Mr. Allison hurls us into 21st Century detective procedures with a vengeance. No longer does the hard-boiled gumshoe detect through tailing the suspect, take pictures of malfeasances and finally grapple directly with the evil-doers. Now it is all through the Internet, cell phones, virtual machines scattered around the world and a wide array of digital devices and procedures most of which the author explains with care and certitude although there were several occasions when I just had to accept that something worked without knowing why. Even his car is fitted carefully with digital care. But that old standby, the gun in the glove box remains. In this case a Glock. Our man might be digitally adept but he retains that which we like in our PI’s: a willingness to shoot without hesitation.
We still have personality quirks though. A hero named Chaucer (his father had been an English Professor) but prefers the name Chalk. The academic’s faint distaste of business and its dealings. A dislike of sartorial splendor. And a mental illness that requires frequent medication.
The story opens with a dying movie magnate, glorying in the sobriquet “Hollywood Hyena”, seeking Chalk’s aid in finding his three sons. Not an easy job since the three were by different mothers each of whom had received the magnate’s sperm through California Cryo Futures, a sperm bank that maintains the anonymity of both its donors and recipients.
The three sons are traced and found. They all three have a certain similar characteristic - a taste violence. During the tracing several pharmaceutical robberies occur at each of which a strange message is left always the same words and numbers just in different order each time. Old kidnapings that had involved the Hollywood Hyena come to the surface. Military veterans start receiving mysterious packages fill with medications and the note “Use or sell” signed GR.
Since this book is planned as the first in a series we spend a lot of time learning about Chalk and his background. Ex-FBI, divorced, childless, Bi-polar and paranoiac. I have read several novels recently in which the protagonist has some form of extreme, for lack of a better word, illness and the reader finds how this affects the plot just as other, more mundane backgrounds (FBI, Soldier, sailor, etc) do. Also I believe that as happens to many writers Mr. Allison suffers from the Curse of Knowledge in that some of his explanations depend upon a more intimate knowledge of the digital subject, so familiar to him, than I think his readers share. It is, however, a good book, well-written leaving us with a taste for more Chalk.
