Like the little villages featured weekly in the long-running British murder mystery series "Midsomer Murders," the tiny Long Island town of Orient has a problem: a murder rate which would rival that of any urban-hell "murder capital." No one is safe: not the local busy-bodies and town snoops, and certainly not the members of the town Historical Development committee, historically devoted to blocking any hint of development that might allow local home and land-owners to realise the full cash potential of their properties. By page 600 of this very readable, not to say addictive, novel, the death toll is flirting with double digits; the final pages are played out as the surviving residents of Orient, both summer visitors and year-rounders, are fleeing by causeway and ferry, lest they too become collateral damage.
But unlike many "cozy" mysteries like "Midsomer Murders," Bollen manages to keep his murder-heavy plot under tight control, never allowing it to degenerate into farce. Each character has been developed, and given a unique place in the dynamic of the town of Orient, so that each murder, when it happens, is a shocking blow. Six hundred pages is easily twice the length of your usual murder mystery, but Bollen definitely makes the length pay off.
But unlike many "cozy" mysteries like "Midsomer Murders," Bollen manages to keep his murder-heavy plot under tight control, never allowing it to degenerate into farce. Each character has been developed, and given a unique place in the dynamic of the town of Orient, so that each murder, when it happens, is a shocking blow. Six hundred pages is easily twice the length of your usual murder mystery, but Bollen definitely makes the length pay off.
