| The Next Accident
opens with an explosive sex scene fuelled by champagne and
culminating in a fatal car crash. General reaction being that a
drunken driver not wearing her seat belt and killing a dog
walker and his fox terrier deserves to go through the
windscreen. On the other hand the astute reader isn't the only
person to suspect the involvement of A.N.Other shortly before
the crash. The dead driver's father suspects foul play and
brings in his former girl friend who confirms it.
Behind a miasma of deceit, conspiracy
and not very credible disguises, is a simple revenge plot; a
psychopath from his past haunting FBI agent Pierce Quincy, not
with the intention of killing him but with the slow and
exquisite torture of a murderous progress through Quincy's
family: daughters, lover, ex-wife, and people who merely get
in the way. Not everyone dies of course, this is traditional
stuff and good has to triumph in the end. However, there are
enough bodies to make you lose count as you try to concentrate
on the intricacies of breaking alibis, a task made harder by
one unforeseen feature (bit of a cheat, that) and the fact
that the action commutes between Virginia and Oregon and
points intermediate.
Plenty of sex and violence then -
Grand Guignol for the connoisseur - and you can't fault the
research. More than one of the characters majored in
psychology, but although modern in its whydunnit aspect the
novel is predictable even to Quincy's lover, PI Lorraine
Connor, playing the part of the tethered goat. No doubt she
will surface again: feminine yet well-muscled (running the
statutory mileage before breakfast), vulnerable yet
resourceful: losing her Glock in the grand climax but
disarming her antagonist with a metal chair. New woman, but
the coup de grace has to be delivered by her man. Old story.
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