VASQUEZ PRIVATE EYE

In Bardes’ mystery debut, a police detective becomes embroiled in a series of murders linked to his past.

When Johnson Vasquez was a 20-year-old police academy student, he, his parents, and brother were passengers on a Boeing 767 that crashed, killing his brother and injuring his mother. Johnson radioed for help from the cockpit, summoning emergency services and also prompting fellow academy student Zelda Thomson to investigate the maintenance practices of Firebird Airlines. Because Zelda’s evidence against them was obtained without warrant, Firebird was acquitted of malpractice charges. Seven years later, Johnson and Zelda have graduated to police detectives and are working together as partners, looking into a spate of mistrials. The attorney that Johnson talks to is murdered, as are Johnson’s father (a renowned police detective) and the judge who presided over the Firebird Airlines trial. Before each murder, Johnson receives cryptic, anonymous warnings. Though his presence at the crime scenes makes him a prime suspect, Johnson continues to investigate in both an official and unofficial capacity, delving deeper into the Firebird Airlines case to establish a connection to the current murders. The story unfolds primarily from Johnson’s perspective. The novel shines in its layered characterization and ingenious plot twists, and Bardes’ prose and dialogue are lively, if not always entirely convincing (“You, like thousands of others, were infuriated that the airline was let off without charge, even with the magnitude of vociferous evidence against them”). Throughout the book, however, there remains a sense of remove—both emotional and logical—from the real world. Johnson’s reaction to his father’s death, for instance, is jarringly minimal (“I sighed and casually turned to my right”), and he rarely behaves like a police officer. Still, there’s a case to be made for treating the work as unreliably conveyed, but if that’s case, the execution lacks the deftness to win readers over.

A solid cast populates this unusual and underwhelming mystery.