Taking a break from both her Britt Montero and Cold Case Squad series, prolific crime author Edna Buchanan debuts what is probably a brand-new series in LEGALLY DEAD. It features a clever and engaging twist on an often mentioned but little explored concept. But unfortunately, this idea overstays it welcome.
Michael Venturi, a former Marines Force Recon member, is a U.S. Marshal in the Witness Protection Program in New York. It’s his job to provide new identities and residences for those who have agreed to provide essential testimony in current criminal trials.
One morning, he discovers that one of his clients — a convicted sexual predator relocated in a small town in New Hampshire — might be responsible for the disappearance and probable death of two female children. He’s desperate to take action, but warned against it by his superiors who fear jeopardizing a star witness.
Venturi is convinced instead to take some time off, and uses this opportunity to secretly track down the client. Sure enough, he finds that not only has the client savagely killed the two children, but is attempting to rob an armored truck. He foils the robbery and calls in an anonymous tip that lands the relocated client back in jail.
Venturi returns to find his superiors furious at the loss of their witness. Knowing that he’ll be targeted as the scapegoat, he immediately resigns. He packs his few belonging, including a stray dog he’s adopted, and heads off for Miami. There he connects with Marine buddy Danny Trado and starts a new life as a recluse in the Florida Everglades.
But then, a chance encounter with a stranger attempting suicide gives Venturi an idea: Why not apply his skills in witness protection to those who really deserve it? That is, those who are falsely accused or victims of damaging swindles who deserve a second chance at life? So Venturi and Trado, with the help of a few selected relatives and friends, create a completely new identity for the man who almost killed himself.
But before they can truly start his new life, they must first completely end his formerly one. In other words, make him legally dead. They succeed, and are soon enlisted to provide the same detailed services for other deserving individuals and couples.
It’s a fascinating idea, and Buchanan has a great time demonstrating how Venturi and his crew overcome the various challenges in what is described throughout the novel as “a combination of EXTREME MAKEOVER, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and CSI — the last in reverse.” But Buchanan gets so wrapped up in these details that she almost forgets an essential fictional requirement: a conflict.
When a conflict finally does occurs, it at first seems distant and awkward. Venturi’s former clients in witness protection are being murdered before or during their court appearances. Finally, things strike closer to home when one of his innocent, relocated clients is killed. Venturi and Trado suddenly drop everything and travel around the globe in an effort to both protect their remaining new clients and find the source and motive of the killings.
But by the time all this happens, there are less than 100 pages left. So, not surprisingly, events and revelations become so rushed and cramped, they become difficult to follow and lose any sense of buildup or suspense. And the ending of the final chapter, which ought to leave us gasping, comes across more as a opened-ended cop-out.
More’s the pity, since Buchanan is an experienced writer who should be far removed from such structural mishaps. Even those new to her work would sense this with her capable presentation of characters, dialogue and all the numerous details that are woven seamlessly into the story without becoming dreary exposition.
Some serious editing and revision would have transformed this into a truly outstanding, fiercely entertaining novel. But for reasons we’ll probably never know, this new work reads more like a collected group of episode treatments for a television series than a fully realized novel. —Alan Cranis
Related posts:
- Dead Street
- Dead Wrong
- Cover unearthed for Preston/Child’s BOOK OF THE DEAD
- Nefertiti: The Book of the Dead
- Big Numbers
