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PRESUMPTION OF DEATH
by Perri O'Shaughnessy
Piatkus, November 2003
320 pages
10.99GBP
ISBN: 0749934050


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

The opening paragraph, a single sentence, exemplifies what's wrong with this novel. "Picture it: A moonless summer night filling a hollow sky, glossy unblinking stars; under this, the rolling brown summits of the Robles Ridge; under this, the dry rattling of the leaf-tops of clustering oaks; and beneath all this, in the deep forest that slopes ever farther down toward Steinbeck's pastures of heaven, two young men, hunting."

The mystery core of the story is the tension that arises over urban sprawl in the lovely valleys of the Monterey area of California. People who have lived for years in places close to nature are faced with a developer who wants to ruin their views and bring many more people to their peaceful neighborhood. They resent it. Now someone is setting fires which destroy developing structures.

Murder occurs and attorney Nina Reilly gets involved when the son of a friend and former employee in her law practice is accused. That Nina has no office and is living with her long-time lover, investigator Paul Van Wagoner, is a complication that grows as the novel progresses.

Their relationship is a second, larger, core of this book and the reader is treated to endless detailed discussion of Nina's roller-coaster emotional ride, their living arrangements, meals and Van Wagoner's dislikes, from Nina 's dog, to his unhappiness with the presence of Nina's teenaged son. At times, Reilly's inability to deal effectively with Van Wagoner's controlling personality and chauvinism, overwhelms the pace and texture of the mystery, as does her relationship with her father.

The third element of the book is the sociology text. It seems an aloof (she lives up the mountain) sister of one of the neighborhood inhabitants is secretly studying the shifting dynamics of the families in the neighborhood and we are treated to several discussions of the power shifts among them. Plus, the reader must wade through detailed descriptions of many characters, several of whom are recognizable clichés; the philandering husband, the nymphomaniac alcoholic wife, the couple with an unsatisfactory sex life, the local gossip. It all becomes too long and too much.

What was a good idea, a plot which has real possibilities and some interesting characters, would have been a fine story with perhaps 10,000 fewer words. But the value is lost in the paths down which the authors wander.

Reviewed by Carl Brookins, June 2004

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