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Terminal Care
Once Joe appears on the scene with his crew, heat gathers and there is no let up till the final confrontation with the underworld kingpin of the narcotics materialises. The novel contains the usual paraphernalia of the detective fiction and the plot revolves around a host of characters. There is Michael Poole, the journalist with the mysterious name "Romano" on his lips before he dies—his last letter and a floppy lying in his own letterbox, his article on the drug mafia still unfinished. There are others like Zach Torrano, the merciless drug lord; Barry Johnson, the doctor and the boxing champion, who is the victim of circumstances; Debbie, the nurse, who is murdered after her suspicious inquiry about the narcotic analgesics in the hospital; Ricky and Monty, the crew of Joe, who are the experts in explosives and surveillance techniques and Sheena who like Michael is bent upon avenging her sister Debbie’s murder. Then there are incidents and descriptions of equipments aimed at arousing suspense and fear: dead autumn leaves twirling around the tree trunks, flaming trucks hurtling over the cliffs, scanners for the hidden cameras, Browning hi-power guns, cell phones with scramblers, hacking of the hospital pharmacy computers, the hospital’s ominous offering to the terminal patients about the choice of their burial places, lethal injections, the dimly-lit cavernous halls of the mortuary where coffins bear name-tags and dates of deaths of the still living patients, lids of the coffins containing the narcotics, pharmacy where the drug contents from the vials are sucked out through needles and then replenished with the diluting stuff, and finally the blasting of a boat with the villain strapped to the seat. It is a tautly formulated
novel that can be a source of entertainment while traveling in a train.
It may even give some relaxation to a brain that has suffered some
taxing activity. But essentially, it is a simple-statement conventional
piece of detective fiction. The characters are flat, and as there is
hardly any appreciable probing into the criminal mind or even into the
minds of the man or woman seeking revenge, the novel remains primarily
incident-oriented. Though it maintains the pace of suspense and is good
for one-time two-hour reading, it does not carry any abiding interest
beyond that. |
Vengeance
that a father seeks for the death of his son Michael Poole, who dies
apparently due to a heroine overdose, is the motif of the action in the
novel. Thomas Poole calls for the impeccable services of his
friend-detective Joe Kranken—both of them have seen action together in
Vietnam—to haul the murderer to him. It is more than a million dollar
deal.