Review: In Camera
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 25, 2013
Boy, what a ride! You always read in reviews that such or such book is a page turner, that the reviewer couldn't put it down, that they read it in one sitting... Commonplace comments, but what else can you do when they are true? This is exactly what I felt and thought and did when I read Patrice Fitzgerald's Deep Justice.All right, all right. It's too easy, I know. You want proof, you want arguments. Let's start with the writing itself, then, shall we? Fitzgerald deftly uses the present tense to stick to the action, and it works: everything seems to be happening in real time in front of your eyes, leaving you breathless on the edge of your seat. The author has that visual quality to her work that made me think she'd be perfect to write TV series episodes in the vein of punchy, addictive fiction like LOST.Now don't think for a minute that you can sum up this piece of work to a mere action-packed blockbuster. Deep Justice is well-written, in the sense that its author can pull the switch at will to move from an action scene to a more introspective one. She can even make you feel the characters' pain through alliterations:"The blood on her coveralls has stiffened and made the tattered fabric scrape with a crusty sound as we crest each new rise."I always enjoy the fact that all Wool fanfiction writers propose pieces of work that thrill you on the surface, and make you think if you are willing to go a little deeper. Without spoiling the thrill of discovery for future readers, let me just say that Deep Justice tackles a very interesting theme that is inherent to mankind, "like theatre... Like a ritual played out by men since the beginning of time.": trap Men together in a closed area, and sooner or later the situation is bound to explode. As Jean-Paul Sartre phrased it in the play Huis Clos more than fifty years ago: "L'enfer, c'est les autres." Karma comes to the same conclusion at some point:"The wise masters, whosoever they were, who designed this inmost circle of hell must have thought of even that. People cooped up for a long time together. Frustration... boredom... desperation. Fighting, murder, death."All the ingredients necessary are here: good writing, action and unexpected twists, characters you care about, and a deeper meaning. Now all I have to do is wait for episode n4. Hurry up Mrs Fitzgerald!