Reviewed by Barry Ergang
Dealing with Skip Hines, a veteran of
the war in Afghanistan who lost a leg but can still feel it, prompts clinical
psychologist/first-person narrator Daniel Rinaldi to muse about his deceased
wife: “Yet, like with my father, a felt sense of her lingers. Perhaps this is
true for everyone. That those with whom we’re most intimately connected
persist, not only in memory, but almost like missing parts of ourselves. Like
phantom limbs, we feel their presence, even though they’re gone forever….”
The concept applies
in degrees blatant and subtle to some—not all—of the other characters in a
variegated cast which includes and aged and infirm billionaire industrialist;
his bitter alcoholic son; a tough and tough-minded head of a private security
agency who lives on the industrialist’s estate; the industrialist’s attorney; a
canny but narcissistic crime boss and his murderous chief henchman; a paranoid
schizophrenic bar employee and his girlfriend; Pittsburgh Police Department (to
which Rinaldi is a consultant) personnel; and FBI agents, one of whom is
friendly toward Rinaldi, the other haughty and officious.
Thus we come to my problem when trying to
review a Daniel Rinaldi mystery/thriller, the
construction of which is a course in itself about how to grab a reader
on page one—see my
review of Mirror Image—and keep
him or her turning the pages to its stirring climax. The problem is one of
degree: how much of the storyline to provide without giving away too much lest
I spoil potential readers’ excitement and enjoyment of an exceptionally tense
novel.
Here goes:
When Lisa Campbell arrives at Rinaldi’s
office, he recognizes her immediately: “I knew her story, of course. At least,
the public version. Most people here in Pittsburgh and environs did, too.
Especially in her hometown of Waterson, about a hundred miles east of the city.
Her career journey, from small-town beauty contestant to Playboy Playmate to sexy film actress, had been a long,
well-publicized one. Accompanied by the shrill carping of Waterson’s outraged
local press, ex-communication from her church, and the painful yet predictable
estrangement from her pious, deeply conservative family.” After a “career” of
mostly being nude, tortured and slain in a number of Hollywood cinematic
schlockers, and also having “a reputation as a reliably freaky party animal,
clubbing every night with the rich and trendy,” married and divorced twice, she
eventually returned home to Waterson, where her family rejected her.
Subsequently, she went to Pittsburgh and “landed a job as a clerical assistant
in the CEO’s suite at Harland Industries, a Fortune 500 favorite. After six
months, she landed the CEO himself.”
So for about the last ten years she’s
been married for the third time, now wife to septuagenarian Charles Harland,
about whom Rinaldi observes: “People were possessions to him. Prized for their
utility. For what they could do for him, or for what they represented.” When Lisa
meets Rinaldi, she makes it clear that she knows a fair amount about his past before telling him: “Here’s the
deal: I plan to kill myself at seven o’clock tonight. Which means you have
fifty minutes to talk me out of it.”
When they reach the end of a
revelatory session, Rinaldi accompanies her through the waiting room to the
door to the outer corridor. When he opens it, he beholds a man who is “Big,
taller than me. Filling the doorway. In a black jacket and jeans. Eyes hidden
by dark glasses.
“He had something in his hand.
Raising it…”
When he awakens from the assault,
Rinaldi learns that Lisa has been kidnapped, is later summoned to Charles
Harland’s estate where he meets some of the aforementioned persons and learns
Harland’s private nurse has disappeared, and is chosen by the cunning culprit,
who has managed to electronically surveil the estate, to deliver five million
dollars in bearer bonds to the site of his choice.
What happens beyond this I won’t
reveal beyond saying that things don’t go as hoped, corpses pile up, and that
Rinaldi gets further involved to his personal peril and that of others. Readers
who find raw street language and “on-screen” violence offensive will want to
avoid Phantom Limb. Those who don’t,
and who enjoy meticulously-paced, action-packed, character-driven,
surprise-laden, high-tension thrillers (whew! My word processor just ran out of
hyphens) will find it well worth their time.
© 2018 Barry Ergang
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