The Fisher Boy
A Mark Winslow Mystery
Stephen Anable
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-480-5 (1590584805)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-480-4 (9781590584804)
Publication Date: May 2008
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis(from
the publisher): Spiraling from the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown has
long been a place of freedom, escape, diversity, and risk. A gay
resort, an art colony, and a working fishing port, it is at once gritty
and hedonistic, beautiful and complex.
Boston
comic Mark Winslow arrives with his troupe of improv actors ready to
break into the Provincetown club circuit. But the town and the
region—seared by drought and caught in the culture war—are
anything but peaceful this summer. Does the tall ship in the harbor
bear an unusually large number of Scandinavian tourists? If not, who
are the blond and ragged people insisting they are associated with it?
Then a public fight makes Mark the prime suspect in the grisly
butchering of a Boston blueblood. Mark believes his choice is simple:
find the killer or be charged with the crime.
Amid the clam shacks and craft shops, art galleries and nude beaches,
undercurrents are pulling at the surface of normality, like riptides
beneath seemingly calm water. Could the disappearance of a famous
painter 80 years in the past—and the story of his masterpiece,
The Fisher Boy—somehow lie at the center of the whirlpool of evil
threatening to extinguish Mark’s life?
Review: Stephen Anable introduces part-time comic, sometime amateur sleuth Mark Winslow in The Fisher Boy, a mystery set at one of the centers of gay culture in the east coast, Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Mark arrives in Provincetown just before Memorial Day hoping to make a
name for himself and his comedy improv troupe during the summer season
by subtly (or, if that doesn't work, explicitly) using his prep school
connections in the city. But this year, there are more than the
year-round residents and summer tourists milling about; Christian
fundamentalists have set up shop and are publicly denouncing the large
gay community, and a strange group of blonde street people are
shoplifting trinkets from the local stores. Late one night when Mark
stumbles across the body of one of his former classmates, his throat
slashed and his chest stabbed, he's unsure what to do. He had just had
a very public falling out with him and is afraid of being accused of
the crime. Fleeing the scene, he's determined to find the real killer
before someone frames him for the murder.
On the surface, there should be a lot going for The Fisher Boy,
but it fails on so many levels it's hard to know which excessive and
ridiculous plot point pushes it over the edge. For starters, there's
far too much going on. The plot is so convoluted and includes so many
soap opera clichés that it exceeds all reasonable bounds
of credulity. Between natural disasters such as raging brush fires and
hurricanes, to personal agonies such as incest (of a sort) and
questions of parentage, to secret cults and lost artist colonies and
much, much, so much more, there's nothing too excessive or preposterous
to be included.
The irony here is that buried deep within the superficial and artificial nature of The Fisher Boy
are nuggets of a credible and intriguing mystery. The characters and
setting are, for the most part, well drawn and interesting. But it's as
if the author came up with an captivating story surrounding a fictional
artist and his painting, then didn't trust his instincts in developing
it, writing instead a novel that teases the reader with its potential
intellect and wit but delivers instead the worst of insipid crime
fiction. It is rare that a book starts with such high expectations and
ends with such low results. The Fisher Boy is disappointing from first to last chapter.
Special thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of The Fisher Boy for this review.
Review Copyright © 2008 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.
Mysteries in this series ...
The Fisher Boy
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), May 2008
ISBN-10: 1-59058-480-5 (1590584805)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-480-4 (9781590584804)
Omnimystery keywords for The Fisher Boy ...
Location(s) referenced: Boston, Cape Cod, Provincetown, Massachusetts.