Cold Case

A year or so before I grew weary of Jonathan Kellerman's increasingly tired Alex Delaware mysteries I came across Stephen White's Alan Gregory mysteries. At first I assumed I was getting just Delaware ripoffs (psychologist helps fat local police detective solve crimes; the telling was fresher and more enthusiastic, yet the scenario was hellish familiar) with an admixture of Patricia Cornwell (the fat local police detective is a bigot, yet somehow curiously gawsh-lovable for all that), and I suspect this was what the publisher initially assumed as well -- when I went back and read some of the early books in the series and their blurbs, I became sure of it -- yet White and Gregory soon developed a real voice and style of their own. This show more is not always a good thing -- a couple of the White/Gregory books have been pretty damn' silly -- yet for most of the time there's a great vigour in these books that you don't so much expect any longer from the corporate mainstream of US thrillerdom.

This is perhaps one of the sillier White/Gregory novels, but I enjoyed it anyway. Some years ago Colorado was shocked by the brutal mutilationary double murder of a couple of teenage girls; yet the case was never solved, thanks to the apathy and incompetence of the local cops. Now an organization of super-detectives and forensic poobahs called Locard (after the famed French detective), dedicated to picking up cold cases, decides to "adopt" this one -- and Alan Gregory and public prosecutor wife Lauren are called in to help. Natch, there are still plenty of rural numbnutses who want to keep the case forever dead, and some of these bozos are murderous . . .

There's 'way too much soap opera here, and the later sequences require your disbelief to be not so much suspended as floated away on a beautiful blue balloon, but all in all the brightness of White's telling made me willing to forgive a lot and to keep turning the pages.

Okay, so there were a couple of testing moments:

Dept of Mammary Bilocation: "She hugged me from behind, one of her breasts heavy on each side of my neck."

Dept of Optical Rodeo: "Her unpatched eye captured both of mine . . . show less

Strong, smart and fun main characters, great timing, okay plot. Liked the many red herrings. Comfortably enjoyable.

This is another in the fine series featuring psychologist Alan Gregory. White does a wonderful job of portraying life in Boulder, Colorado and weaves in some wonderful characters. In this one, Alan and his wife work with a private team of experts who solve cold crimes. While this particular book isn't the strongest in the series, it's a nice read and I'm delighted that I have others yet to read.