Review: Art, Crime, and Autism..not your usual detective story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 14, 2012
Genevive Lenard, our main character, has high-functioning autism. She's extremely intelligent but has poor social skills. She doesn't understand jokes or euphemisms, hates physical contact of any kind, and has extreme OCD. Her boss, Philip, has realized her ability to 'read' non-verbal communication and hires her to investigate insurance fraud by viewing videos of his clients. Philip is the only person she trusts because he respects her requirements and never treats her like a freak.Along comes Manny, a detective friend of Philip, asking for help in solving a puzzling crime involving the murder of a young woman. Genevive, against her wishes, agrees to help because Philip asks, even though she dislikes Manny profoundly. The investigation becomes more intricate, involving all sorts of people and agencies that seem to have no connection to each other.The plot is a good, with numerous misdirections and seemingly unrelated details. The characters are well developed and have depth; especially Genevive. I imagine it's challenging to create a character such as Genevive, who isn't always sympathetic with her blunt approach and unusual needs, but Estelle Ryan makes us believe in Genevive.***Small Spoiler Alert****My only complaint, a small one, is that early in the book, Genevive copes with any disturbing event by tuning out her surroundings, sometimes for hours, and writing out Mozart's compositions, which she has memorized. As the book progresses and stressful situations become more frequent, she can cope simply by imagining the music. Her other autistic behaviours change fairly rapidly (the story takes place over the course of several weeks). Autistic people are certainly capable of learning new behaviours, but I think a more gradual change, over the course of several novels perhaps, would be more believable.*************That said, I liked this book and highly recommend it. The main character is not the usual hapless female. I look forward to reading more books about Genevive Lenard.