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Surviving the six-week-long course at the Arizona Police Academy is almost more than Ali Reynolds can manage. She's one of the few females attending, and she's also over forty. She makes it through, only to be "furloughed" when she gets back home; being laid off was NOT in her plans. Covering for her parents at their local mom-n-pop restaurant while they go on a cruise was in her plans; spending the week there gives Ali a new appreciation for the amount of work her parents have done most of their adult lives. During the time her parents are gone, one of Ali's former work associates shows up in Sedona to ask for some help. Brenda Riley was one of blonde talking heads on California television; she and Ali were never best friends. It is quite obvious that Brenda has fallen on hard times - she's living in her car, for instance - and is drinking to excess. Brenda was engaged to a guy, a guy she's only ever talked to on the phone or over the internet - and she wants Ali to run a serious background check on Mr. Richard Lattimer. Ali reluctantly agrees, mostly because she's a nice person. Turns out Mr. Lattimer is not a nice person. He's not even Richard Lattimer. He's Richard Lowensdale for real, and Richard Something-else to several other women all over the country. He's also n unemployed computer programmer who used to work on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones. Richard is currently unemployed because his former bosses did not get a government contract they had been counting on. Somebody else is interested in the UAVs; one of his bosses wants him to fix the program in the old (theoretically and on paper destroyed) UAVs. Richard knows he can fix the program; he's the one who wrote the error into it. What he doesn't know is that Ermina Blaylock, the boss, is not nearly as naïve or stupid as the women he courts on-line. FATAL ERROR is a slow starter. It takes Jance quite a while to get all the threads in place. Once she does, FATAL ERROR is eminently readable, both as a mystery and as suspense. Jance has written enough books that she knows how to build characters, build tension, and set a scene. She knows how to weave in back-story without destroying the pace of the story. FATAL ERROR is a competent mystery by a competent writer. Keep reading; it does get better. § P.J. Coldren lives in northern lower Michigan where she reads and reviews widely across the mystery genre when she isn't working in her local hospital pharmacy.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, February 2011
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