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HomeNewsArchivesCHARACTERS COME TO LIFE IN MURDER THRILLER

CHARACTERS COME TO LIFE IN MURDER THRILLER

Over Tumbled Graves
by Jess Walter
Fiction, Regan Books-Harper Collins
367 pp, $25.00

Caroline Mabry grabs us on page one as she moves through the riverside park in Spokane, Wash. She is a police officer in disguise, hoping to make a drug bust, but feeling bogged down by the stroller she's pushing. The occupant is a large plastic doll, obviously fake to Caroline and, she thinks, everyone else.
Every person in this tale of violent criminals and the law officers who track them is carefully drawn and brought to life vividly as they move along in the daily routine of work and play. Another cast of players, the prostitutes, star mainly in their role as victims, existing in their tawdry lifestyles on luck and the availability of drugs to make their days bearable.
Sgt. Alan Dupree is watching his marriage come apart as he tries to convince his wife and himself that his being in love with Mabry is not the reason. Nearly every one of his buddies on the force has one or two divorces on file; it seems to go with the job.
A serial killer enters the picture, with corpses appearing as regularly as the morning paper, each placed along the riverbank in exactly the same manner. The Spokane River plays a dominant role in the book, spilling and tumbling with waterfalls, rock formations coloring its rush through the heart of the city.
Police methods of crime detection are always intriguing; here we have two famous FBI experts who detest each other, with contrasting theories of the classic serial killer. In one spot where a TV news team is videotaping the cops at work on the riverbank, the Bureau's Blanton is talking to Mabry on his cell phone: " … I sit alongside your beautiful river, watching McDaniel [the other Bureau officer] explain the peculiar psychosis of your man, Lenny Ryan [the killer], to this walking mound of hairspray [a.k.a. Tom Brokaw] that the crew of this television program mockingly refers to as the talent."
It's wild stuff watching the police follow leads, and as tension tightens, so does our nervous system. Jess Walter, a newspaper journalist, earlier co-wrote a best-selling documentary book about the O.J. Simpson trial, "In Contempt," with one of the prosecutors, Christopher Darden. This is Walter's first fling at fiction. On my scorecard, he's a winner.
"Over Tumbled Graves" is available at Dockside Bookshop in Havensight Mall. To check out other Dockside favorites, click here.

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