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There is an old James Bond movie, "You Only Live Twice." The appropriate epitaph for blackmailer and all-round swine Martin Wingo would be "You Only Die Twice." Wingo disappears from his yacht in San Francisco Bay on his wedding night. Lovers Jean Applequist and Peter Brennan split up to search for him. When Jean finds him thrashing in the water, she throws him a life preserver, but he is not a skilled enough swimmer in the frigid waters to reach it. He is presumed dead. A few days later, Jean receives a call from Wingo, asking to speak to his "widow," Diane, but Jean had given her sleeping pills so strong that she was totally knocked out. Wingo promises to come home in two hours, after he has taken care of a small problem. This time he really is dead, his body found at the San Francisco Aquarium. His widow, who was Jean's college roommate, believes he was murdered, and she enlists Jean (who, at some point in her life, channelled Nancy Drew) to find the truth about his death. Diane's condition is that Jean work with Zeppo, a young man of twenty-three, which makes him considerably younger than Jean, and who has had a crush on Jean since he first met her. Zeppo, who was Wingo's right-hand man, is privy to the names of all the people Wingo blackmailed. Zeppo himself is keeping a deep, dark secret about his past, a secret only Wingo knew. Jean and Zeppo embark on a chase with enough twists to keep a pretzel factory in business for years. In their investigation they come upon a famous sculptor, Armand Setrakian, who has a penchant for sexually abusing his young female models. They turn him in anonymously; he loses his lucrative commission from a woman's magazine. When he finds that Jean and Zeppo turned him in, he takes his revenge. None of the main characters are particularly likeable. All of them are driven by their hormones. I don't consider myself a prude, but Jean's sexual practices are a little off-putting. The most endearing character is Roman, Jean's gay friend, who is an editor by trade, but who always appears with physical help at the right moment. But King has a wonderful sense of place. San Francisco and its environs emerge as a colorful character in the story, which she brings to both a sad and an appropriate conclusion. § Mary Elizabeth Devine taught English Literature for 35 years, is co-author of five books about customs and manners around the world and lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Devine, May 2012
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