Review: Aberration: lapse from a sound mental state
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 10, 2014
Cape Cod author Steve Marini takes advantage of his location in bringing another Jack Contino mystery thriller to his fans. Marini made use of his degrees in Educational Technology (Boston University) and Business Administration (New England College) to fill a successful business life in the education training field in both higher education and governmental posts in the National Security Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Fire Academy and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Great credentials for gathering experiential and technical expertise in resolving major consequential problems - the kind police face in crime solving. It is no wonder he is finding success in his `retired' mode as an author living on Cape Cod - just enough of a disconnect from mainland matters to offer a new clarity of thought in the realm of criminal investigation based on personal one-on-one experience as opposed to the gadgetry of mainland criminology.Marini's battered but not beaten hero Jack Contino, a cop's cop, has moved from Boston to Dennis, Cape Cod where he heads the small and potentially quiet Dennis Police Department. His verve for crime solving is met in the early pages of the book when a black bartender, Manny, is discovered murdered by a slash to the throat in his car in the parking lot of the little pub café where he works. Jack Contino is called in immediately and while the murder seems merely a sad deed at first soon leads Jack to discover that this murder closely resembles another murder that occurred ten months ago in close-by Needham on the Cape. The specter of racism enters the diagnostic dilemma, and there are implicating circumstances from disparate sources as DeeDee O'Hare a waitress in the same bar with Manny - and her involvement with another bartender Jared Wilkes whose seamy past places him on the suspect list along with a near clandestine white supremacist group. And to complicate matters Jack's prior job as a Boston detective finds a thread with Tommy Shea, a Boston mobster who not only personally assaulted Jack, but remains in his background like ground glass. In this milieu of severe racial hatred and murder and the backdrop of Jack's previous position fighting mobs in Boston, Steven Marini carves out (pun intended) a mystery that is as gripping as it is homespun in writing style. It works. Grady Harp, February 14