Greenlaw’s latest sea tale a little leaky
Let’s face it. There are plenty of us who want to read anything Linda Greenlaw decides to write. A friend of this reviewer-an outdoorsy radical terrain ski guy, who’s read all Greenlaw’s books-confessed that he had even read her cookbook and he likely has zero interest in cooking.
Greenlaw’s first Jane Bunker marine investigator murder mystery, Slipknot, was a darn good book (Working Waterfront June 2007)-well-crafted and suspenseful with right-on-target Maine dialogue and issues, including a wind farm project as the backdrop for a small-town murder. Fisherman’s Bend, however, doesn’t quite live up to the standard that the first mystery set.
An analogy here might be a tennis star who’s had a strong winning streak, but had one game with some lousy serves or maybe it was too windy during the match. The skills are still there and the crowd loves them, but they lost one game. So what.
Greenlaw is a master of writing about all things marine. In Fishermen’s Bend, she makes the reader feel and see exactly what an oil tanker (from which Bunker dangles, gun in hand, on a fraying rope ladder) is like: “The deck of the Asprella was the size of a football field. Large pipes ran in mazelike confusion to pump boxes and valves…” Ditto for any other kind of boat she describes, including an aquaculture research vessel and smaller fishing boats. She nicely crafts words, as in “The Sea Pigeon settled deeply, pulling the surface up like a blanket.”
The mystery gets off to a good start when Deputy Bunker and her sidekick, Cal, find a lobster boat circling at sea with no one at the helm. The elements in Fisherman’s Bend are OK in themselves: Native American archeological sites, aquaculture surveys, oyster farming, feuding local fisherman, illegal drugs, and a lot of bad actors like a drunken oil tanker captain. But these are not enough to hold the book together-the seams aren’t quite tight enough.
Fisherman’s Bend could have used a heavier editor’s hand to even the rhythm of the writing. Chapters in the middle of the book feel like there is no one at the helm-they drift. Some of the dialogue and narrative here isn’t helpful to the tale itself. The punk waitress at the local café can only hold so much of our interest. The tweedy “Old Maids” are more fun. And the references to Bunker’s former work in Miami fighting crime is just too, well, Magnum P.I., as a counterpoint to her stint in Green Haven.
Toward the end of this book, Greenlaw kicks it all into gear for the cliffhanger closing chapters. I, personally, would love to see more nonfiction from her. Maybe a Lobster Chronicles II is in order-she’s got wit, candor, maritime knowledge, and a terrific unpretentiousness when her own voice and life experience has the upper hand. Greenlaw deserves a break for just one less-than-perfect book.