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Linda Barnes' THE BIG DIG is on my 'top mysteries of 2003' list and I'm happy to report that DEEP POCKETS is a worthy successor. In Carlotta Carlyle, Barnes has created a protagonist who continues to hold my interest, and her stories seem to get better with each book. In DEEP POCKETS, the crime is blackmail: a man with a lot to lose is trying to hold on to his marriage and his career, which will be in jeopardy if word got out about his affair. It seems like a pretty straightforward situation, but it's not. Wilson Chaney's affair was with a student, the uniquely named Denali Brinkman. He's a professor at Harvard; the student died in a fire but the letters are still out there, and Chaney needs Carlotta to discover who's blackmailing him and stop it. And the more Carlotta looks for answers, the harder they are to find. Among the questions are "who exactly was Denali Brinkman and where did she come from? Is she what she appeared to be?" As Carlotta learns more and more, about Chaney, about Brinkman, about some of Chaney's research, the more complicated the story and, in fact, the more dangerous things become. Carlotta plays it sometimes unsafe; she goes in rather than waiting for help, she tends to welcome some risks, and her idea of back-up is often Roz, the artist who lives upstairs and doesn't, shall we say, live the straight and narrow life. There's also Gloria who owns the cab company (once Green and White now it's Marvin's Magnificent Cabs, aka 'black and blue' alas, for the new color scheme) and who still champions Carlotta's relationship with Sam Gianelli. And then there's Sam. What Barnes has created here is fascinating; Carlotta's smart enough to know that she's better off with the very attractive Leon, with whom she got involved during the last big case. Even if Leon is black (in Boston, as in most places, a white woman dating a black man is still very much an issue) he's still a safer bet than Sam, whose family IS the mob in Boston. But she can't help it; it always comes back to Sam. He's sexy, he cares, he understands Carlotta better than almost anyone. Neither can he seem to give her up. And he's not a good idea. That weakness is one of the most interesting parts of these books for me; seeing an otherwise smart woman doing something she knows she shouldn't do, but can't help. For anyone who's ever desired someone, or something that might not have been good for them, but was oh so tempting, Carlotta's dilemma might seem familiar. And I can't decide whether to cheer her on or not; Carlotta knows it's wrong but, he does care and he is good to her and as she says: "He was who he was and I was who I was, but what was the use pretending I didn't love him? what was the point in denying it?" It's tough to watch, but completely believable and bittersweet.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, April 2004
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