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George Young works as an attorney for a top insurance firm; this does make him an amateur detective, after a fashion. He has a fairly normal life: a good job, a reasonably happy marriage, nothing to upset his apple cart. One day, out of nowhere, he is summoned to by Mrs. Corbett, the widow of the firm's founder. She knows she is dying, and she wants to know where her husband was going when he walked in front of a garbage truck. She is quite sure Roger's death was an accident, as she has a videotape of it, but she wants to know what he was thinking about just before he died. A reasonable request, perhaps, but not an easy task. George does some discreet inquiring and tracks down Roger's mistress. Eliska is a hand model from Czechoslovakia with some interesting connections. Are these connections in any way responsible for Roger's death? Alternatively, does it have more to do with his inability to make it in the cutthroat world that is New York City? Harrison originally wrote RISK as a fifteen-part serial for The New York Times Magazine. This undoubtedly contributed to the brevity of the novel, as well as to the sense of timing and suspense Harrison maintains throughout the work. Harrison's portrait of George is brilliant, particularly as he shows George slowly stepping out of his comfort zone time and again, as he strives to answer Mrs. Corbett's simple question. At one point, about halfway through, George does something that seems totally out of character for him; this was not resolved by the end of the book and still strikes me as odd. Other than that, Harrison has done an outstanding job. The plot is all a reader could ask for, as is the setting. Harrison's short novel is well worth the time spent reading it.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, November 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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