It Happens in the Dark

Carol O'Connell is a masterful writer who has created a vivid alternate universe inhabited by memorable if rather unlikely characters. I've enjoyed many books in this series. FIND ME was among my top ten reads in 2007. This entry, sadly, didn't make the same strong impression. returnreturnThe mystery involves a Broadway production that is experiencing difficulties. On opening night, the play was halted due to a woman's fatal heart attack. The next night, the lights go out and when they come back on, the playwright's throat has been cut. An unknown presence is rewriting the script, leaving new material on a chalkboard where nobody is ever seen writing. And it all, somehow, mirrors a family massacre that happened in Kansas many years ago. returnreturnThe style is vaudeville, a French farce with slamming doors and lots of running around, the humor broad and slapstick. Everyone has secrets, everyone has enemies, and the police spend much of their efforts sniping with other police. Mallory is, as always, beautiful, clever, impatient, and untouchable. There are very few glimpses of her humanity, something that peeps through in the other books in spite of herself. The most interesting character is a stagehand who was once a talented actor but now plays the role of a character in a play and performs scenes from the ill-starred production on subway platforms using homeless people as his cast. But he's not enough to carry the show on his own. returnreturnThe book, in a way, is a commentary on our need for puzzles to be solved, and is reminiscent of British golden age mysteries - of Ngaio Marsh, with her theatrical settings, but even more in the style of Margery Allingham, who populated her stories with oddballs and eccentrics. There are lots of puzzles here, including a game that a Sheriff from Kansas plays with Mallory, each proffering bits of information before slamming down the phone. It's all a game, and for me it went on much too long. returnreturnThere's no doubt that Carol O'Connell is a stylish and inventive writer. I generally want my mysteries to be fairly realistic, anchored in the real world and able to explain something about it to me. O'Connell isn't interested in mimicking the real world, though she often does draw on a kind of emotional reality for her elaborate, fully-realized alternate universe. The trouble with this book, for me, was that it didn't have enough alternate universe reality of its own, or enough of its own gravity, perhaps, to draw me in.returnreturnI got this book as part of the Early Reviewer program.