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When superstar Wall Street analyst Greg Danes disappears, he leaves behind an angry ex-wife, a lonely son and a group of co-workers who mostly didn't much care for him. The ex-wife, Nina Sachs, hires PI John March to find Danes. She's dependent on the generous alimony and child support that Danes pays her faithfully. Dealing with her should triple March's fee, but she's one of the most difficult people to deal with that he's ever faced. So what did happen to Danes? Did he run away from home, something which he has done before? Or has something bad happened to him? As March peels back the layers of Danes' life, he finds that Danes was pretty much disliked by everyone that he interacted with. Admittedly, he was great at his job, but recently he had a bad series of opinions that were causing his star to dull. As it turns out, there are others looking for Danes for their own reasons; and March keeps stumbling into their path. Not only are some of the titans of the business world interested in finding Danes, so are a group of Russian mob types with whom March forms a surprising association. I was totally caught up in the first two-thirds of the book. Spiegelman did a great job of detailing exactly how a typical investigation proceeds, with the PI having to research innumerable arcane details and try to make sense of mostly meaningless information. March was a fastidious researcher, and that was fascinating. However, as the book progressed, the protagonist morphed into someone who turned from a cerebral to a physical approach, and that's when the book lost its luster for me. March angrily facing suspects and beating them up just didn't feel right to me. But perhaps I missed a telling event in the narrative, as he also gave up on a very promising relationship with a woman who really meant a lot to him and just generally seemed to be moving into permanent anger mode. Those two aspects of the book ended up making it less than satisfactory for me, in spite of some fine writing.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, September 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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