"Knee-Deep in Death" by Bruno Fischer
I wonder if the title is Fischer's, or if Fawcett chose it
for him, as they did with most of Peter Rabe's. Knee-deep is
hyperbolic by most people's standards. I counted only two
deaths, so unless you have really short legs...
Anyway, it's reasonably entertaining fare, although not a
patch on Fischer's excellent "Fools Walk In". "Knee-Deep" is
longer than your average Gold Medal (170 pages), mostly
because of the backstory involving the protagonist's stormy
marriage. It's handled fairly well, although the scene where
the young lovers declare their love for one another is trite
beyond belief (and I got a bit confused with the complex
chronology). The pace is sedate for a Gold Medal, but there
is still plenty tension in the fact that you know something's
amiss in this small town, you just don't know what. The
solution becomes evident long before the author discloses it,
but I found the whole experience satisfyingly
predictable.
Good dialogue, too. It's worth reading just for the following
four-line exchange (unfortunately, this is also a
SPOILER):
S P O I L E R
A L E R T
She blinked at me. "He was kidnapped?"
"Yes. Tuesday night."
"Who would kidnap him?"
"Kidnappers," I said.
Al
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