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One good thing about this first novel by a new author is that it's just plain good; it's such a pleasure to see someone avoid lots of the cliches of mystery writing (OK, there are a few). Another cool thing is that this is, for a paperback original, a long book, and it doesn't flag. It lasts, without padding, for all 350- plus pages. That doesn't happen too often -- in recent years, as a constant reader, I've been driven to mild distraction by books I thought should have been chopped by a third or a half. Not so with DEALING IN MURDER. Elaine Flinn has written an interesting character in an interesting setting. Her Molly Doyle is not stylized, but a fully realized protagonist. She's running away from her life in New York where her louse of a husband involved her in a scam that threatens to destroy her reputation as a high-class antiques dealer. It's a small enough world that she starts using a different name (albeit her own maiden name and nickname) so that people in the know won't connect her with the mess back in New York. She flees to Carmel, where a friend offers her refuge -- a place to live and work, even if it is a fairly down-at-the-heels antique/junk shop. Molly is traumatized one day when a woman she goes to visit (to get a key for a desk she'd bought the previous day) dies in her arms. Suspected, at least of knowing more than she tells, Molly tries to understand what happened. Randall, the new police chief in Carmel is himself a "formerly" -- a big shot in LA who thought he would have a quieter life as a police chief in a place like Carmel by the Sea. I had some problems with Randall, especially at first; he's an experienced professional police officer who almost instantly dislikes Molly Doyle and lets it show. His superficial comparisons on Molly to his ex-wife, and his narrow-minded lumping together of antiques dealers (essentially they're all crooks and liars, he sneers) needs to stay out of his investigation, and eventually, he calms down and does a professional job. The secondary characters make the setting real and realistic; I felt after only a short time that I knew exactly where Molly lived and worked and what the place felt like Flinn, I thought did a wonderful job of showing more than just tourist Carmel (a place I've only visited twice). I saw the shop, and the apartment she's trying to live in; a comedown from her slick New York situation but under her control. I don't get her bias against Mission furniture (hey, I like the stuff) but when Molly likes something, you can tell why. There aren't those dreaded expository lumps of description of the furniture of gewgaws in the store. Flinn writes with a lively and interesting style and the book moved along for me very well. Dialogue seems natural and the author doesn't make the mistake of treating either the cop or protagonist as stereotypical mystery plug-ins. Randall realizes early on that Doyle is not a suspect, so he doesn't treat her like one, for example. There are a few surprises, but they make sense in the long run; you end up understanding why people behave or act the way they do. Flinn's sense of setting and place shine in this book. Carmel may be a little quaint town on the California coast, but there are still politics and rivalries, alliances and friendships and secrets. Many 'small town' mysteries have a tendency toward melodrama -- that whole "everyone knows everything" story line, which sends me racing toward the bookshelf for a big, anonymous big city mystery novel. I hope this book does very well so that we can see a lot more from Elaine Flinn.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, December 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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