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Gordon Osmond

Reviewer Gordon Osmond : Gordon is a produced and award-winning playwright and author of: So You Think You Know English--A Guide to English for Those Who Think They Don't Need One, Wet Firecrackers--The Unauthorized Autobiography of Gordon Osmond and his debut novel Slipping on Stardust.

He has reviewed books and stageplays for http://CurtainUp.com and for the Bertha Klausner International Literary Agency. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School and practiced law on Wall Street for many years before concentrating on writing fiction and non-fiction. You can find out more about Gordon by clicking HERE

Gordon can also be heard on the Electic Authors Showcase.







 
By Gordon Osmond
Published on April 1, 2012
 

Author:Mary Anna Evans

Publisher:Poisoned Pen Press

ISBN:9781590589298 Hardcover

ISBN: 9781590589311 Trade Paperback





Follow Here To Purchase Plunder: A Faye Longchamp Mystery.

Author:Mary Anna Evans

Publisher:Poisoned Pen Press

ISBN:9781590589298 Hardcover

ISBN: 9781590589311 Trade Paperback

In this, her seventh one-word title (the first one in the singular), author Evans has her archaeologist protagonist dig into a mire of water, oil, and blood created by the BP spill and a murderous member of a family that is more accurately represented by a bush than a tree.

If Faye Longchamp, her humpy hubbie, Joe, and barely born son Michael thought that digging for relics and remains on the southern coast of Louisiana was going to be a pleasant past-grounded experience, they didn't plan on having to deal with the family Landreneau, many of the members of which make The Little Foxes come off as cuddly kittens. In the environs of Barataria Bay, Louisiana, more than fish get filleted when a certain Landreneau relative--a marine version of Mack the Knife--is around.

Faye and Joe befriend a lovely and leggy Landreneau, Amande, who, in a very short period of time loses a mother to cancer, and a grandmother and uncle to Mack's knives. By the way, all of the family relationships must be qualified by "step," "half," or "in-law." This is, after all, the South, and one never knows if one might discover that one is one's own grandpa. “My family is such a mess," a character accurately and understatingly observes at one point. Amande Landreneau, a pre-college student, soon becomes a primary focus of the novel as well as a dedicated and responsible substitute babysitter for little Michael.

The lust for lucre is the primary motivation for Plunder's less savory characters, of which there is no shortage. Whether the moola comes from digging up real or imagined sunken treasures of yore or contemporary manipulation of Louisiana's labyrinthine laws of inheritance is relatively unimportant. As the Gulf of Mexico is a far piece from Wall Street, in Plunder, greed is definitely bad.

The author nicely posits a race between human (the Landreneaus) and natural (the oil spill) detritus as to which will first overtake (and depopulate) Barataria Bay.

The climax of the novel begs for film treatment but for the hero's performing it B.O.B. (baby on board). I think it would be difficult to pull this off on screen without audience horror/incredulity that a mother would expose her newborn to such danger. Interestingly, when the reaction of the proud but absent papa to the adventure is imagined, the greatest concern is that he would find his son being sedated with Jack Daniels more troubling than having the baby participate in the first place in the taking down of a triple murderer in fevered pursuit of fresh victims.

The novel's dénouement was a bit drawn out; most readers will probably not relish a rehash of Louisiana's intestacy laws. And once it is clear that the four good guys are safely on their way back to the aptly named Joyeuse Island, Florida, who really cares about the plight of the human refuse left behind in the Mississippi delta?

In the opinion of this reviewer, the writing of this novel outclasses its story. Ms. Evans is a keen observer of the grace notes of human experience and has an outstanding ability to present them to the reader with an array of offbeat but never inapt vocabulary, imaginative and sometimes quirky metaphors and similes, and sentence construction using adjectival forms in preference to longer phrases and clauses, all of which propel the novel like a powerful outboard motor. The following excerpt will illustrate:

"Faye had been fascinated to watch Didi turn on her sex appeal in advance of the lawyer’s arrival. Her eyes had softened. Her lips had dampened. Her hands had slowly run down her torso, smoothing her tank top over a slim waist and full hips. At the sight of Bernard Reuss, that sex appeal had flipped off like a switch. A slump now hid the graceful body, and sullenness clouded the eyes. Faye could have sworn she saw the woman’s lips dry up on the spot. She wondered if Didi did these things consciously, or if some women just had the knack of alluring men without really having to think about it."

Evans is not above a pun or two although this one might have been inadvertent:

"I think it’s significant that Hebert went first, before Miranda, to keep his

heirs from showing up and wanting a cut.”

Author Evans or her editors could place her "only"s with greater care, and often "farther" rather than "further" should be given a chance when geographical distances are being measured, but these are niggardly quibbles that do not detract in the least from the enjoyment of this novel as a product of a gifted writer hard at work within the confines of the traditional corpse-hungry mystery genre.


Follow Here To Purchase Plunder: A Faye Longchamp Mystery.