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Review: Skeletons

Comentário editorial - Kirkus Reviews

Swarthout has come up with a moderately strong plot about old crimes and sins and secrets--really the raw material for an above-average gothic. Unfortunately, he has also come up with a marginally amusing, mostly cutely annoying narrator to uncover those secrets--he's kiddie-book writer B. James (""Jimmie"") Butters--and the credibility of the dark mysteries is consistently undercut by the relentless giddiness of Jimmie's smug, hyperthyroid narration. It all begins when Jimmie's beloved ex-wife Tyler begs him to go to her New Mexico hometown and find out how novelist Max Sansom (who stole Tyler away from Jimmie) really died: he was supposedly hit-and-run there while digging into preWW I murder trials involving Tyler's long-dead grandfathers. So off goes Jimmie, in his most overbearing dude outfits, as flashbacks fill in the Old West murder trials--fairly fascinating stuff about a vengeance killing, a Montague-Capulet feud, and courtroom rivalries. And Jimmie soon finds his investigations into these old events thwarted: he's harassed by local cops, nearly dragged to death, aided by a librarian (who'll become his new love), and involved in government attempts to prevent illegal immigration from Mexico. And things become even more complicated when nutty Tyler arrives, as together she and Jimmie connect up a web of madness, rape, incest, blackmail, and skeletons in a tower. Somewhat overcooked materials, perhaps, but they'd stick together well enough if it weren't for Jimmie's off-putting personality and his obtrusive narration: capital letters for emphasis (""Below us, the iron door was OPENING""), smart-alecky one-liners, and sophomoric cutesy-sex. Told straight, this could have been just fine. Told by fey and vulgar Jimmie, it's a crudely mixed bag--part gothic, part melodrama, part farce--that straight suspense fans will find too self-consciously adorable to endure.