This plot device prevents the reader from learning what John
learns, so that the ensuing action loses all predictability; a reliable old
mystery plot device used very adroitly in this case. More photos of boxing matches come to light,
like the ones found in the offal bathtub, with our heroes still apparently not
aware of why they’re important. And,
yes, Tracy is finally nabbed by the bad guys and carted off, only to be
discovered by John much later during the climax of the story.
Rebus rents a tux to go make his appearance at the club
owned by Finlay, one of the wealthy contributors to the planned anti-drug
campaign. Not knowing what Rebus knows,
we are unaware that this is where the fan gets hit until well into the
action. The disturbance caused at the
door to the club’s bar is curious until we learn, much later, that it was
planned by John himself to create a diversion so that he can leave unobserved
to find the incriminating evidence in another part of the complex.
And now, the obligatory scene where the hero gets into a jam
that it looks like there’s no way out of.
Locked into a small room with a large mirror in one wall, he realizes
too late that he has been duped; followed into a trap and sealed away. It’s actually rather far-fetched that he ends
up putting his fist through the mirror – a one-way mirror – and damaging his
tormentor enough to then grab him by the throat … but mystery writers can’t
seem to avoid stretching our credulity at this point in the plot, in my
experience, at least. He then gets the
drop on Lanyon, a further stretch of artistic license; and the wealthy man’s
henchmen - sensing that their employment situation is about to deteriorate – simply
run away … the most dubious stretch of all.
Mystery writers seem to get in a hurry at the end to get the climax over
with, and seem to cut corners a bit regarding what is believable and what
isn’t. For me, these events could have
been fleshed out quite a bit without losing the climax’s punch. Or maybe I’m wrong about that, maybe there is
a protocol to this that great writers are aware of and I’m not. It just seems to me that the fireworks at the
end of a story like this are always too brief, too hurried.
There isn’t much of a “wrap-up” to be done at
the end; once we find out what has been taking place and where and why, the
questions are pretty much all answered. We’re
never told what kind of deal John had to make with McCallum for the information
he got, but we can assume it resulted in a lighter sentence or something along
those lines. Certainly Gill has washed
her hands of McCallum at this point. It’s a nice parting gift to the reader
when Gill shows up at John’s flat:
“There was a knock at the door.
He had hope in his heart as he opened it. Gill Templer stood there, smiling.”Join us next time (March 7) for March’s book of the month: “Hammerfall,” by C. J. Cherryh. (The first segment will cover Chapters 1-7.)
One of the most renowned figures in science fiction, C.J. Cherryh has been enthralling audiences for nearly thirty years with rich and complex novels. Now at the peak of her career, this three-time Hugo Award winner launches her most ambitious work in decades, Hammerfall, part of a far-ranging series, The Gene Wars, set in an entirely new universe scarred by the most vicious of future weaponry, nanotechnology. In this brilliant novel -- possibly Cherryh's masterwork -- the fate of billions has come down to a confrontation between two profoundly alien cultures on a single desert planet.
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