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BRIGHT FUTURES
by Stuart M. Kaminsky
Forge, January 2009
304 pages
$23.95
ISBN: 0765318288


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Stuart Kaminsky has been writing mysteries for a long, long time and does not appear to have ever slowed down. He's an amazing talent, writing multiple series novels that offer some of the best writing in the genre.

Kaminsky's newest series (relatively speaking) features Lew Fonseca. When I read the first book of the lot, I found Fonseca, while plausible, just too depressing to spend time with. So it was a surprise to find in this, the sixth book in the series, that while Fonseca has never been able to turn his life around (his all-too-plausible deep depression comes from the death of his wife in a hit-and-run car accident) he's seemingly made his peace with living. He gets by, never pretending to be other than he is, living a pretty marginal life but with it all, having some true friends and real relationships. The most stunning is the appearance of Victor Woo, the man responsible for Lew's wife's death. As the book opens, this man is sleeping on Fonseca's office floor. Woo's a free man - he apparently traveled to Sarasota to seek absolution or punishment for his actions and somehow this weird and uneasy liaison has been going on for a while.

There are several plot threads to this story but they're not so Byzantine that you can't deal with them. Kaminsky's ongoing brilliance is his portrayal of odd characters, sad characters, obsessed characters, all of whom keep your attention. In the Rostnikov series, there are annoying screaming mothers, and morose men who live for the life of their country and the ideals of Communism, now crushed. But the author makes them appealing, causes them to be worth caring about. In the series featuring Abe Lieberman, the aging Chicago cop, he'll often team up the most unlikely of people with other people and he makes it work. The title BRIGHT FUTURES is a tad ironic. Fonseca is unlikely ever to see a bright future. However those close to him have pretty much forced him to have a future, even one without his wife. He won't ever manage to come completely back from the devastation of her death, but he can actually look ahead. While he's doing so, he's still finding the resolution so that other people need so that they too can look forward, and that includes Victor Woo and his future. Interesting guy, that Fonseca. And definitely an interesting book. You can't go wrong with Kaminsky, no matter where you start, even mid-series, you'll find a good story and some stunningly drawn people.

Reviewed by Andi Shechter, May 2009

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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