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One of Thomas Perry's most interesting characters is Jane Whitefield, the heroine of half his 10 novels. Jane Whitefield is a guide. She takes people in danger and guides them to safety. This is a very limited theme for a suspense novel, and it is difficult to be fresh. However, in Blood Money Perry succeeds better than in some other recent novels in the series. As the novel opens, Whitefield is retired as a guide, when she is approached by a young Florida girl, Rita Shelford, daughter of a single mother in jail for narcotics, who has been working as a hotel chambermaid, and, more recently as a housekeeper for Bernie the Elephant. For 50 years Bernie has been hiding the money of most of the Mafia families, keeping no paper records: everything is in his head, since he has a photographic memory. Now some of the mafioso want to computerize his files, and Bernie himself is experiencing memory lapses. Bernie goes to Detroit to see his long-time lover, but she shoots him at the airport and then suffers a heart attack. Suddenly, mafiosi are searching Bernie's house in Florida, frightening his housekeeper, who takes the first opportunity to run. The Mafia thinks the housekeeper is the key to the location of the billions of dollars Bernie was hiding. Bernie turns out not to be dead, and Jane Whitefield is suddenly trying to hide both of them. This is one element of the plot: Jane's efforts to keep Bernie and Rita out of the hands of the Mafia. The second element of the plot is the disbursement of the billions of dollars to keep them out of the hands of the Mafia in such a way that the Mafia will, eventually, lose interest in Bernie and Rita. They decide to give all the money to charity. And so the chase is on. The novel is somewhat less bloody than recent novels in the series, but many people are killed, mostly by the Mafia, as they search for Jane, Bernie and Rita, and Jane keeps snatching Bernie and Rita out of trouble. It is very suspenseful. Those details of the money-laundering and money transfers that are given seem reasonable, and I didn't see any obvious inconsistencies, except that there should be more records of the original funds so that taxes can have been paid (the IRS gets excited by brokers reports of earnings that it can't match to tax returns or information returns). But once you get past this original premise, the plot works. The methods of disguise and identity-change that Jane uses are plausible, and don't necessarily duplicate those of earlier books. Jane's ingenuity in running and hiding--and hiding people--is the fresh aspect of this series. Similarly, the methods used by her enemies to find her are plausible and effective. She succeeds only by being smarter and quicker-thinking and more expert at hiding or disguise than those following or searching for her. Indeed, in other books she calls upon contacts for many of her need, but in Blood Money she acts almost entirely alone. While Jane is a Seneca Indian, there is little of Seneca culture in this book--less than in some others in the series, and very little compared to, say, Tony Hillerman. The main element is some dream sequences about duality. Indeed, in most of the books at some point Jane "sacrifices" tobacco for the spirits, but not in this book. The characterizations are strong. Jane, Bernie and Rita are well drawn, and Rita does grow and mature as the book develops. The mafiosi are sharply drawn, but mostly stereotypes, and I'm not sure they're clearly-enough differentiated in terms of personality, though there are some differences. The point of view is almost entirely third person, following Jane, with a few chapters that are third person following one or another of the mafiosi. These help build the suspense because they show details of the woman-hunt that would not be obvious if we knew only what Jane knows or sees. There is no sex in the book (well, maybe in one chapter, but it's very tasteful), and little or no bad language. But people do get shot or stabbed or beaten up "on camera", so the very squeamish should be warned: this is not quite a cozy. In all, I recommend it highly. I also recommend the first in the series, Vanishing Act (which has rather more Indian culture, though still not up to Hillerman's standard). The second, Dance for the Dead, is also quite good, and really develops the premise. I am not so sure about the two intermediate books: Shadow Woman and the Face Changers. They're fairly good, but not as good as Vanishing Act or Blood Money. Specifically, the villains are more elaborate and, ultimately, less plausible as the series progresses, and the plots were getting more and more improbable. Indeed, I was on the verge of abandoning the series as one that had exhausted its premise and was descending into self-parody, but this fifth book shows that Jane Whitefield still has promise as a character and a concept. While the series is possibly best read in order, and Perry does make references to events and characters in earlier books, the references are not spoilers, and you will not miss much, if anything, if you read the books out of order. In particular, the character of Jane Whitefield does not develop much from book to book, and the few recurring characters are very minor in most books of the series (some minor characters in one book may have been major characters in an earlier book).
Reviewed by David Chessler, May 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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