The Third Coincidence by David Bishop

Published by Oceanview Publishing on February 6, 2012

A Justice of the Supreme Court is murdered. Inexplicably, the Supreme Court Police fail to enhance their protection of the remaining Justices, making it easy for a second Justice to be assassinated. Then a Federal Reserve Governor is killed, followed by more targets from the Court and the Fed. Despite the absence of evidence that a foreign power is responsible for the assassination, the president asks a CIA agent to assemble a task force to find the killer. In the real world, every available FBI and Secret Service agent would be investigating the murders, plus the local police, the U.S. Marshal's Office, the Supreme Court Police, and any other law enforcement agency that could reasonably justify sharing in the glory of finding the killer. In the world of The Third Coincidence, the crime is solved by Jack McCall and a handful of people who spend most of their time eating meals together and thinking lustful thoughts about each other.

Finding the killer should take all of thirty seconds given that he's a crackpot whose political grievances are inconsistent and laughable, but the novel posits this loony toon as a serious threat to governmental institutions. Frankly, if it were that easy for deranged individuals with screwy political beliefs to kill important members of government, we wouldn't have a government. That murders of highly placed officials would continue to occur when those officials are under constant surveillance requires more credulity than I was able to muster.

I'm tired of thrillers that imagine the hero to be a personal friend of the president, particularly when they lead to inane dialog like this: "`I often think about those nights we spent in embassy kitchens eating your homemade ice cream,' the president said .... `Do you still make those Grand Marnier bonbons?'" Friendship or not, it is impossible to believe that McCall would be given a leading role in the investigation. A president who puts his buddy in charge of the investigation despite his buddy's lack of law enforcement experience and who publicizes his idiocy by having the buddy give a televised news conference, would be committing political suicide.

I'm also tired of unoriginal supporting characters, including killers who taunt their hunters. McCall assembles a stereotypical "task force" that includes a sexy FBI agent who wants Jack to desire her so she can reject him, a gifted computer whiz, local cops who think the feds are snobs but love McCall anyway, and a former military sniper whose job is to sit around in case the task force decides someone needs to be shot from a distance. Of course, McCall, the hacker, and the sniper have no law enforcement experience, which makes it even less likely that real cops would take direction from the task force.

We're told that McCall is a stud who has had "flings" with women all over D.C.; if so, they must like his looks because he has no personality with which to wow them. The other characters are just as thin, but McCall is laughably one-dimensional. He pictures himself as a boulder "standing strong against the forces of evil." Sadly for the reader, McCall is about as interesting as a boulder. He is given to self-righteous platitudes and apparently views himself as more patriotic than other Americans because he works for the CIA -- as if patriotism has anything to do with catching a nutbag killer. My impression is that The Third Coincidence is intended as a message novel -- the message being "true patriots risk their lives for their country" -- but a message is no substitute for good storytelling. To the extent that a few paragraphs deliver a more salient message about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court's function as a guardian of constitutional rights, it gets lost in the morass that precedes and follows it.

In one or two chapters, David Bishop manufactures a high level of tension. Those are unfortunately offset by chapters in which characters sit around a table stating the obvious. They spend most of their time praising each other as government officials continue to die. By the end I was thinking "Just catch the guy already." I have no problem with Bishop's prose -- he is a capable writer -- but it takes more than a clean writing style to make a novel work. Dull characters and a silly plot make The Third Coincidence unworthy of attention.

NOT RECOMMENDED