Dead On is Dead On
First and foremost I’ve got to get this out of my system, “Wow!” I’ve got some other choice interjections but this is a rated G review and my expletives will be censored into some symbols, “@#$%%^@!” Dead On by Ann Kelly published by iUniverse 2004 at $24.95 is 196 pages of pure guilt-ridden instant gratification. I could have read Dead On in one sitting, in fact that would have been my preference, but much resented life interfered with my reading and I had to put the book aside for a day. Everyone around me, friends and family not excluded had to listen to my grumblings about the rude “readerious interruptus”.
Dead On is a mystery in a mystery within a mystery. Ann Yang, a medical examiner finds herself stuck in all three. Yang’s investigation of a murder scene in Doylestown Pennsylvania reveals what she suspects to be the act of a serial killer. A ruthless murderer that uses Civil War coat buttons placed beneath the victim’s tongue as a calling card. “Union infantry. Genuine article.” At the same time, Yang finds during the renovations of her house an old diary that belonged to a former occupant and maybe the key to a hundred year old mystery. Newly divorced and gun shy of relationships, Yang begins to have feelings for Mark, the carpenter that is working on her house, but will not give in to them because of the “trauma” involved with being a medical examiner. She attempts to alleviate these deterrents by attending therapy sessions of hypnosis and past-life regressions. Soon, Yang is convinced that the killer, the diary and her past are somehow connected.
Dead On is a quick read, but packed like a novel twice its size. Kelly’s chapters are short but hit with a large wallop. While some authors fawn and preen their vocabulary and stamina as a wordsmith by writing forty page chapters made of lengthy passages of purple prose describing each tiny filament on the leg hairs of a tsetse fly. Ann Kelly’s writing is sparse and at the same time lyrical. She keeps the reader riveted, their mind’s racing; continually second guessing themselves in a delicious tension that is almost palpable enough to eat with the mouth as well as their devouring eyes. Her descriptions just about burn the page with action interrelated with ideas; especially the entries of a journal that her protagonist Ann Yang has discovered:
April 14, 1902
I don’t bother her in school. It’s not that I’m ashamed of myself. It’s just not the thing to do. I have no desire to step into the shallow pool; I’ve grown accustomed to the reckless, deep walls of my own poisoned well.
What a glorious Saturday. I found myself on the trolley today, heading to Willow Grove Park. I was surprised when she sat down next to me, alone, not saying a word. Eventually we reached Philadelphia. I enjoyed her nearness; I was excited by the proud way people stared at her. Soon we were north of Philadelphia in a crowd of well-dressed ladies and men departing the trolleys, descending the stairs, and walking through the tunnels that had been dug under Easton Road. There’s an inscription above the door to one of the two tunnels:
For myriad souls this is the shrine-The temple of the art divine.
Ann Yang is like Kathy Reichs’ heroine Forensic Anthropologist Temperance Brennan and James Patterson’s Abnormal Psychologist and Forensic Psychologist hero Alex Cross (Kelly even makes a playful salute to Patterson by having Yang describe her retired FBI profiler friend Tony Cole as resembling the actor Morgan Freeman. Freeman played Alex Cross in the movie adaptations of Patterson’s novels Kiss the Girls and Along Comes a Spider.) Some differences between Yang and Brennan are not subtle. Brennan does not carry a Glock strapped to her ankle and she is not Chinese. The subtleties are more interesting: Yang is more fallible than Brennan, but she understands her needs and appetites better than Brennan. Like an ascetic, Yang denies herself any pleasure almost as if she is punishing herself for her poor decisions in the past. Unlike an ascetic she eventually gives into her needs and passion, which makes her likeable and thus the reader can emphasize and identify with Yang’s emotions more than Brennan’s intellect. Yang and Alex Cross have similar traits possessing an animalistic tenacity, a primal determination to not only solve the case, but also to bring a permanent closure. Yang doesn’t have Cross’s pretentiousness and her vulnerability lends humanity to an inhumane situation and that creates hope.
-Lee Gooden 8-15-06