Cape Disappointment

December 8, 2008
Last seen in Catfish Café
(1998), Thomas Black finds his memory playing tricks on him at the start of Emerson's dark and disturbing 12th novel to feature the Seattle PI. As Black recuperates in the hospital after being severely wounded in an explosion, he can't remember if his lawyer wife, Kathy Birchfield, is alive or dead. Kathy was to have been a passenger on a chartered plane, along with Sen. Jane Sheffield, that crashed into the sea with no survivors. In flashbacks, Black and Birchfield work on opposing senatorial campaigns until the crash eliminates Birchfield and the blast injures Black. Twin brothers, Elmer “Snake” Slezak and Bert Slezak, play key roles—Snake protects Black; Bert, a former CIA sniper and confirmed conspiracy nut, tries to persuade the PI that the plane crash was no accident. Conspiracy buffs should enjoy this thriller with its references to real-life events like 9/11 that some consider coverups, while Thomas Black fans will welcome his return after a long hiatus.

January 1, 2009
Conspiracy, murder and dirty politics head the list of chores for private eye Thomas Black, back on the job again after a ten-year hiatus.

With four weeks to go in Washington 's senatorial race, popular incumbent Jane Sheffield maintains a comfortable lead over sleazy challenger James Maddox —she 's a shoo-in, the smart money figures. So how to explain the aura of confidence that seems to permeate the Maddox camp? wonders Thomas Black, though perhaps not as hard or as often as he should have done, he 'll later acknowledge. Black is working security for Maddox, a man he doesn 't much like who once did a favor for him when they were young cops together. His beloved wife Kathy hates the setup. Putting a thriving law practice on hold, she 's enlisted in the Sheffield campaign with the kind of passionate partisanship that 's generated by noble causes and scurrilous attackers. When a famously reliable airplane plunges into Cape Disappointment with the senator and Kathy aboard, everyone in the Maddox campaign goes into overdrive to make Thomas believe it was an accident.

When the plotting 's not predictable, it 's implausible. Emerson, whose firefighting novels (Primal Threat, 2008, etc.) brim with crackling energy and an insider 's authority, misfires here.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2009
Its been nearly a decade since Emersons last Thomas Black novel, and much has happened to the Seattle PI in the interim. Hes finally married longtime friend and then lover Kathy Birchfield, and the two have found a bantering Hepburn-Tracy groove, now tested by their own version of Adams Rib in which they find themselves working on opposite sides in Washington States heated senatorial election (Black doing investigative work for the Republican candidate, a former cop, while Birchfield is a key advisor to the Democratic incumbent). When a private plane crashes off Cape Disappointment near the Oregon-Washington border, the senator is killed and Birchfield is assumed dead, though her body isnt found. Inconsolable, Black is drawn into believing a conspiracy theorists seemingly outlandish explanation and begins a solo investigation into what could be a massive government scheme to rig elections. Emerson makes good use of his highly charged political themes, playing on recent concern about election tampering to create an almost-believable scenario in which even a determined individual has little chance against an entrenched, quasi-governmentalmachine. A welcome return for a popular series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)