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Mystery
Title: Specific Gravity Author: J. Matthew Neal Rating:  Excellent!
Publisher: Dunn Avenue Press Reviewed by: John Lehman | View Bio |
 
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I like a good mystery. This one has a great title and a murder weapon that has never been used before. It took a little to get into the story. The author introduces each major character through his or her own chapter (much like the trend in movies to run simultaneous story lines that at first seem unrelated and then draw together—but the difference is people don't usually walk out on movies, they do put down a book and not pick it up again). I have to add the purple and orange cover is one of the ugliest I have ever seen. It pictures a bottle of water but, in a misguided effort to call attention to its contents, the graphic designer has colored them Kool-Aid orange. Not exactly menacing. On the positive side, Dr. J. Mathew Neal is currently Director of Internal Medicine Residency at Ball Memorial Hospital and Clinical Professor of Medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He's Mensa-smart as are his male and female protagonists out to solve the riddle of a pharmaceutical company executive's mysterious death. What a pleasure it is to be in intelligent hands. Every explanation—from an escape artist's techniques to voiceprints to the workings of antique fountain pens—is unusually engaging. And the inner politics of a hospital are equally instructive unless, of course, you're reading this book while a patient in one. In that case you might be content knowing less.
There are some inherent difficulties with building suspense when a book's crime has happened in the past (most of the people in the book deem it a natural death), and some of the book's characterizations seem a bit glib—arrogant CEO, alcoholic younger brother, bitter divorced wife, greedy executive's daughter—but I have to tell you that a hearing-impaired Latina forensic scientist who is also a noted female escape artist has got to be a mystery-novel first. The last hundred pages are a little talky but when danger finally catches up with her and her Hardy-Boy-like physician partner your blood pressure rises and your heart starts pounding. The climax is at the hospital Charity Ball, believe it or not, and the anti-climax involving a nuclear physicist and his demented cousin will have you applauding. Nice job, Doc!
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