Vanished!, 21 Jun 2004

By	Donald Mitchell "a Practical Optimist" (Boston) - See all my reviews

The case is simply that of a missing person. The client is the missing person's mother. There may be nothing wrong . . . or there could be. After the mother's contacts end with her daughter, Nameless heads for where the daughter was last seen, the tiny town of Creekside in northern California. The people there aren't used to strangers and feel inclined to protect their own. As a result, the book has an atmosphere like so many detective novels where it's one person against the town. But Nameless does get help from some people in town, and is eventually able to uncover an undercurrent of white supremacist feelings. How might that backdrop be connected?

As the story unwinds, Nameless uses his usual nerviness to learn the town's secrets while running grave personal risks.

Nameless also develops his working relationship with Tamara Corbin, his new assistant, who becomes a big help with the case.

The book is unusually weak in its character development. That's usually one of Mr. Pronzini's strengths. You usually get a strong sense of the intellect, psychology and background of each character. Instead, he tries here to portray a number of people as unintelligent, weak-minded and corrupt. The characterizations come across as conclusions rather than as being supported by your own reactions to the situation.

The counterpoint is that the dark mood is well developed. It's too bad that it was developed at the cost of the characters.

I was also disappointed to find out that much of the story line didn't connect very well to the rest of the story. It made the main story line seem more like a short story than a full-fledged book.

This is my least favorite book in the series.

As I finished the book, I found myself wondering how my own actions might sometimes trigger hateful reactions in others.

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