DEATH IN THE DIAMOND LANE

In O’Donnell’s debut novel, a chauffeur in Silicon Valley finds himself in possession of something so valuable that people are willing to kill for it.

Bill Feeney has been a limo driver in Silicon Valley for more than four years, which is an unusual career choice for someone with a doctorate in anthropology. However, his job makes him privy to a lot of valuable insider information from wealthy and politically connected clients, leading someone to try to bribe him for it and another to bug his car. In fact, a listening device seems to be responsible for the malfunctioning of a client’s pacemaker; as a result, his regular client Elizabeth DeLong nearly dies in the back of his Lincoln Town Car. She offers him a handsome fee to help her escape from the hospital, but then she suddenly dies under suspicious circumstances. It’s soon revealed that DeLong left Bill cryptic instructions that take him to Utah, where he discovers he is the unwitting owner of a massive tract of “desert wilderness” on which rests a rare substance that could change the face of the global energy industry. Over the course of this novel, O’Donnell, who once worked as a California limo driver, displays an impressive knack for weaving the implausible into the ordinary. He effectively shows Bill to be an average fellow who’s soon swallowed up by an extraordinary turn of events. He also knows how to set a mood, as when he chillingly describes a hospital room in the aftermath of DeLong’s demise: “It was so still, it was if she’d taken all the air with her wherever she’d gone. Coal mines and deep caves and grain silos and pharaohs’ tombs came to mind; places where life looked over its shoulder.” That said, the story also flirts with unnecessary convolution at times, which can prove exhausting. However, the author generally keeps thing gripping with a peculiar but entertaining amalgam of murder mystery and political conspiracy.

A fast-paced and inventive, if sometimes overly complex, thriller.