Don't Turn Around by Harry Dolan

Published by Atlantic Monthly Press on April 2, 2024

Eleven-year-old Kate Summerlin snuck out of her bedroom window at night, took a stroll in the woods, and came upon the body of a young woman named Melissa. Her killer had written the work Merkury on her body. The killer had planned to hang Melissa's body in a tree, but Kate came along while he was retrieving the rope. He told her not to turn around. Then they had a little chat that Kate has always kept to herself. The reader won’t learn the full details of that encounter until the final pages. I’m not sure it is worth the wait.

Kate is now in her late 20s. She supports herself by writing true crime stories. Merkury went on to become a serial killer. He has racked up nearly a dozen victims when the story resumes.

As an adult, Kate’s a bit of a mess. She likes to have rough sex, but only when she is the rough one. The guy needs to be gentle and follow her instructions. Unfortunately, that’s the only character trait that makes Kate interesting, and she doesn’t have enough sex to sustain a reader’s interest in her kinkiness.

Kate is now living rent-free at a relative’s home in rural Ohio. She receives a visit from Vera Landen from Alexander, New York, where Kate lived with her father when she found the body. Vera bothers Kate periodically, hoping she will reveal a new detail that will help her catch Merkury. This time she tells Kate that Merkury, who has killed people across the country, has returned to Alexander.

Bryan Cayhill’s body was found by a film student, Lavana Khatri, as well as two other students who were helping her make an extremely low-budget horror film. Kate’s agent convinces her that her career as a true-crime writer isn’t going anywhere and that she can only give it a boost by writing about Merkury. Kate returns to Alexander, where she plans to interview the students who found Bryan’s body. Lee Tennick, who has a true-crime podcast, is there ahead of her.

Clay McKellar, one of the actors who found the body, seems to be freaked out by the experience. Tennick befriends Clay, perhaps to induce Clay to appear on his podcast, but becomes concerned when Clay disappears. Did Merkury do away with him?

Shortly after Kate arrives in town, Sam Wyler asks her to look into the disappearance of his 19-year-old daughter Jenny. Since Kate isn’t a detective, the request makes little sense (neither does Kate’s agreement to investigate), but Harry Dolan needed to send the story in a new direction so there you have it. Perhaps Jenny ran away from her controlling father and, if so, she should have done it when she turned 18, but perhaps she’s been abducted, car and all. Naturally, Jenny’s disappearance will connect with one of the murders because that’s how crime novels work.

Who is Merkury? Could it be Sam Wyler? Could it be Devin Falko, a therapist who turned up at Kate’s book signing and became her on-again, off-again lover? Could it be Lee Tennick?  Could it be Travis Pollard, a seemingly creepy guy who played the killer in Lavana’s movie? Could it be Kate’s father? More death ensues before the reader’s questions are answered. A bit more than midway into the novel, Kate kills someone, more or less in self-defense, and learns how it feels to form the intent to take a human life. It doesn’t seem to bother her much.

When the puzzle seems to be solved with a hundred pages remaining, the reader knows that the solution is either partial or false. The unfolding truth becomes a bit convoluted and is not remotely credible — Kate knows a shocking number of people who harbor a murderous intent — but such is the way of the modern thriller. Implausible stories might still be enjoyable, but I never warmed up to Kate and the other characters tend to be lifeless, even before they’re murdered.

Most of the story proceeds at a steady pace, although it drags a bit as it nears its final revelation. The story ends with some decent action scenes. They aren’t particularly suspenseful, but Dolan at least makes an effort to satisfy the thriller reader’s appetite for thrills. A couple of suspense-building tricks are cheesy — someone we think is dead miraculously turns out to be not dead — but some readers find dramatic cheese to be tasty. The story hinges on a final reveal, the big mystery that defines Kate’s life. That plot detail is too contrived for my taste but again, some mystery fans might think it is sufficiently shocking to make it worth the wait.

I’ve enjoyed other Dolan novels more than this one, but the story does just enough to earn a recommendation for mystery fans who have finished all the top-shelf novels on their reading list. On a five-star system, I would give it 3.5, a half star above a Recommended with Reservations rating.

RECOMMENDED

The Good Killer by Harry Dolan

Published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on February 4, 2020

The Good Killer is worth reading just for the epilogue. It balances a dark story with a message of healing, a suggestion that there is a path out of the darkness.

Sean Tennant joined the military with his best friend, Cole Harper. Cole’s brother Jimmy was disappointed that Sean didn’t talk Cole out of the military adventure. Cole lost a foot in the war, for which Jimmy blamed Sean. Later, Sean decided to pursue a theft that went sideways. Jimmy blames Sean for bringing Cole along. Now Sean is on the run from Jimmy. Accompanying Sean are Molly Winter and Cole’s ghost. At least, Sean carries on conversations with Cole, although to others, he seems to be talking to himself.

The victim of the theft, Adam Khadduri, lost cylinder seals valued at a few million dollars. He also lost Molly, or she lost him before telling Sean where to find his valuables. Like Jimmy, Khadduri is trying to track down Sean.

Sean and Molly have new identities and feel reasonably safe until Sean stumbles across an angry man in a mall who is shooting random customers to impress Rose, the woman who rejected him. Sean shoots the killer, saving Rose and earning the status of a folk hero. But since his picture, captured on security cameras, is now on cable news, Sean and Molly need to flee before Khadduri or Jimmy Cole find them.

After the shooting, law enforcement agents who know about his theft are also looking for Sean. He is occasionally recognized by people in small towns, but since Sean and Molly have attained the status of cult heroes, there isn’t much risk that anyone will turn them in. America loves its celebrities.

Some of this seems improbable and forced. In particular, I didn’t buy Jimmy’s vendetta. Khadduri has a stronger motivation to chase down Sean, so the story is at last partially believable. In the end, if a reader can buy into the premise, The Good Killer delivers a satisfying action story.

The law enforcement characters have standard law enforcement personalities. Sean isn’t necessarily an admirable guy, but he at least feels remorse about his reckless behavior, which accounts for the ghost of Cole that he carries in his head. While taking out a mall killer might be seen as an act of redemption, I never entirely warmed to Sean. While I prefer conflicted bad guys to stalwart good guys, Sean seems more like an artificial construct whose job is keep the plot moving than a flesh-and-blood character. The “dead best friend in my head” theme has been done so many times that it comes across as a shopworn tool of the writing trade.

Although I didn’t entirely buy the story and wasn’t in love with Sean, Harry Dolan scores points by underplaying Sean’s ability. He is far from a typical thriller superhero. I was more intrigued by the characters of Molly and Rose, although they both play much smaller roles. In fact, Rose is a negligible character until the epilogue, when she reappears to give the story an emotional power that is absent until that point. The Good Killer is an uneven performance, but it does maintain an escalating level of tension, and its touching epilogue earned it a recommendation.

RECOMMENDED

Very Bad Men by Harry Dolan

Published by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam on July 7, 2011

Very Bad Men tells a very good story, an absorbing mystery with enough twists that you may need to take notes to keep track of the plot.  Someone is trying to kill the participants in a bank robbery that occurred seventeen years earlier.  We are well into the novel before the police discover the killer's identity, but this isn't a whodunit:  the reader knows from the start that Anthony Lark is the culprit.  What we don't know is why Lark is after the robbers.  Investigating the mystery are David Loogan, the editor of a mystery magazine; his law enforcement girlfriend, Detective Elizabeth Waishkey; and Lucy Navarro, a persistent tabloid reporter.   Rounding out the cast are the wheelchair-bound former sheriff who caught a bullet while foiling the bank robbery, his daughter Callie who is running for a Senate seat (and with whom Lark is more than a little obsessed), Lark's psychiatrist, and Callie's father-in-law, an affable senator whose behavior is a bit loopy.

The mystery's solution seems to be tied to the getaway driver who fled when the robbery went sour.  His identity presents a second mystery for Loogan and the police to ponder.  When Navarro disappears a little more than halfway into the story, yet another layer of intrigue is added:  Was Navarro kidnapped, and if so, by whom?

Lark is the novel's best character.  He suffers from an affliction that imbues written words with color and causes them to move around on a page.   He can handle Hemmingway's terse prose but Joseph Heller's abundant adverbs "swarm like marching ants."  While unexpected traits like this bring many of Harry Dolan's characters to life, Waishkey is a typical police detective, less interesting than the novel's other players.

Dolan uses crisp, undemanding prose to construct an effective plot.  We know that someone wants the truth to remain buried -- to that end, Loogan and Navarro are confronted with threats and attempted bribes -- but the puzzle surrounding the bank robbery kept me guessing to the end.  Although it's not always easy to follow, the plot never becomes so convoluted as to slow the story's steady pace.

Loogan is no Sherlock Holmes.  As he tries to puzzle out the solutions to the various mysteries, he's frequently wrong.  That gives him a measure of credibility that is too often missing from the seemingly infallible armchair detectives who headline mystery novels.  As unlikely as it might be for a mystery magazine editor to become embroiled in a mystery, Dolan concocts a believable excuse for Loogan's involvement.

This is the second David Loogan novel but the first I've read.  It was strong enough to earn my recommendation and to encourage me to buy the first book.

RECOMMENDED