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CONFIDENCE WOMAN is the third in a new series by Judith Van Gieson, who has previously written eight mysteries featuring Neil Hamel, a New Mexico lawyer who often functions as her own private investigator. Any resemblance between Neil and Van Gieson's new protagonist, Clair Reyneir, is totally non-existent. OK, let's get down to the really nitty-gritty here: I miss Neil Hamel. I loved everything about Neil, read every single book, totally hated when those books stopped coming out. Which was totally not the author's fault. So I was glad when Van Gieson got a new series with a female protagonist, even though the paperbacks were hard to come by, and the hardcovers -- which by an interesting arrangement, are pubished simultaneously by the University of New Mexico Press -- were even harder. And thus it came to pass that I did not read the first two books in the series, and snatched at this one, the third. The first two titles are THE STOLEN BLUE and VANISHING POINT. I'm very sorry to say that my joy was slowly replaced by dismay as I read more and more pages of CONFIDENCE WOMAN. Don't let my one reaction discourage you: A lot of people are going to love this book for reasons I'll give; and others aren't going to like it any more than I did, for reasons I'll also give. First, the good positive stuff. Judith Van Gieson writes as well as she ever did. She hasn't left behind the Southwest setting she does so well. Her descriptions of the scenery and her understanding of the people who populate the towns of Santa Fe and Albuquerque environs, and some less-known spots in Arizona, are as keen as always. For readers who like their heroines to be indisputably virtuous and continuously on the side of right not might, Claire Reynier will be just the ticket. CONFIDENCE WOMAN is easy reading, an evening's entertainment. The story is one-dimensional and you can follow it along predictably to the ending you most likely anticipated. You may, therefore, feel fulfilled when you put the book down. But (you knew that was coming, didn't you): If you were thinking or hoping Claire might be a slightly older version of Neil Hamel, you'd be wrong. Claire is indeed in her 50s, as many of us are now -- we who started out reading the female PIs, both amateur and professional, during the explosion of female mystery authors following Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, and Sue Grafton. Claire Reynier is a rare book librarian and collector who unwillingly functions as an amateur detective. I kept reading on and on, looking for Claire to shed her too-good-to-be-true image, but she doesn't. She really is that good. She's also still a size 10, same as the day she graduated from the U. of Arizona ... which turns out to be important to the plot. The plot revolves around the mystery of who killed a woman, temporarily resident in Santa Fe. She's found dead in the first couple of pages. The dead woman had been Claire's sorority sister. Evidence was found at the scene that she'd robbed Claire, and also robbed four other sorority sisters, two in New Mexico and two in Arizona. Therefore, the somewhat dull but earnest, not bad-looking, young Santa Fe police officer concludes, all four of the former sorority sisters had a motive to kill the woman. Claire is the unlucky one with no alibi. So she concludes that she must do everything she can to clear herself. In the interest of doing so (or maybe simply because it's in keeping with her character), Claire tells the young police officer the truth about other thefts that happened in their college days all those years ago. The others didn't want Claire to tell. Because she does, another woman becomes a suspect -- which makes Claire's place on the moral high ground a little slippery. In spite of that one little slip, to me Claire is entirely too good, too perfect, and too tame to be a sympathetic protagonist. She didn't engage my full attention or my affection -- and in the absence of an irresistible plot, I want at least one of those to keep me reading. I guess I go with what Tina Turner used to say while singing Proud Mary: "Some folk like it hard, and rough." I won't apologize for liking it hard and rough. That's why I still miss Neil Hamel.
Reviewed by Ava D. Day, March 2002
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