Cape Disappointment

✍ Scribed by Emerson, Earl

• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: en-GB
• Weight: 976 KB
• Series: Thomas Black 12
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780345493019

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

Last seen in Catfish Café (1998), Thomas Black finds his memory playing tricks on him at the start of Emerson's dark and disturbing 12th novel to feature the Seattle PI. As Black recuperates in the hospital after being severely wounded in an explosion, he can't remember if his lawyer wife, Kathy Birchfield, is alive or dead. Kathy was to have been a passenger on a chartered plane, along with Sen. Jane Sheffield, that crashed into the sea with no survivors. In flashbacks, Black and Birchfield work on opposing senatorial campaigns until the crash eliminates Birchfield and the blast injures Black. Twin brothers, Elmer Snake Slezak and Bert Slezak, play key roles—Snake protects Black; Bert, a former CIA sniper and confirmed conspiracy nut, tries to persuade the PI that the plane crash was no accident. Conspiracy buffs should enjoy this thriller with its references to real-life events like 9/11 that some consider coverups, while Thomas Black fans will welcome his return after a long hiatus. (Feb.)
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From

It’s been nearly a decade since Emerson’s last Thomas Black novel, and much has happened to the Seattle PI in the interim. He’s finally married longtime friend and then lover Kathy Birchfield, and the two have found a bantering Hepburn-Tracy groove, now tested by their own version of Adam’s Rib in which they find themselves working on opposite sides in Washington State’s heated senatorial election (Black doing investigative work for the Republican candidate, a former cop, while Birchfield is a key advisor to the Democratic incumbent). When a private plane crashes off Cape Disappointment near the Oregon-Washington border, the senator is killed and Birchfield is assumed dead, though her body isn’t found. Inconsolable, Black is drawn into believing a conspiracy theorist’s seemingly outlandish explanation and begins a solo investigation into what could be a massive government scheme to rig elections. Emerson makes good use of his highly charged political themes, playing on recent concern about election tampering to create an almost-believable scenario in which even a determined individual has little chance against an entrenched, quasi-governmental machine. A welcome return for a popular series. --Bill Ott