PALIMPSEST

A doctor and crime fighter gets pulled into an Old West–style showdown in this fifth installment of a series.

Dr. Andrew MacCrimmon is having a rough couple of days. First, he walks in on his wife, Karen, in bed with her personal trainer, Pavo Makkonen. Next, Andrew tries to shoot Pavo, but the naked man manages to escape down the back alleyway. Then, Andrew throws Karen bodily from the house with a few choice expletives. A few days later, during an aimless drive to help figure out what to do with himself, he is mugged, carjacked, and left unconscious in the desert. He is discovered by good Samaritan Bob Seibel, the owner of the BS Tavern and Grill in Chamberton, California. In exchange for Bob’s kindness, Andrew agrees to run the place while Bob and his wife go on vacation. It seems like a nice, calm spot to get his thoughts in order, slinging beers to the few regulars who come through the door. Not so. Enter Lena Montoya, a mysterious woman who looks remarkably like Karen: “The resemblance was astonishing—the same triangular face and squared off chin; the same high cheekbones, straight nose, and strong mouth.” What’s more, she seems to be on the run from someone—perhaps the same men who mugged Andrew. Even after he learns that her husband is a ruthless Mexican drug lord, he allows himself to become enamored by the beautiful Lena. He hatches a plan to keep her safe from her husband’s hired men, who have begun to swarm the area. At the same time, he begins receiving anonymous letters about the fate of his wife and son back in San Francisco. The situation quickly reveals itself to be much more complex—and interconnected—than Andrew realized. Caught between his past and present, is it even possible for Andrew to keep everyone he loves safe? Croft’s (Thorns of Remembrance, 2019, etc.) novel successfully summons the feel of an old action movie, particularly its neo-Western setting filled with outlaws and henchmen. But the book quickly and unintentionally turns into a parody of itself. The author seeks to portray Andrew as an honorable, aging doctor/brawler whom everyone finds attractive. One of Karen’s friends observes, “He’s so muscular, and he looks so ageless, like Sean Connery or Paul Newman,” and even the cartel members who mug him remember him as “good-looking.” Yet Andrew’s jealous, violent, and frantic behavior early on is so disturbing that his good-guy antics later won’t salvage readers’ opinions of him. He destroys Pavo’s motorcycle while fantasizing that it’s Karen. Later, he “blew his nose and wiped his eyes, and whispered to the room, as if in disbelief, ‘I’m a cuckold.’ And again, louder: ‘I’m a cuckold!’ ” When he calms down, he writes Karen a note, the first sentence of which reads: “Even the most sincere apology would be ridiculously inadequate for the brutal way I treated you, something like Hitler apologizing to the Jews.” The ending—where readers learn the context of how Karen came to sleep with Pavo—is needlessly exploitative (and not the first time Croft has gone to that well). 

A cartoonish thriller that treads too often into male fantasies about dominating women.