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Down-at-heels private investigator George Kocharyan needs work so badly that he can't turn down two jobs that walk in the door. One is to trace the wife, Tricia, of a rather fat, perspiring schoolteacher, Al. According to what Kocharyan finds with his GIS tracer, Tricia is having a great time with several male friends. The details of Kocharyan's stakeout are steamy, the fallout with Al emotionally messy; not the best job, but it will help Kocharyan make payroll. Next in the door in her perfectly groomed attire, every hair in place, is Sylvia Booker, the wife of the bursar at Morley College, Cambridge. What she is doing in Kocharyan's tatty office becomes clear when she asks him to trace her daughter Lucy, a freshman at Cambridge. Seems she is running with the wrong crowd. The plot thickens when Tricia turns up strangled and nude.
Dramatis personae: George Kocharyan, proprietor, Cambridge Confidential Services, a private investigator of Armenian extraction who plays chess with himself; his administrative assistant, whose other job is to run an adult chat room from her home; her son, Jason, disgusted by how his mother attempts to make ends meet; George's father, at a care facility for those with dementia; Sylvia Booker, wealthy, powerful, controlling; her husband, the bursar, who scarcely has a role; their daughter, Lucy, who flirts and drinks too much; Detective Inspector Stubbing, who despises George and uses her police powers to abuse him verbally at will; Detective Chief Inspector Judith Brampton, who may have something to hide; Quintin Boyd, oily and filthy rich American who commands goons, a personal driver, and a limo; Mark and Kevin, the goons.
The novel is poised to handle several societal conflicts with sensitivity: ethnicity (Armenian); women's roles; and pornography as a form of exploitation. It does not, however, handle these things. It is character-driven and atmospheric. Instead of scenes of punting on the River Cam or hanging out in boaters on the backs, people hide their sleaze in gated communities behind closed doors; instead of families, single parents struggle to support children from multiple, absent spouses; instead of romantic love, bodies urge the minds that inhabit them to find ways—and more ways—to experience sex and power until those minds flee, or become hardened, or until they die.
E.G. Rodford—a pseudonym—has created a noir fiction which explores the other Cambridge. In interviews, Rodford notes his indebtedness to Raymond Chandler's hardboiled world. Indeed, Rodford's sense of delight in transposing American noir to modern, multicultural Cambridge is palpable. Rodford notes in an interview that creating the bad guys is a writer's delight, and, indeed, the American, his money, and his goons, are greasy with evil. Rodford's book is an entertainment and that is all. It does not reach for or ask for philosophical depth, but rather one, familiar with dignified and noble Cambridge, is asked to slum a bit, perhaps arm in arm with the author, opening doors and peeking at our messy modern lives.
§ Cathy Downs is professor of English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and a fan of the well-turned whodunit.
Reviewed by Cathy Downs, March 2015
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