|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
In the opening scene, a hired assassin, a psychopath known only as the Professor, has, alternately, an Iranian-American medical researcher, her precocious ten-year-old daughter, and her boyfriend in the crosshairs of his customized Remington 700. Instead of pulling the trigger, however, he sets off an explosive that opens a curbside package containing the latest-generation iPod. Its arrival coincides with the daughter’s birthday. It is the last tranquil moment in this Dallas-based thriller. Just moments later he kills an itinerant worker who comes into the partly constructed home the Professor is using as his blind, the first of 16 brutal murders (and counting) he and others commit. Remaining totally ignorant of the Professor’s presence, Dr Anita Nazari, the researcher, shortly afterwards encounters Henry Lee 'Hank' Oswald. The burnt-out private investigator with the unfortunate name is visiting Mike Baxter, who is dying in the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital where she works. Alternately cajoling and browbeating him, Anita lures Hank out of his self-imposed retirement to investigate who has been sending her threatening email messages for the past year and a half, a person she suspects is behind the mysterious arrival of the parcel. Hank initially resists returning to his career as "a righter of wrongs, a would-be knight in rusted armor" riding the mean streets of Dallas, but it helps Anita’s campaign that he has just walked out of his job as a bartender. Mike also wants Hank to return to being an investigator in order to track down his estranged daughter. Mike wants to make peace with her before he dies of cancer, an apparent consequence of the Gulf War Syndrome that plagued him upon his return from the Middle East. When Hank balks at helping, Mike does not hesitate to resort to emotional blackmail. He reminds Hank that he is in the shape he is because he happened to take Hank’s place on the fatal mission where the oil wells blew, spewing up clouds of pollutants that contributed to his present condition. At his funeral, Hank sorrows "for all the lives lost or damaged beyond repair because of a few barrels of oil [on] an unnamed hill somewhere." Gradually, we become aware that the first President Bush’s Gulf War, in fact, hovers behind the entire novel. The Professor likewise suffers from a severely compromised immune system. Though we never learn for sure its causes, since he was a Ranger in Desert Storm, his ill health probably also originates with the same war. As a result of his condition, he has become a total health fanatic, almost a comical figure in the extremes that he takes to purify and maintain his body. He sometimes sounds like some eco-terrorist. We also learn that Anita’s latest research proves "that a certain substance was evident in the blood of veterans suffering from the so-called Gulf War Syndrome," though she doubts that her work will ever be published. Local thugs become part of the general menace. Other mysterious figures claiming to be FBI agents show up wreaking havoc. Swept into the mayhem for a large portion of the novel are the innocent Irish travelers, a group whose very existence I am embarrassed to say I had never heard of before. Sometimes called tinkers, often confused with gypsies, they are a distinctive minority who seek to coexist outside conventional social structures. One in a long fictional line of brash-talking, hard-hitting womanizers, Hank himself verges on being a caricature. Facing the approach of the big four-oh, he should have learned by now, one would think, when to keep his mouth shut. But part of the fun is watching Hank put his own spin on the traditional character. Who would want to give up witnessing the generally outlandish results of his latest outrageous quip to the wrong person? One of my favorites is his wisecrack to an FBI agent: "Were you born without a personality or did you have it surgically removed when you joined J Edgar’s outfit?" Hank blurts out what the rest of us wish we had the nerve to say. The novel moves at a fast clip. The story develops in 54 short chapters, the majority narrated from Hank’s perspective, a few in the author’s voice providing information about Anita’s or the Professor’s movements. With so many bewildering twists and turns, I started feeling that the author had left plot holes so gaping that the Irish travelers’ Winnebago could drive through them. Then, suddenly, almost at the very end, Hunsicker demonstrates how totally in control he is of his seemingly incoherent plot as everything falls into place for a most satisfying resolution, one that forces the reader to rethink the entire novel. This is the third in the Lee Henry Oswald mystery series, following STILL RIVER (2005) and THE NEXT TIME YOU DIE (2006). Readers who have read them will be happy to know that Olson makes a cameo appearance here and that Nolan returns to take on a strong supporting role. For me it is the most accomplished. As with the other two, the violence remains over the top, but CROSSHAIRS is a cleaner, slicker work. At the same time it is richer, more fulfilling. It teases the reader with political, military, industrial, and environmental concerns that demand our attention more than ever. One of the last lines in the novel sums up: "Let’s just say it’s hard to tell where corporate America ends and the government begins." The reader is left to draw appropriate connections to current US policies.
Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, September 2007
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
