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It's easy to forget that reading is supposed to be fun. I am as inclined to pick up a heady, weighty tome as much as the next guy, but once in a while --- like every couple of days --- I like to kick back and read something that isn't going to improve my life or a work that has not been blessed by the god of self-importance. This week, NATURAL SUSPECT is just the berries.
NATURAL SUSPECT is a collaboration of sorts. William Bernhardt starts things out with an opening chapter that sets things up. Bernhardt's cast of characters --- and what a bunch of characters these are, believe me --- consists of Arthur Hightower, a captain of industry who is 350 pounds of horse manure packed into a 50 pound bag; Julia, his gold-digging lush of a wife; their obnoxious offspring Morgan and Marilyn; and Sissy, Morgan's nymphet wife. Arthur isn't around too long, and his untimely demise sets up a classic whodunit with no lack of suspects.
Only this isn't your classic whodunit. Bernhardt sent his opening chapter to another author, who added a chapter, and sent both chapters off to another author, who added their own chapter. Eleven authors contributed to the project, including Bernhardt. These luminaries include Leslie Glass, Gini Hartzmark, John Katzenbach, John Lescroart, Bonnie MacDougal, Phillip Margolin, Brad Meltzer, Michael Palmer, Lisa Scottoline, and Laurence Shames. The result is 12 intriguing chapters (and yes, I know there are only 11 authors listed, so someone --- probably Bernhardt --- wrote 2 chapters) culminating in an interesting exercise of Screw Your Buddy, as each author takes things a little further out and then leaves it to the next author to keep things moving and somehow consistent (or not) with what has gone before. It isn't long before the reader realizes that none of the characters is as they seem, as each contributor takes the tale into places and nooks and crannies that are entirely unexpected. What comes out is a cross between a mystery and a legal thriller --- not that the lines of those genres don't blend frequently anyway --- with a little LeCarre thrown in just for grins and giggles. There is also the additional puzzle of precisely who wrote which chapter, a question that I will leave to others to answer.
These books have been done before; there was a title called NAKED CAME THE STRANGER written under the pen name Penelope Ashe, which did something like this but in the Jacqueline Suzann tradition, and more recently Carl Hiassen did a south Florida number with a group of authors from that region in NAKED CAME THE MANATEE. NATURAL SUSPECT continues this tradition and upholds it well, reminding us that even in a genre about which we are passionate and serious there can still be room for fun.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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