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Irish director Jack Donovan is one of those men who exudes charm and is a powerful force that can't be ignored. For many years, he has worked with almost the same crew to film his movies. Known as the "Gang of Four," they've been together through great successes and great failures. They are currently shooting a movie in Dublin. When Jack receives a series of threatening letters, he turns to an old, but estranged, friend, private investigator Ed Loy. They are able to move beyond the issues that caused the rift in their friendship, and Ed finds that Jack has lost none of his charisma over the years. As Ed looks into the threats against Jack, he learns that three beautiful women who have secondary roles in the film have not shown up for work. It's not immediately clear whether they have actually just gone on a lark or been victims of foul play. Ed suspects the worst, as he recalls a movie shot many years earlier in which three young women disappeared and were never found. Could someone involved in the movie production be a killer? If so, why would they jeopardize the success of the movie by removing actors whose scenes were only half complete? The investigation leads Loy in many directions, including back to Los Angeles where the bodies of the earlier victims have been uncovered. Based on evidence found at those scenes, he suspects that there have been many more unreported murders which seem to have occurred in groups of three. He fears that the killer has begun to escalate and to be committing murders on a much more accelerated schedule.. Despite the fact that Hughes is an excellent writer, I felt that the book suffered from use of the cliché wherein individual chapters are narrated from the point of the view of the killer and italicized. For an avid reader of crime fiction, this technique has become an irritating annoyance that has been overused in serial killer books. As a result, it has lost its impact and feels derivative. In spite of that flaw, Hughes has a poetic writing style, which makes for a very pleasurable reading experience. His development of the character of Ed Loy, who is fighting the demons of drink, is wonderfully done, particularly in the interactions with his new love, Anne Fogarty, and her children. The fact that they may be in danger is quite scary. Hughes does an equally good job on fleshing out Jack Donovan, who could have been a caricature but showed surprising psychological depth. The characterization definitely trumps the plot. There was very little suspense about the identity of the actual killer. The clichéd serial killer aspect of the book led me to be mildly disappointed in the book, despite some wonderful writing.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, April 2010
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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