"TOO MANY MURDERS," by Colleen McCullough, Simon and Schuster, 371 pages, $26
When a reader picks up a Colleen McCullough book, there's always room to wonder what it will be.
The woman who decades ago penned the best-selling novel "The Thorn Birds" has since dabbled in biography, history and murder.
In "Too Many Murders," she brings back Captain Carmine Delmonico and gives him a seemingly herculean task: Solve 12 murders, committed the same day but not all by the same hand and certainly not using the same method.
There's the weasel of a student-turned-blackmailer, for instance, who finds himself quite literally in a bear trap. And the call girl who's tortured, while a mother of three is allowed to die painlessly. But how did her mentally disabled baby die? And what links those deaths to the fellow who was poisoned or the three who were shot — with different guns? Or the others.
If it sounds messy, it is. And the story is further complicated by the fact that it's set in 1967, in the middle of the Cold War, but perhaps just as significantly at a time when much of the technology we've come to love for its mystery-solving potential, like DNA analysis, wasn't available.
This book is a mixed bag. It's absolutely cunning and the story moves along with lots of twists and turns to keep anyone reading. But it's nearly too complicated. And because there are so many victims with whom to deal, a reader doesn't really grow to care more than superficially about any of them. It feels a little like reading about a mass murder half a world away.
There is, however, a mystery that draws the reader in unexpectedly: The competition between two very good detectives for a promotion within the police department. Early on, it's explained to Delmonico that he has to change his approach to solving the murders because it seems to favor one of two very qualified and valued men and he mustn't give the appearance of taking sides. It's a clever and thought-provoking concept.
This ambitious book is still a fun read, but it's also a bit more superficial than McCullough readers might like. And you need a scorecard to keep track of the bodies. She probably should have let a half-dozen of them live.
e-mail: lois@desnews.com