The Prodigal Son

September 10, 2012
In the prologue of McCullough’s disappointing fourth novel featuring Capt. Carmine Delmonico of the Holloman, Conn., police department (after 2010’s Naked Cruelty), John Hall, a long-lost heir recently arrived from Oregon, dies from a lethal injection of a stolen toxin at a black-tie family party held on the evening of January 3, 1969. Delmonico, who investigates Hall’s murder and two other grisly poisoning deaths, has a personal interest in the crime—his medical examiner cousin’s daughter was the keeper of the pilfered poison. Suspects include relatives who were slated to lose large amounts of money from Hall’s reappearance as well as ambitious faculty members from the town’s Chubb University. A far-fetched premise, lengthy passages of exposition, unconvincing characters and dialogue, and a lack of attention to accurate period detail will cause the reader to lose interest well before the end. Agent: Michael Carlisle, Inkwell Management.

In 1969, the marriage between black Jim Hunter and his blonde wife, Millie, is met with unspoken ostracism, even in their circle of research scientists. An expert in lethal poisons, Millie announces that her groundbreaking blowfish toxin has disappeared from her closet-sized research lab, and then two murders rapidly occur in their small academic community. Narrator Lewis Hancock applies straightforward voices for Jim and Millie, and shines in his subtle characterization of Captain Carmine Delmonico, the police detective at the center of McCullough's whodunit series. Hancock provides more colorful portrayals for a manipulative Yugoslavian trophy wife and a buttoned-up university president, both suspects in the murders. Even in academic circles, the lust for power can result in tragedy. N.M.C. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine