Silently Screaming

Scream in Silence [by] Eleanor Taylor Bland

New York; St. Martin's Minotaur [2000]

0312203780

Scream in Silence is a wonderfully rich layered story in which Mystery’s first African-American female homicide detective, Marti MacAlister, and her partner Matthew “Vik” Jessenovik join forces for good in the Chicago suburb of Lincoln Prairie. It is the eighth in the series by Eleanor Taylor Bland.

The detectives must track down a relentless and deadly arsonist and an elusive and psychopathic bomb-maker, who displays rage, frustration and plans for future violence.  Then someone Vik remembers from his youth, Virginia McCroft, a political gadfly and busybody with "the personality of a lemon," is found dead by gunshot in the basement of a home destroyed by arson.  Marti finds out that she may have been involved in shady land deals or even blackmail.  The detectives find themselves burning the proverbial candle at both ends as the pressure builds around them to solve the crimes before panic sets in in the sleepy little suburb.

And Marti, newly married, is now not only juggling her kids’ interests, but that of her new husband, an EMT with his own exhaustive schedule.  Marti and her family are wonderful characters, as are the members of the Lincoln Prairie Police Department and the citizens of the town, which is now on full alert and afraid.  The characters are wonderfully rich and engaging.  Some have very small roles to play, but they increase the flavor of the times and the sense of fear, where everyone screams in silence, due to their helplessness within the system, caused by race, age, poverty, and other factors.  When the author was alive, she was a mover and shaker in the Chicagoland area, and her social concerns make themselves felt in all of her books, but never in a heavy-handed way.  You come to care about the victims because they are so human, their plights so real, that you come to understand them so well.

A subplot about a petty con artist with lofty ideas about a big time money-making scam almost steals the show.  Geoffrey Bailey, worthless but charming, is endearingly inept, but very creative.  His antics will both anger you and make you laugh out loud, even as you realize how close he’s getting to real danger.  His interference brings him a hair-raising encounter with the arsonist, with unexpected consequences.

This is a fine police procedural with lots to think about. A Booklist reviewer called author Bland "one of today's most talented mystery writers."  When you read one of her books, you realize what a loss she was to the mystery world, for there were only 14 books about Marti and Lincoln Prairie written before Bland died in 2010.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r 

____________________________________

This book is part of my private collection.

____________________________________