Review: The Parcel Express Murders

Beautiful, but emotionally cold, psychiatrist Samoa Tate is obliquely drawn into a series of puzzling murders among the affluent and bored when she accepts as a patient the widow of murdered playboy car-dealer David Bass. It happens that Samoa's best friend, Christine Hawkins, is married to one of the detectives investigating the murder of Bass and his clothing-designer girlfriend. Samoa finds herself drawn to Detective Hawkins' new partner, Eddie Clark, complicating her life and practice when she discovers that the sexy widow Bass has young Detective Clark in her predatory sexual sights. As more murders occur, the detectives are stymied by a lack of clues and suspects while Samoa becomes unwittingly drawn into a web of deceit, fury and insanity, even as she reluctantly falls in love with Clark.

As a mystery, Parcel Express Murders is a bit below average for plot and structure, while the romance and relationship elements command much more of the story's time and care. The best-realized aspect of the book is its setting in the world of affluent African-Americans in which, for once, stereotyped gang-bangers, drug dealers and welfare moms are the rarity rather than the rule. The major characters, while better than two-dimensional, seem a little inconsistent and prone to occasional fits of plot-motivated irrationality. The book starts a little slowly and is a bit disjointed at the beginning, picks up a bit after the first 50 pages, but gets derailed again in the middle, beginning with a sex scene which, while important to character development, is a little excessive. After this, the book trots, rather than dashing, to exactly the ending you expect and a rather pat "feel-good" epilogue. The title is almost a misnomer and there's not much really happening to misdirect the reader from the killer and his intentions, leaving the important clues as exposed as mussles at low tide.

I found the book a little short (224 pages, but low word-count per page), underdeveloped, and less inspired than I had expected from the opening. If you're expecting a fast-paced, gritty, psychological thriller, this isn't the book for you. Neither the police work nor the psychological aspect are entirely realistic and the pacing is not pulse-pounding due to loose plot structure and writing. Sex plays an active role; beyond the one very explicit sex scene, nudity, sexual manipulation and quite a bit of reference to sex--both for pay and for pleasure--figure into the plot. The killings are described pretty quickly and over with with equal speed, though they are rather gruesome. There is more emphasis on and description of clothes, skin-color, hair, furniture and so on than seems necessary, but at least they don't drag on, Dumas-like, for pages--merely for a few extra sentences. Generally, Parcel Express has the feel of a good start which didn't get enough objective analysis and revision in early drafts. There are obvious copyediting and proofing errors, including swapped homophones ("bare" for "bear" and so on) and misused words ("psych" instead of "psyche", most notably), which pop up to annoy and an interesting idea gets lost in clumsy execution. The book would have benefitted a lot from hard-nosed editing and a couple of re-writes.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Kat R - RAM - Seattle

Book Review: The Parcel Express Murders