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NIGHT IS THE HUNTER
by Steven Gore
William Morrow, January 2010
420 pages
$14.99
ISBN: 0062025090


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Steven Gore, a former private investigator, clearly understands the world of criminal justice, and has created a hero in Harlan Donnally who is up to the task of untangling the moral dilemmas one finds within that world. NIGHT IS THE HUNTER is the third in the series, all dealing with different problems within the criminal justice system.

The story opens on the banks of a Northern California river where Judge Ray McMullin asks Donnally to look into the conviction of a gangster named Israel Dominguez who is about to be put to death for the murder of a gang member. The judge confesses that he was never sure the crime merited the death penalty. And the defendant has always maintained his innocence of that particular murder. Not only is Judge McMullin suffering from a crisis of conscience– he also exhibits memory lapses and disturbing symptoms that could indicate the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

Harlan Donnally has his own demons to wrestle with – his father, Don Donnally, is a famous, self-absorbed internationally recognized director whose actions led to the death of his other son in the Vietnam War. The Donnally father and son relationship is distant at best, with the son angry over his father's failure to take responsibility for his actions. Like the judge, Don Donnally is exhibiting Alzheimer's-like symptoms, and Harlan has to juggle the needs of his parents with his investigation, especially as the execution date draws near.

And Donnally's own history plays a role in this story, as he himself was forced to retire as a homicide detective in the San Francisco Police Department after being shot during a gang shootout that happened ten years after the first shooting. Because some of the same gangs were involved in both shootings, it was sometimes difficult to focus on which crime was being solved.

There is a lot to grapple with in this book: at least three separate yet related plot lines with twists, connections and legal concepts that will leave you pondering for days about justice, memory, means justifying the ends, the role of the criminal justice system in a democratic society, etc. In fact, the author specifically states that his hope was "…to contribute to the public debates that will determine what kind of people we'll be, what kind of society we will have."

Another difficulty for me was the sheer number of characters we were asked to follow. I sometimes found myself going back to try to figure out when one or another particular gang member first made an appearance and how he was related to the plot, or to which plot line he belonged. There were also characters I would have liked to get to know better, such as Harlan's psychiatrist girlfriend Janie. It was hard to tell much about their relationship, or what kept them together.

The writing itself would have benefitted from some more careful editing – there were sentences that needed to be sharpened and/or shortened, and philosophical discourses on justice that I could have done without.

Yet I find myself thinking about this book, and the concepts of justice that Gore presents here. Long after the plot twists have been lost in the foggy mists of my memory, I am still left thinking about the big issues of justice, right and wrong, and balancing the needs of all in a civil society. That in itself is a worthy achievement.

§ Phyllis Onstad has been a writer, editor, civil servant, teacher and voracious reader. She currently lives in the California wine country.

Reviewed by Phylllis Onstad, February 2010

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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