Reviewed By: Sarah - RAM
The Prince of Deadly Weapons
Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Boston Teran
Class/Genre: Mystery
So I finished this odd, weird book and you know what? I really,
really liked it. In fact the more I think about it, the more it may
well end up on my "best of" list for 2002. And this after I spent
much of the book wondering if I was going to like ANY of the
characters or truly get what Teran was trying to do...but while by
the end, things are just as disjointed, the characters, thankfully,
took off.
The plot in a nutshell Taylor Greene, son of a wealthy California family, inexplicably commits suicide. Except that others are not so sure. His girlfriend, Essie, who works for his father Nathan, is pretty certain it's murder. The mother, Ivy, isn't particularly interested one way or another. The nearby DA, Roy Pinter, who is also buddies with Nathan, has no desire to investigate, and besides, he's way too sex-obsessed. Sinister doings are definitely underfoot. And not long after, a federal agent that Taylor was supposed to meet with is gunned down.
Flash forward a few months later. Dane Rudd, a young man of mysterious origin, comes to town for the memorial to young Mr. Greene. Dane, you see, was the beneficiary of a corneal transplant. The corneas were Taylor's, and now Dane can see. It seems like his motives are just to thank Nathan and to express his gratitude, but it's very clear that Dane has his own ulterior motives...
But in a way, this plot synopsis doesn't really do the book justice. That Dane has an agenda is blindingly obvious. But it's also obvious that he's a pawn in a game, just like Nathan, Ivy, Roy, and some of the other major players. In a way, the underlying crimes are secondary to the interactions between everybody.
And where Teran really shines, IMO, is in his characterization of women. Three in particular Essie, the tearful girlfriend who slowly, through her own means and through the help of others, turns out to be a hell of a lot stronger than anyone suspected; "Flesh", the assistant DA who might be just a bimbo but who might be one of the most acidic women I've come across in fiction; and Sancho Maria, the companion of an ex-con who houses and comes to trust Dane, a woman who's seen too much but has made her choices and lives by them.
It took a while, but I think the novel will be well worth reading. Not that there aren't problems. For one, Teran seems to have picked up an annoying new quirk, the unfinished sentence. It happened like every other page and quickly grew tiresome. Also, I'm still not sure why he portrayed Dane as he did--was he deliberately trying to create an unheroic hero, but who turned more heroic anyway in spite of himself? I guess Teran was trying to mess around with archetypes....
I think I liked the book in the end b/c it was obvious Teran was taking chances. And because he really got to the heart of relationships between people--longtime love, uncertainty, and best of all, the poisonous hate that can develop between those who work too closely together, live too closely together, or who had once loved.
In any case, it's VERY different from GOD IS A BULLET, that's for sure!
Sarah - RAM
Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Sarah - RAM
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