At twenty-nine,
Harvey Mapes has largely resigned himself to having little in the way of a
life. Having been a security guard in an exclusive Southern California
community since he was in college, he spends from midnight to eight a.m. six
days a week in a stucco shack outside the gates of the Bel Vista Estates,
watching a monitor to make sure people don't run the stop sign at an
intersection within the community. If they do, he's required to write them
"courtesy tickets" when they come through the gate.
The job gives
Harvey a lot of time to read, and his favorite genre is the detective
story—specifically, the hardboiled private eye story. He's also fond of
catching reruns of old private eye series on the TV Land channel. Among his
favorite detectives, literary and televised, are Travis McGee, Shell Scott,
Elvis Cole, Spenser, Joe Mannix, Magnum, and Dan Tana from "Vega$."
His fantasy is to be a private eye and have a life as fraught with excitement
as theirs are.
Fantasy becomes
reality when Bel Vista resident Cyril Parkus hires Harvey to trail his
beautiful wife Lauren and report to him about her activities. It doesn't take
long to discover that Lauren is being blackmailed, though Harvey doesn't know
the blackmailer's name or what he has on her. His pursuit of the man earns
Harvey a severe beating, but it doesn't dissuade him from eventually learning
the man's identity. When he reports what he's discovered to Cyril Parkus,
Parkus says he'll take it from here. This doesn't sit well with Harvey because,
to his way of thinking, the case has just gotten under way, and his literary
and television idols wouldn't quit at this point in a case. Thus, thinking he
can help both his erstwhile client and his wife, he once again trails Lauren.
When she drives to a freeway overpass, gets out of her car, climbs onto the
railing, looks directly back at Harvey, and then dives into the traffic below,
Harvey can only stare back in shock and horror.
Beset with
guilt, despite realizing with the rational part of his mind that he's done
nothing to feel guilty about, and again because his fictional heroes wouldn't
leave a case unresolved, Harvey is determined to uncover the secret that drove
Lauren to her death and, if he can, bring her blackmailer to justice. His quest
takes him to Seattle and other areas of Washington state, where he encounters
murder, a variety of quirky characters, and some stunning revelations.
I've read and
enjoyed a number of the novels Lee Goldberg has written based on the TV series
"Monk," so I know he's adept at writing humor. There is a good deal
of that in Harvey Mapes's first-person narrative, one full of self-deprecating
remarks and wry perspective on his particular world. What I initially thought I
was getting in Watch Me Die was a fluffy screwball comedy about a private eye
wannabe who'd blunder his way through a "case" populated by
idiosyncratic characters and wacky events. What I got was far different: a love
story (yes, it is that, too) that becomes very dark, violent, and sometimes
flat-out nasty; that is as much about Harvey's maturation and insights into
himself and others as it is about solving a mystery. Goldberg skillfully
manages the delicate transition from levity to gravity as Harvey probes—and
sometimes occasions—events.
This well-paced
page-turner is not a cozy, so readers who dislike raw language, sexual
situations, and onstage violence will want to avoid it. Those who can handle
those elements will be rewarded with a story that amuses, surprises, and
lingers in the mind long after it ends.
It's available
in both trade paperback and Kindle editions.
Barry Ergang © 2012, 2022
Among his other works, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s locked-room novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, can be found in e-book formats at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com
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