Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Off-Islander by Peter Colt

The Off-Islander by Peter Colt (Kensington, 2019) is the first in a projected series of private investigator mysteries with Andy Roark, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD. Set in Boston in 1986, 10 years after the fall of Hanoi, Andy is still having trouble assimilating into the civilian world. He tried college, he tried the police force, and he’s fallen into collecting evidence for divorce filings and following up on personal injury cases. Nothing challenging but it’s a paycheck. His high school friend, now lawyer, Danny Sullivan throws work his way occasionally and brings him in to find Charles Hammond, who walked away from his family some 30 years ago. The client, Hammond’s daughter, is not interested in re-uniting with Hammond but she is worried about potential fallout that could affect her husband’s political career. She wants to know what he’s been up to so she can nip whatever trouble there might be in the bud.

The major clue is the list of addresses to which the Veterans Administration has mailed his pension checks for years. The West Coast locations were investigated without success so Roark decides to look into the only East Coast address. This involves lots of driving back and forth between Hyannis and Boston in heavy traffic, offering plenty of opportunity for commentary on the region. The Hyannis place turns out to be the site of a former commune run by an artist who paints in the style of Georgia O’Keefe. She doesn’t remember Hammond among the dozens of people who came and went during the 70s. Still, when the house and outbuildings are burned to the ground a week or so later, along with the artist, Roark knows he’s hit a nerve.

The ending is surprising enough to be satisfying. Colt has a gift for descriptive detail, which he uses as much for wartime flashbacks as he does for the investigation underway. As much as half of the book is devoted to Roark’s memories of Vietnam, which I certainly hope will decrease in future titles. I am more than a little tired of veterans with PTSD as protagonists.

It will be interesting to watch how well Colt manages the technology changes that are about to turn the world on its ear, with the internet becoming public in 1991, a short five years after the timing of this debut novel. The first cell phones became widely available to the public in the mid-1980s, about the time of this story. Personal computers were already in use, if not especially common.

If Colt can develop more substantial plots and reduce the wartime ruminations, this series will be one to watch.

·         Hardcover: 240 pages

·         Publisher: Kensington (September 24, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1496723414

·         ISBN-13: 978-1496723413

·         Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.