Buried on Avenue B

Buried on Avenue B
by Peter de Jonge
Recommended Ages: 14+

Ever since I ran across it, I've been reading aloud the first paragraph of a major structural division in this book to anyone who will listen. It goes like this:

Instead of a shot from a starter's pistol, there's the bing made by a microwave when the soup is warm. O'Hara pushes from her seat in the second-to-last row and with two hundred compressed, vaguely nauseated travelers plods toward the exit. She presses through the malodorous air of coach and the still-warm party debris of business and does that little perp walk past the chipper smiles of the flight crew. When she steps into the rubber hose that connects the plane to the terminal, the crappy seal offers the first inkling of Florida heat.

Isn't that just delicious? I thought so the moment I clapped eyes on it, and I still think so. That's top quality writing, there. It's observant, sensuous, funny, and sizzling with personality. It also cleverly achieves the effect of a picture gradually coming into focus, leading you to understand what the scene is about without hitting you right in the face with it.

Good writing, rich characterization, crisp dialogue and a perplexing mystery are all strong points of a nevertheless imperfect novel – what novel isn't imperfect, though? It starts when a home health care aide tips O'Hara that her client, a career criminal with a touch of dementia, hints that he buried the body of his sometime partner in a public garden off Avenue B. O'Hara manipulates her captain into letting her dig up the body, expecting it to be an easy case to close for a division known throughout the department as Homicide Soft. But the bones that turn up are those of a 9-year-old boy, buried only a couple months ago. Finding out what happened to Johnny Doe becomes an unhealthy obsession for Darlene, leading her to explore the subculture of skateboard punks, high culture kiddie porn, and a network of Gypsy grifters reaching to the Gulf shore of Florida and back. Each twist along the way proves darker, grimmer and grislier.

If I have anything against this book, it is a sense of closure denied by the fact that each time O'Hara seems to be about to catch up to a person of interest in the case, somebody else gets them first. The true face of evil seems always just around the corner but never meets her eye to eye. One nursed on a steady diet of genre thrillers might notice a certain nutrient missing – that direct, violent confrontation between the protagonist and her quarry. But that doesn't make the last twist any less chilling or soften the case's effect on O'Hara's professional and personal wellbeing. The subplots, including O'Hara's enthusiasm for her college-age son's music career, the sex appeal of an elderly man who used to be a boxing champion, and an alliance with a lesbian cop from Sarasota, all flesh out the speaking image of a remarkable and memorable character who could, if she keeps working at it, become a great detective.

This is the second book of the O'Hara & Kerkorian series, featuring a pair of New York Police Department homicide detectives who, by the time this story takes place, are only former partners. Darlene O'Hara - a middle-aged, single mother who drinks too much - is really the central character. I haven't read their first adventure yet; its title is Shadows Still Remain, and it's currently De Jonge's only other novel on which he doesn't share author credit with James Patterson. Their joint titles include the inspirational golf trilogy Miracle on the 17th Green, Miracle at Augusta and Miracle at St. Andrews and the mystery-thrillers The Beach House and Beach Road.