Book Review: Echo Bay

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

Echo Bay     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Richard Barre
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Capra Press - 2004

Set in a small town on the shores of Lake Tahoe, this book traces the fallout from events in an abusive family occurring over 60 years ago. As the book opens, Shawn Rainey is down on his luck, living in a small New Mexico town, when he receives an offer from his ex-wife's current husband - return to his boyhood home in the Lake Tahoe area, provide public relations services to a group planning to bring a sunken steamship back to the surface of the Lake and restore her as a tourist attraction. In payment, Shawn will once again enjoy the right to visitation with his two children.

Shawn takes the deal, and his first few weeks on the project are successful. But he receives threats against his safety, his motel room is ransacked, and he encounters stiff opposition from the matriarch of the area, the daughter of the owner of the steamship. Her father had ordered the boat scuttled some 60 years ago, and she is adamant that the plan to raise her be abandoned.

Seeking solely to regain a relationship with his children, Shawn perseveres in identifying the reasons for her resistance. The search takes him back into a tortured past and layer upon layer of secrets, betrayals, and cruelty.

Barre writes in a sort of staccato style - short clipped sentences and brief enigmatic references to the portions of the tale still not fully understood by the reader. In the early chapters the patterns of unfolding events are not always clear. Barre portrays Rainey as a man burdened by the weight of past mistakes, and not always admirable in his actions. But his children appear in the story just often enough to hold the reader's interest and keep the reader rooting for his eventual success.

Barre is relatively new to the suspense fiction scene. He's an author worth watching.

Woodstock - RAM

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