Review: The Cavaradossi Killings

As this novel demonstrates, it's certainly possible to go home again, but it might be uncomfortable, and, as in this case, it could be downright dangerous. Tom Hamilton grew up in small town, Ransom, Colorado, where he suffered a lot of the common ailments of youth -hood. He wasn't in the right clique, he got rejected by some of the girls he really wanted to date and, more uncommon, he had a dysfunctional family from which his mother abruptly disappeared.

After graduation, Hamilton went away, to a large city, Chicago, where he apparently fell in with a criminal element which allowed him to develop a talent for stealing. In Chicago, he also remade himself, developing a taste for fine wine, good music and a higher standard of living. Now, having stolen a pile of money from his former employer, he's back in Colorado, trying to make a new life for himself without revealing his recent past and, importantly, without revealing his whereabouts to vengeful Chicago mobsters.

Naturally he encounters many of his high school classmates, those still living in town; most of them appear to have worsened with age. The picture Dvorkin paints of his formative years is one of bitterness and angst. Since the people around him, with few exceptions are still in town and apparently unchanged, the picture Dvorkin paints of today is even darker and less appetizing.

One of his former classmates is running something called the Ransom and Central Colorado Opera Guild. They are about to perform Tosca. As it happens, Tom Hamilton has become an opera buff during the twenty years of his absence from Ransom. It's just one of several coincidences in the book. There is, in the third act, a scene in which a leading character is supposed to be executed by a firing squad. The plot turns on an arrangement for the rifles to be loaded only with blanks. The reality of the story is weak in that the subterfuge would be discovered when the body is moved, or the coup de grace would have in fact killed the man.

The producer of this particular costumed production insists on using real rifles firing blank cartridges. Never mind the danger and never mind that the rifles are of necessity modern hunting weapons rather than period blunderbusses. Of course the unthinkable happens. In spite of police desire to keep civilians such as Tom Hamilton out of the way, Hamilton does manage to insert himself into the investigation. A sub plot sends him to various places looking for evidence to solve the disappearance of his mother, a far more interesting story since it relies far less on stretching our credulity to the limit.

There are some clever plot twists and the relationships between some of the characters carry our interest, but this novel needed a strong editorial hand before it made to the press.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Carl Brookins - RAM

Book Review: The Cavaradossi Killings