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The main character in THE DREAM OF THE BROKEN HORSES is David Weiss, a highly regarded forensic artist, who supplements the relatively small salary he earns from working with police departments, by drawing courtroom sketches for major television news networks when their cameras are not allowed in the courtroom. In his forensic work, David has earned a reputation for being uncannily accurate in depiction of criminal perpetrators; he gains his accuracy by entering the mind of the victim through careful, empathic questioning. He has near-total recall of everything he sees and hears -- a fine quality for a (third person) narrator. The book opens with a prologue and first chapter that are examples of David's mind at work, though the reader will not know it until later. The author's interesting technique here has the effect of plunging us, vividly and shockingly, into the middle of a story that took place twenty-five years in the past. David Weiss has returned to Calista, a fictional Midwestern city where he was born and spent the first decade of his life, for the sake of one of his courtroom jobs. It is the first time he has been back "home." His young life in Calista had been marked by crime and tragedy, culminating in his mother's leaving his father, with David, for California where she married again and David took his stepfather's name. David's real father, Dr. Thomas Rubin, was a psychoanalyst who somehow became involved in the murder of a socially prominent married woman and her young lover (also named Thomas): The two were shot to death in Calista's downscale Flamingo Motel, by a man who was never identified except as having worn a long black raincoat and a black fedora pulled down to shadow his face. After the murder, David's father became inexplicably and increasingly depressed, which strained the marriage to the breaking point, and eventually caused Dr. Rubin to take his own life. David's self-appointed task, in his spare time while working the trial of another sex/money/drugs murder, is to solve two old cold cases that have had direct bearing on his life: one is the kidnapping of a little girl who was named Belle Fulraine, and the other is the murder of the two lovers in the Flamingo Motel. The woman half of that pair was Barbara Fulraine, Belle's mother. Barbara is the fulcrum around which this complex story moves: It was she who had the dream that becomes the title of the book. She was also in psychoanalysis with Dr. Thomas Rubin, to whom she reported that dream and its many variations. That David Weiss is able to solve these old crimes that have so closely touched his life, to successfully illustrate the ongoing-in-the-present trial, and at the same time during that trial to develop what seems destined to be a lasting love relationship of his own, is a fascinating process to watch unfold on the page in William Bayer's skilled hands. This is a complex, layered story that progresses on many levels simultaneously and totally believably. Most fascinating are three long sections of forensic detail: the police case notes of the Flamingo murders, Dr. Rubin's case notes of his analysis of Barbara Fulraine, and one last document -- the nature of which cannot be revealed in a review, or it would spoil the story. THE DREAM OF THE BROKEN HORSES is not a "fast read" -- it's better than that. The book is involving and rewarding. The author's astonishing ability shows through. The back book cover blurb labels it "psychoerotic suspense." Well, perhaps. But I would say THE DREAM OF THE BROKEN HORSES is a forensic psychological and procedural thriller, in which the keenness of the main character's observations and insight into the mind of long-dead victims and still-living witnesses is surpassed only by his ability to observe his own inner self, and to grow from his observations. This is a book I will want to read again. It's a keeper.
Reviewed by Ava D. Day, February 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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