Where do I start? This is the old bait-and-switch, where a 'realistic' story is tricked up to look like a mystery in order to fool potential purchasers. Pick this book off the shelf and riffle through it, and you will come away convinced that it is a genuine small-town detective story, with an investigation, a series sleuth (Chief of Police Fred Fellows), a victim (missing schoolgirl Bobbie Markle) and a list of suspects including local men, boys at the same high school, prowlers and others. Begin to read it, though, and after a while some nasty doubts begin to surface. Is it really an investigation, when all the leads turn out to be dead ends, or just a documentary-style description of what police actually do? Page after page goes by while you wait for the big dramatic break that is going to startle everyone and clear the case up; but the big dramatic break never comes, and at the end of this sad and dreary tale the murderer is picked out of a hat with one of the most unconvincing motives ever.
I understand that 'realism' has an attraction to readers and writers alike, although heaven knows why, but surely even real police deserve better than this kind of story, which shows them bumbling around at random until no option remains but to seize on the correct murderer. Waugh's approach turns the whole process of investigation into a kind of lottery, devoid of human intelligence, where the participants simply go on buying tickets until a winning one turns up.
One for the bin -- or to be preserved as a terrible warning of what happens when 'realism' reigns supreme.
Jon.
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