THE DEAD SURVIVORS

If ever a death by hanging had the look and feel of a suicide, Frank Beck’s did. Six months earlier, his wireless electronics business had gone belly-up, costing friends and other investors dearly; his much-loved wife of 30-plus years had left him; and his advanced case of colon cancer was leaving him racked with continual and intensifying pain. Never mind that his youngest son insists that adversity served only to fuel Frank Beck’s fighting spirit. In the experience of Special Detective Marshall (Mars) Bahr of the Minnesota PD, denial of this sort is commonplace. And yet . . . and yet. There was that highly sophisticated hangman’s knot supposedly tied by someone who could barely lace his shoes, and those weird numbers written on the dead man’s right arm. Whatever they mean, they certainly let the air out of the official suicide theory when the M.E. reports that the numbers were inscribed after Beck was dead. Soon enough, Bahr and his task force are locked in an intricate and scary contest with a vengeful psychopath for whom the battle of Gettysburg is still to be resolved. And Bahr had better master the rules of the game in a hurry, or a lot of unsuspected latter-day noncombatants will be added to the list of Union dead.

Mars Bahr, the Candy Man, remains a sensitive and appealing protagonist (Third Person Singular, 2001), but that cryptic numbers game drags on well past the point of diminishing returns.