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It's impossible to discuss DEADMAN'S SWITCH without talking about Barbara Seranella, who died far too young in January 2007, only a few months before the release of this book, which was to begin a new series. On receiving my copy, a few weeks back, I took several days to crack it open. I feared, paradoxically, that I wouldn't like it, reluctant to read about someone new when I wasn't 'done' with Munch Mancini yet, and fearful that I would like it a lot and all that would mean. I loved this book. It offered a fascinating story, a character with brains and flaws and insight and reality and I learned all sorts of things from it. Damn. Barbara Seranella was one of our best writers. She offered honest-to-god characters with huge issues but they made sense. I always felt that readers like me read Seranella's books in part because we got Munch, and wanted her so much to succeed, knowing how hard it would be for her to free herself from her past. That awareness was a regular theme in that series. We're all a summation of all we've done before, but with Mancini it was acute and she was always dealing with the huge mistakes she'd made, and the horrors visited upon her by others. In creating Charlotte Lyon, Seranella offered us a new character. Lyon is struggling with several major issues but she has learned, very wisely, to channel some of those problems into useful paths. Charlotte deals with OCD, the now familiar obsessive compulsive disorder that many people have heard about. She ain't Monk though (and boy am I glad), but she has learned that her fears, rational or not, plausible or not can be worked with and in fact they led her to become an expert in crisis management. She uses what she knows to calm her own irrational behaviors and fears, when she can. Other times, she simply does what she has to to get through a day. I admire that trait and I appreciate how Seranella showed this to us. In DEADMAN'S SWITCH, Lyon is called upon to work for a law firm that represents Sun Rail. A train has derailed for no obvious reason, killing the conductor and a passenger who turns out to be famous and good, a true do-gooder who was loved and admired throughout the world. While it's not Lyon's job to determine the cause of the derailment, there's no way to avoid involvement. She needs to understand what happened for a variety of reasons; to help write press releases, to track down responsible parties, to ensure victims are taken care of with respect. On thing I like in this book is that Lyons has not "overcome her disability" nor has she completely let it take over. She's found a way to live with it and function in a world where she is not comfortable. The reader learns about trains along with Charlotte. This is not a bad thing; the exposition works well because Charlotte, in order to assist the client, needs a working knowledge of train design, how engineers and conductors do their jobs, how safe trains are and how communication works throughout the system – without lumps of exposition. It's there but it's smooth and comes in the form of inquiry and communications that you would expect someone in this job to pursue. I'm not a train enthusiast, but this was interesting stuff, and I acquired enough expertise to ride along, as it were. Lyon's job is a lot of public relations – managing this crisis includes making sure people have hotel rooms and places to go and that the company that runs the trains isn't seen as a heartless bad guy. But finding out who was responsible is important too, to prepare for lawsuits, liability, and of course the future of the railroad and the track, especially when one victim is close to sainthood in the eyes of thousands. While I did guess the who, the identity of the person responsible for the crime, I never guessed the all-important why and was surprised to learn it. The additional threads regarding Lyon's attraction to a National Transportation Safety Board investigator, as well as Charlotte's disaster of a mother, are well-written. I really dislike 'annoying mother syndrome' but this situation is unique, drawn with precision and credibility, and shows a lot about the protagonist. It's stupid to whine about how it's not fair. I want to read more books featuring Charlotte Lyon. It's just terribly hard to comprehend that there won't be any more books from this author who left such a mark on the field in only ten years (NO HUMAN INVOLVED, the first Mancini, was published in 1997). I will so miss the talent that brought us Munch Mancini and the promise of this most excellent book in what was to have been a new series.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, May 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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