Sometimes when you open a book you can tell from the first couple of sentences that you’re in good hands. Very often when the story is told in the first person it’s simply the voice – you hear it and know that the person narrating is somebody worth listening to. Part of it is simply a certain authority, the suggestion that the hero knows a thing or two and will be able to take you to significant places with style. It’s a sensation I had when first introduced to the cadences of Loren Estleman’s Amos Walker, Steve Hamilton’s Alex McKnight, and just recently when encountering Brad Parks’s Carter Ross.
To me it goes to one of the things I find so appealing about mystery writers in general. Most of them are grown-ups who have had at least one other profession and seen more than a bit of life, unlike the current “literary” types who seem to know little they haven’t picked up in grad school and approach novel writing like a classroom excercise rather than something that reflects modern life. Certainly Parks, who is a former reporter for The Washington Post and The Star-Ledger knows the territory where he puts his protagonist, reporter Carter Ross, through his paces in the dark environs of Newark, New Jersey. Parks won the coveted Shamus Award for the first book in the series Faces of the Gone, and he hits another home run with his latest Eyes of the Innocent.
Carter, a somewhat embittered survivor in the rapidly deflating yet still vital world of journalism, initially finds himself covering the tragic yet straightforward story of a house fire that killed two children, motivated mostly by an editor’s obsession with the perils of space heaters. But in the ruins of the burnt out house he and the dewy intern known as “Sweet Thang” encounter the grieving mother, whose affecting front page tale turns out to be less than candid, pointing to a word that quickens Carter’s blood:
Someone wanted something covered up. I didn’t have the slightest idea who or what. But reporters love cover-ups only slightly less than they love their own mothers – more if their mothers don’t cook well. Whisper the word “cover-up” in a noisy room full of reporters, and I guarantee we’ll all stop and turn our heads to listen.
From that point the chase is on, and Parks mixes a twisty, unexpected plot with moments of both humor and horror, as Carter and his motley crew of contacts, friends and sometimes unwilling colleagues follow the perilous trail to high places and low dives. But it’s that voice, authoritative, self-effacing and often down right funny that takes the reader along for the ride and there’s no place else you’d rather be.
