Fatal by John Lescroart

Published by Atria Books on January 24, 2017

The characters in Fatal, regardless of gender, have trouble keeping their pants on, at least when they are with someone else’s spouse. Fatal isn’t quite Fatal Attraction, although there are overtones of obsessive desire leading to dangerous consequences.

Geoff and Bina Cooke bring their friends Peter and Jill Ash together with their friends Ron and Kate Jameson. Kate comes home with the overpowering desire to shag Peter. One seduction later, Kate has satisfied herself but has transferred the obsession to Peter, who can’t stop thinking about her. This apparently transforms Peter’s life in ways that I didn’t understand or believe.

Frank Rinaldi is the murder victim in an apparent murder-suicide. Beth Tully, investigating the case, thinks his wife killed herself after she killed Frank, probably after learning that he was having an affair with Laurie Shaw. Beth, who starts dating Laurie’s brother Alan, happens to be a good friend of Kate. You might need a spreadsheet to keep track of the intersecting relationships in Fatal.

All of this seems more like a soap opera than a thriller until a group of terrorists start shooting people and blowing things up near the coffee shop where Beth and Kate are chatting about Kate’s infidelity. Hello, terrorists? That comes out of nowhere, and it’s followed by Peter’s murder. So now we’ve got a thriller. But then we’re back to a soap opera as Beth helps Laurie deal with her anorexia while adding her friend Kate to the lengthening list of women who might have wanted Peter dead. That’s a little too much soap for me.

John Lescroart should stick to writing about lawyers. This is a novel about cops, and his cops are tedious and annoying. Beth is more interested in her intuition than evidence and her partner is more interested in being a bully than in doing legitimate police work. When they finally settle on one of a few different competing theories, the partner isn’t the least bit troubled that no evidence establishes the purported killer’s motive. That reflects the sad reality of law enforcement — everyone they meet is a suspect, the presumption of innocence doesn’t exist, and clearing a case is more important than arresting the right person — but as realistic as Beth and her partner might be, I wouldn’t want to know them.

And unfortunately, by the end of Fatal, I didn’t care who shot Peter. The investigating cops are so unlikable and self-righteous that I would have been just as happy to see the crime unsolved — maybe happier, since I didn’t think they deserved to solve it. My favorite character was a CSI guy who kept telling them to stop bothering him until they had some actual evidence that merited investigation.

The solution to the mystery isn’t terribly surprising and the ending is silly, but I don’t have a problem with the plot so much as the disagreeable characters. I hope Lescroart returns to writing about Dismas Hardy. That’s a character I can enjoy.

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