MURDER SUICIDE

A beautiful mind gets snuffed, and a forensic psychiatrist Frank Clevenger (Psychopath, 2003, etc.) sniffs something rotten in Denmark.

Suicide’s the initial call, but Dr. Clevenger’s inner olfactometer is registering off the charts. John Snow, M.I.T. professor, aeronautical engineer, and universally acknowledged genius, has died of a gunshot wound to the chest. Boston cops say self-inflicted, but Clevenger says no way. Maybe it’s just that the dead man wasn’t in a suicidal kind of place; there was too much of a positive nature happening in his life. Or look at it this way: the usual suspect list contains an unusual number of sleuth-arousing possibilities. Collin Coroway, for instance, Snow’s partner in Coroway Engineering (radar systems, sonar, missile technology), who becomes sole owner of a multimillion-dollar patent with Snow’s demise. Consider Mrs. Snow, for years a patient Griselda of a wife, now thoroughly aware that she’s become a woman blatantly scorned. Kyle and Lindsay Snow, son and daughter, can't be ruled out either, since each was tormented in different ways by the paternal neglect of icy Snow. And yet, the ironic fact is that Snow, in the four or five months preceding his death, had never been happier. In gloriously beautiful Grace Baxter—auburn hair, green eyes, “the body of a mermaid”—he had found his lovemap. “Lovemaps,” Clevenger explains on several occasions to more or less interested parties, “are people meant for one another.” But is there something a little ersatz about gorgeous Grace? Of course there is, and when Clevenger gathers his suspects together in one room (obeisance here to Dame Agatha), the reader discovers that ersatz has been running wild.

The plot fails to cohere mostly because the characters fail to convince, as if the author couldn't quite tap into the artistry needed to breathe life into them. Ablow has done better work in this series.