About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

DEAD EVEN
by Mariah Stewart
Ballantine Books, August 2004
384 pages
$6.99
ISBN: 0345463943


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In today's mystery market, it has almost become a cliché that characters bash law enforcement personnel as unfeeling, unreasoning and incompetent. This novel goes against type in that the two prime protagonists are members of that elite law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. What's more, the principal characters, agent Miranda Cahill and her sometime lover, agent Will Fletcher, interact extensively with several other members of the bureau who are mostly competent, caring, individuals, as are the two protagonists.

The novel follows two separate stories in interesting ways that allows the author to tie both together in a manner that doesn't affront our intelligence. In the main story, Cahill and Fletcher chase down an unlikely killer who is targeting specific individuals from another felon's past life of misery. Think Strangers on a Train. Plus one.

Although the agents know that the killers who set the game in motion are dead or in prison for life, and that the third player is, with a high degree of certainty, stupid, incompetent, inexperienced and unlikely to voluntarily kill anything larger than a cockroach, they have to follow up. It's an unusual and clever twist. It raises interesting possibilities which are not fully exploited.

The second, smaller story line, concerns attempts by the FBI to extract a kidnapped child from the clutches of a neo-religious cult-like operation called Valley of the Angels. The child's mother is an FBI staffer and the undercover agent sent to extract the girl from her father's clutches is the wife of the FBI agent in charge of the case Cahill and Fletcher are investigating. I thought this story had greater potential for development of some interesting characters than did the main story.

Difficulties with the novel mainly occur in two places. Early on in a chance meeting between three felons in which the primary plot is established, is the first. Several times we are treated to pregnant pauses and meaningful glances between two of the characters in the scene that make it appear the meeting and plotting was previously arranged. That is never explained, although a prior arrangement doesn't seem at all possible.

The other difficulty is hard to justify here without revealing too much of the mystery. This novel is both thriller and mystery. When it becomes obvious that Agent Cahill is a target of the killer they are chasing, the justification for her remaining on the case and relatively unprotected is a little hard to swallow.

Both stories move with measured pace. The author handles the scenes of tension and action well and at times there is interesting interaction between the plots. Stewart is a good writer and the book is clean and well-edited. There are a few minor plot holes, but this is, after all, fiction, and our suspension of disbelief is not unnecessarily troubled.

Reviewed by Carl Brookins, August 2004

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]