight. At least readers can be certain that, unlike Linda Fairstein’s Alexandra Cooper, Kinsey won't ever find herself in grave peril because her cellphone battery just died. Heck, Milhone still doesn’t even own a fax machine…

Patricia Cornwell, "The Scarpetta Factor": Too Much Angst and not Enough Action

The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia D. Cornwell

Back in 1985 Bobby Ewing was murdered on Dallas, but he was resurrected in a ham-handed “dream sequence” the next year; a television event that may rival the infamous “jump-the-shark” episode of Happy Days for small-screen hubris. Not to be outdone, author Patricia Cornwell left signature character Kay Scarpetta grieveing upon finding lover Benton Wesley’s engraved Breitling watch amidst the ashes of a bomb site in 1998’s Point of Origin; only to raise him from the dead five years later in Blow Fly. The reunited couple has since wed, moved to the northeast, and set up multiple psychiatric and pathology practices in Boston and New York… a real shuttle family. And yes, Lucy and Marino have tagged along, though Marino can only afford housing in NYC, and lacks a squat in Beantown. Scarpetta's billionaire niece Lucy can, of course, afford both…

To keep busy while Ben (or is it Wes? I never remember) toils at the McLean Institute; the Doc, as Marino calls Scarpetta, does pro bono autopsies for the NYC medical examiner and picks up pocket change as a forensics consultant to CNN. Guess that latter’s how the couple affords both a home in Boston and a pied-à-terre on Central Park West. Though the latest media sensation in the Big Apple is the disappearance of money maven Hannah Starr three weeks ago, Scarpetta’s not on that case – instead, she’s on the case of a young jogger whose body was discovered in the Park. There’s no reason to think there’s any connection, but during Scarpetta’s next appearance on CNN the host tries to get her to connect dead woman to missing woman, going so far as to claim that both had been seen “getting into a yellow cab.” Gee, I thought everybody in Manhattan rode in cabs all the time…

Wes… errr, Benton has his own problems, involving an “inappropriate” Christmas card from a recently discharged patient at McLean. Something about this woman sets his teeth on edge – though it’s difficult to figure out what could ruffle the preternaturally calm shrink and former FBI wunderkind. That is, of course, before the bomb shows up on their doorstep. All of which kicks Marino, Lucy, Lucy’s squeeze Jaime Berger (ADA in charge of sex crimes [ain’t that Linda Fairstein’s job?]), and a host of cop-types into high gear. A missing BlackBerry and a deteriorating relationship between Lucy and Jaime add to the fun.

But you ain’t seen nothing yet – if you thought Benton’s (did I get the name right) resurrection was something, The Scarpetta Factor is gonna set you on your ear.

Somewhere about 1998, the Kay Scarpetta series went off the rails. Instead of being about a ferociously intelligent woman who uses her skills and intellect to solve crimes, the series morphed into something about relationships – dysfunctional relationships. First there was Scarpetta’s niece Lucy, the supercali-technologic-XP-all-precocious young lesbian: her coming out, her violence, her tendency to be completely uncontrollable and just abour as antisocial. Then there was the whole Wesley thing, with his “death” and reappearance. Then there was the Marino thing - a drunken attempt to “hook up” with Scarpetta. There were all the moves - Virginia to South Carolina to Florida to Bos/NYC – and Scarpetta’s career changes. Oh, and the whole wolfman Chandonne thing, too…

Recently, it looked as though author Patricia Cornwell had pulled the series out of its funk, especially in the last installment – simply named Scarpetta. In the seventeenth book of this venerable series, however, Cornwell backslides something fierce. Of the nearly 500 pages of The Scarpetta Factor (a hefty tome), much more than half is given over to the characters’ analysis of their feelings, fears, hopes, desires, memories… There are soliloquies on what kind of tomato Scarpetta should slice up for a 3:00 AM salad to make herself feel better about the bomb squad’s leaving fingerprints on her glass sculpture. There are extended – and I mean several pages – renderings of Lucy’s barely-contained rage at what she considers a slight by an FBO air-traffic controller. There is page after page of Marino and Wesley in their ongoing pissing contest. It’s rather boring, in fact.

Yes, the pieces of a good mystery are all there: Marino has his cop moments; Scarpetta is a pathology goddess in scrubs and a hair net. Lucy has better computers (and more smarts) than NSA signals intelligence, and knows how to use them. But Lord! There is so much misdirection and so much sniveling going on in here that its removal would have cut the book in half and still left the plot intact.

Last time out, I thought Scarpetta was back: sadly, it appears I was wrong.

John Sandford, "Rough Country" - Virgil Flowers Returns (if Anyone Cares)

Rough Country by John Sandford

Erica McDill paddled her canoe out to watch the eagles return to their nest at sunset. She never came back. Virgil Flowers was on a boat of his own when he got the call, only a couple of hours into a big muskie fishing tournament. Virgil never came back, either. The difference was that, a few hours later, a very alive Flowers stood looking at a very dead McDill.

In Virgil Flowers' experience, murder is usually about sex or money; and McDill seemed to have plenty of both. The Eagle's Nest Lodge near Grand Rapids (the one in Minnesota, not the one in Michigan) began as a family joint; but a while back the owners had converted the Lodge to a high-end, women-only resort and the place had thrived. Though not officially a hangout for wealthy North Woods lesbians, a good chunk of the clientele had always been either full-time residents or visitors to "the island," McDill among them.

Nothing back home in St. Paul looked suspicious and the setting of the killing seemed to indicate a local, so Virgil began his investigation by nosing around the Eagle's Nest and the Grand Rapids lesbian community - a community that substantially overlapped with the local music scene. That overlap was mainly due to one person: the top local band's lead singer, Wendy Asbach, a brash, brawling blonde C & W type with a set of pipes to die for. So, the number one question: did McDill die for them?

Virgil Flowers commenced to do what Virgil does best: he poked his nose into enough people's business and turned over enough rocks to build a case, and then he let nature run its course. Witness and suspect interviews were a little tougher than usual for Virgil this time, though, since the cop who looks like a surfer dude (blond hair that's a little too long, tight faded jeans, and a string of rock concert tee shirts) figured out that good looks and an "Aww, shucks, ma'am" style just didn't seem to work as well on these particular women. Well, they worked fine on one of ‘em's sister: now, if he could just get his cell phone to stop ringing at all the wrong times...

Rough Country, John Sandford's third Virgil Flowers novel (after Heat Lightning and Dark of the Moon), finds Lucas Davenport's go-to guy still wandering around Minnesota's back roads in a state pickup truck, pulling a private boat. He's also still more inclined to leave his sidearm under the seat of the truck than under his arm, and he still has enough of an anti-authoritarian streak to sleep with witnesses and the occasional suspect - that he doesn't this time is probably more a result of the sexual preference of most of the women in Rough Country than for lack of trying. Given the small-town setting of the McDill murder, Flowers truly doesn't have much to work with - and that means neither does Sandford. A single red herring is pretty much all that separates readers from an open-and-shut case, and identifying the killer on about page 100; even with the stinky fish it's still close. So Sandford has to find other ways to pad out the plot. I lost track how many times Flowers had to backtrack because his chief local source, Zoe Tull, "neglected" to tell him yet another interesting factoid - one of which in fact turned out to be important, but the rest of which were just more distractions. All of that means that, while the two previous novels featuring Virgil were not only fun, they were also good mysteries that kept readers guessing. This time, though, the fun factor is just as prevalent but the mystery element is pretty ho-hum.

As ever, Sandford keeps up a running patter for his character . Clearly, Virgil was ADD as a child (consider that he doesn't sleep, and he doesn't  seem to be able to concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes at a time - except fishing). We learn that Virgil detests the Dixie Chicks (probably more a Clear Channel thing on Sandford's part than a music critic thing, since Virgil thinks Leann Rimes is the bomb); we also get minor insights into his three ex-wives. Unlike the previous two novels, though, Virgil has little luck with the ladies this time - however Sandford spins Virgil's frustrations into an amusing secondary thread. The problem with Rough Country, unfortunately, is that this thread is almost as engaging as the murder mystery. For that, Virgil loses half a star...

Find Rough Country at eBay

Why Read "The Spire"? It's Pointless...

The Spire by Richard North Patterson

Sixteen years ago as a senior (and one of the B-est of MOCs) at Caldwell University, Mark Darrow stumbled off fraternity row early one Sunday morning, only to find the body of a young African-American classmate lying in the shadow of Caldwell's iconic landmark, The Spire. The uproar over the death of one of the school's few minority students (not to mention a beautiful young woman) and the conviction of a second student - one of Darrow's closest friends - knocked the legs out from under the tiny college's fundraising efforts, and it'd been downhill ever since. Darrow's career, on the other hand, had moved in the opposite direction: after Yale Law, his rise in the ranks of attorneys was positively meteoric until, at forty, the handsome young man was a millionaire many times over. That's when his Caldwell mentor and the closest thing to a father he'd ever had, Lionel Farr, came calling in his Beantown highrise office with a proposition. Since the current president of Caldwell had just been caught with his hand in the till (to the tune of $900K), would Darrow please quit his law practice and take over for him?

Well, of course he would...

Back in Wayne, Ohio (home of Caldwell), Darrow found his alma mater clearly on the skids, with morale among both alumni and faculty tanked. Since that long-ago murder started Caldwell on a long, slow decline, Darrow found the case weighed heavily on his mind. Though snowed under with his presidential duties , Darrow nonetheless found time to investigate Angela Hall's murder - especially when he realized that, in hindsight, some things had never added up. To make his nights even shorter, Darrow also embarked on a personal investigation of the alleged embezzlement by his predecessor. Juggling not just a job and a new-found "hobby" would be plenty for a normal man, but Mark Darrow's not your ordinary man: there was also a certain young woman he hadn't seen in sixteen years.

Did the wrong man go to jail for life? Where's the missing money (and who made it go missing)? Could Mark Darrow turn Caldwell around in spite of having zero experience running a university? Would the young widower's broken heart be mended by a raven-haired beauty? All the answers will be found near the center of the Caldwell campus, at The Spire.

Richard North Patterson's seventeenth novel (and second for 2009), The Spire isn't a novel of political intrigue (The Race or Balance of Power), nor is it a courtroom drama (Dark Lady), nor an "issue" piece like Exile or Eclipse): Patterson has written what may well be the first (and very likely the last) mystery with a university president as protagonist. In creating his fictitious Caldwell, Patterson draws heavily on his undergrad days at Ohio Wesleyan University, though the real place seems to have no "spire" at the center of campus - that would be the University of Texas...

Although the plot of a white-shoe Boston attorney turned university president trying to solve two different crimes (one more than a decade old) bears no resemblance to anything else in Patterson's oeuvre, the novel remains immediately recognizable as his work. As in both Exile and Eclipse, the protagonist is a single male legal eagle called to help an important person from his past; about to re-encounter a woman he'd left behind. 

Some might think that the dynamics of small-town race relations and the friction between "town and gown" in small university towns are issue enough for Patterson in The Spire, though I would disagree. Neither such stress is covered in any particular detail, and race relations are actually glossed over except to say that "some people were racist back in the old days." In the absence of a great question to discuss and about which his characters might wax philosophical (endlessly...), Patterson's latest is decidedly smaller that most of his recent works. It's not much smaller physically, but it's smaller intellectually. Where protagonists in his "large-scale" novels are world-class experts working at the leading edges of their vocation (the law), Darrow seems somehow able to have leapt into an entirely new job and still have time to investigate not one but two crimes - and have hot monkey sex with a beautiful woman in his day. Oh, to be young again, eh? Or perhaps it's the Perry Mason effect - lawyers are all supernatural beings.

Besides a plodding and pedestrian plot, The Spire also suffers from a surfeit of transparency. That both of Darrow's investigations would result in miscarriages of justice uncovered was, per convention, a given from page one. What is worse, however, is that the true villain of the piece, regardless of Patterson's clumsy attempts at misdirection, is as obvious as an NBA center amongst a tribe of pygmies. What a generous reviewer might call a "huge plot twist" came as no surprise whatsoever for this reader. Last, Patterson never laid any groundwork for Darrow's decision to leave a highly lucrative legal career and become president of a tiny college - while barely in his forties. Such shortcomings do precious little to recommend The Spire as a mystery/thriller novel - and I don't recommend it, either.