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Chase Dagger is a private detective with some unusual assistants. Sara, a very young and very beautiful woman, is also a shape-shifter. She has the ability to change at will into a gray wolf or a gray hawk. His other assistant, if that is the word, is Einstein, a macaw, who just happens to have a photographic memory. One might think that these supernatural aspects would detract from the enjoyment of the mystery but, thanks to the author's adroit handling of them, they don't. Dagger is caught up in the mystery when Sara, shape-shifted into a gray hawk, is a witness to the murder of a woman. When she recruits Dagger and they return to the scene of the crime, the body is gone and there is no evidence of any crime having been committed. Shortly thereafter, Dagger and Sara attend a party at the home of Robert Tyler, a hotel magnate, who is a close friend of a newspaper tycoon, Leyton Monroe. Monroe's daughter, Sheila, is Dagger's ex-fiancee, though she still seems to want to restart the flames between them and Dagger is a bit ambivalent about her. At the party Sara finds a portrait of a woman who looks exactly like the woman she saw being killed. The portrait is of Rachel Tyler, Robert Tyler's wife, who supposedly died five years before in a sailing accident. Thus the title of the book, The Good Die Twice. There are wheels within wheels in the goings-on at the Tyler home. Rachel may or may not have been a "good" wife. Robert's son, Eric, had an affair with her before she married his father. Driver manages to keep all the plot convolutions straight as she maneuvers the reader through the twists and turns of the story. I would suggest that The Good Die Twice is certainly worth reading. Chase Dagger is an interesting hero. The elements of the supernatural in the story add to the interest rather than detract from it, as I was afraid they would. Sara's shape-shifting is not carried to extremes -- it doesn't happen too often -- and Einstein, the macaw, is good for a few laughs. There is quite a bit of violence in this book, so a laugh now and then is appreciated. The relationship between Dagger and Sara is an intriguing one and it will be interesting to see how the author builds on it in future books. Dagger watches Sara mature before his eyes from someone he views as a child into a beautiful and mysterious young woman. They both have secrets they keep from each other, including, it seems, how they really feel about each other. Everyone, or almost everyone, in the book assumes they are having an affair. And, after Sara barely escapes an assault, it seems likely that in a future book everyone will be proved right. Lee Driver is the pseudonym of S. O. Tooley, the author of the Sam Casey series. The Good Die Twice is not as fast-moving as the two Casey books I have read, but it makes up for it by more character development, especially of the hero. I enjoyed it thoroughly and would highly recommend it.
Reviewed by Jeffrey O'Brien, August 2001
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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