Review: Cracking good thriller creates a fan
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 25, 2011
There are books that grab me from the starting gate, reel me in, keep me turning pages . . . and then fizzle in some manner. This can happen through emotional involvement (I quit caring about the characters), through plot twists (becoming too unbelievable), or through confusion (I couldn't follow the writer's meaning). With Bodyguard of Lies, an otherwise cracking good thriller by Bob Mayer, this happened through a dwindling intensity in the author's originally powerful narrative, and what felt like a rushed middle and ending.**SPOILER ALERT**When Tony Gant dies of cancer, he leaves his lover and undercover ops protege Neeley a problem, a puzzle, and a pathway to follow--as well as a target metaphorically painted on her back. Throughout his life, Gant has enforced an uneasy truce with the Cellar, a powerful shadowlands Federal agency, by hiding certain documents and videotapes implicating a powerful Congressman. This blackmail cache also made it possible for others involved in the Congressman's past disaster, specifically a pipeline engineer named Masterson, to live a normal life rather than be eliminated as a loose end.But Gant's death knocks this uneasy balance out of kilter. The Cellar and the Congressman want those documents, and they presume Neeley has them. As well, before dying Gant manages to warn Masterson, who disappears, leaving his distraught wife Hannah trying to understand the ruins of her upper-middle-class life. These two women, on the surface utterly dissimilar, must work together and follow Gant's pathway from Colorado to France to West Virginia, solving his puzzle, to renew the truce before the Cellar's operatives break it and them.The storyline rocks from the opening pages, and here Mayer's clear, direct writing satisfies. He builds an engaging picture of a woman whose husband has vanished:Hannah Masterson opened the door and walked to the mailbox, a routine she had done for years. She returned clutching a wad of envelopes and newspapers. A quick check turned up no new postcards or letters from John. There were several bills, objects she would have carried to John's desk but now felt heavy in her hands.He handles action as concisely as narrative:Reacting instinctively, not knowing where death had winged its way from, the other four men swung up their submachineguns and fired on the Mercedes crew. The dumpster man replied, only to be lost in the roar of the machine gun in the window. In the ensuing confusion, and on the same paused breath, in between new heartbeats, Neeley put a round into one of the limo men.But the flowing style becomes more choppy toward the book's center:Hannah brushed her hair vigorously for the photo, giving her some time to feel things out. Hannah decided that Suggs was relaxing a bit although he still had difficulty ignoring their breasts.The engagement and strong characterization remain, but such repetitions should have been smoothed over in edits, giving the center and even more, the end of the book, a less polished feel. The deeper into the story the reader travels, the more choppy the writing becomes, as if Mayer was rushed in the conclusion and not sufficiently supported by an editor after the first hundred or so pages.None of this detracts from the storyline. The Cellar's leader plays operatives against each other as if playing chess with himself, and figuring out the old bugger's game is half the fun of Mayer's beautifully convoluted plot. But I found his ending slightly off and somewhat unsatisfying. A previously unknown third party scores the killing shot, rather than either of the two main characters, and the presence of two bullet-proof vests at the end game is less planning on anyone's part and more an accident. And does "dying" while wearing protective equipment qualify as a surprise ending any more?Finally, there's the character development for Hannah, the abandoned housewife. Of course she toughens up fast when her life is on the line. It's also believable that she learns quickly and begins to feel excitement rather than terror as she and Neeley sort out the puzzle and understand the game. But when she starts drawing conclusions from thin air, without explaining how she reaches them to the reader's satisfaction, it's a bit much:"How do you know that?" Neeley demanded in frustration, but Hannah didn't answer.So why four stars? Bodyguard of Lies remains a cracking good story, a page-turner and a blast. It could have been better. But that won't stop me from reading more of Mayer's stories as soon as I whittle down the current to-be-read stack. It's a sufficiently solid story to create a fan.