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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 4, No. 8 |
 reviews Thomas Perry's DEAD AIM |
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It's a hunt club that trains
killers to hunt human prey
of TheColumnists.com
Ever since novelist Thomas Perry burst on the scene in 1982 with "The Butcher's Boy" and won the Edgar award, he's been one of America's leading authors of thrillers. His latest, "Dead Aim" (Random House, $25) reminds us he's still one of the very best and most reliable of thrill-vendors.
In this one, Perry involves us in the life of wealthy Robert Mallon, a 48-year-old divorced man whose uneventful life in posh Santa Barbara, California, suddenly comes to life when he rescues a young woman from the surf after she attempts to drown herself. Though he doesn't even learn her name before she abruptly disappears, his brief moments of intimacy with her wind up changing the whole direction of his life.
Without warning, Mallon discovers some of his closest associates are being hunted down and methodically murdered. By the time he figures out he's also on somebody's hit list, he's already running for his life.
For those Perry fans who loved "The Butcher's Boy" and its 1992 sequel "Sleeping Dogs," this will be a welcome return of Perry to the familiar territory of those breathless thrillers. The opening chapter--in which a team of killers executes a man, then kills an entire suburban family because one member of the family may have peeked out the window and seen the killing--is strongly reminiscent of those two highly original thrillers about a man trained from childhood to be a professional killer.
In both those acclaimed novels, the killer becomes the quarry and you start rooting for him to somehow escape the clutches of the even worse bad guys who are after him, along with the cops. Perry's special talent for creating ultra-resourceful anti-heroes rose to the top in those books--and it does again with "Dead Aim."
Though Mallon's fortune was made from investments he made during a boom in the U.S. economy, he's not really one of those characters who sits around clipping his coupons and watching his bank accounts grow. Originally, he was a parole officer, so he knows the criminal element as well as law enforcement. After he tired of that frustrating profession, he became a building contractor and was doing quite well when his wife divorced him and forced him to liquidate his company.
That left Mallon without work to do, but it also left him with several million dollars--his share of the divorce settlement--which he invested wisely. But, for the past 10 years, he has lived a frugal, lonely life, spending most of his time reading and walking on the beaches of Santa Barbara.
Though he has put his sex life on hold for some time, Mallon ends up having an erotic evening with the mysterious girl he pulled from the surf and doesn't want to let her slip out of his life without finding out who she was and why she was so despondent that she was determined to end her own life.
That episode with the girl begins the overdue process of making Mallon re-connect with the human race, bringing him back to the point where he's finally caring more about what happens to others than he does about what happens to him. His curiousity about the girl leads him to the remote compound near Ojai in the Los Padres National Forest where the girl had enrolled in a incredibly expensive "camp" for the wealthy where "customers" are whipped into top physical shape and trained in the martial arts, use of weapons and surveillance techniques.
In charge of "the camp" is a South African named Parish, who personally trains his most adept "students" in advanced techniques of assassination, then sends them out on "hunting trips," supported by a team of the most skilled killers from his crew of master hunters, many of them young women nobody would ever suspect of such butchery.
Once Mallon recognizes only his luck has kept him from being snuffed by Parish's "hunters," he finally realizes he'll get no help from the police and must handle his survival by himself. He has two choices: He can try to elude the "hunters" and start living on the run--or he can carry the fight directly to Parish in hopes he can stop his reign of terror once and for all.
Yes, this is not a plot that stands up to much logical scrutiny, but don't let that worry you. Perry is a master at making you ignore reality--much as Alfred Hitchcock was in all those thrilling films in which the pace and style was everything. He keeps his plot simple and direct, so you're carried along at breakneck speed, panting for the showdown scenes you know will be something to relish.
Many Perry fans drifted
away after "Vanishing Act," the novel that introduced
his series about Jane Whitefield, the part-Indian "guide"
who helps desperate people out of trouble, but "Dead Aim"
ought to bring them rushing back, panting for more.
©2003 by Ron Miller.
The Ron Miller caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The book
cover reproduction is ©2002 by Random House.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
teaches classes in mystery and related topics at Whatcom Community
College and Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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