On Aug. 28, 2003, in Erie, Pa., pizza delivery driver Brian Douglas Wells robbed a bank. When confronted by police, he explained that three men had forced him to wear a collar-bomb around his neck, and that if he did not complete all the tasks assigned to him, they would detonate it.
He didn’t get to complete the others. As the police waited for the bomb squad, the device detonated, killing Wells. That much is fact. It turned out that Wells was a probable co-conspirator in the plot, and that his cronies killed him to remove witnesses. An adaptation of this grisly incident is the kickoff for G.M. Ford’s BLOWN AWAY, a new mystery starring journalist detective Frank Corso, the sixth in the series.
Corso is sent by his new publisher to the town where it occurred, and I like to think that the author may really have visited Erie. It’s a beautiful city, and Ford describes certain aspects of it well: the fact that it’s a snow magnet, the giant gray horizon that is Lake Erie, its status as an industrial city that is striving – and sometimes succeeding – to reinvent itself).
But if Ford did visit, he doesn’t let his character stay too long in town. In fact, it almost seems like the town police force don’t want Corso investigating. He’s attacked in his hotel room by two masked goons, and the cops aren’t all that convinced by his story. Everyone seems to want the bomb-collar story to go away. This just makes Corso more determined to get to the bottom of it.
After his publisher sends an assistant to do legwork, things get really dicey when the FBI steps in, and whisk away both Corso and the assistant to a debriefing. Wells isn’t the only victim of such a bizarre plot. Bomb-collar bank robberies are starting up again, and the FBI wants to know why.
Ford takes all this and crafts a brisk, thrilling suspense novel surrounding the investigation. His style is spare but efficient, dialogue rings true, action scenes are tense, and he doesn’t suffer from flowery descriptions. Corso’s abrasive personality is well-drawn, and the addition of a rough-and-tumble female assistant allows a bit of gruff emotion to show through. I’m not convinced by Corso’s newfound literary wealth (when’s the last time you saw an investigative reporter on the cover of People magazine?), and while the plot is acceptable, the ending is not for a standard mystery.
This is my first Corso mystery, so maybe they all end with an unresolved cliffhanger, akin to the first book of a fantasy trilogy. And while it’s slightly unsatisfying, I must admit that I’m interested enough to want to know what happens in the next Corso book. This is a tight little well-done series, perfect for fans of a tough-guy, quick-read style of mystery. –Mark Rose
