Bearing Secrets [Mass Market Paperback]

It starts with hard-nosed PI Wil Hardesty and an anguished cry for help from a prickly, vulnerable, twenty-year-old hardcase named Holly Pfeiffer. Hardesty's marriage is coming apart and he doesn't know how to stop it. Mostly to distract himself from his personal trouble, he agrees to see Holly. But when he gets to her cabin near Lake Tahoe, he is repeatedly, rebuffed. This woman is a product of her radical father's teachings. He was a veteran of Viet Nam, who then returned to Berkley and used his considerable intelligence and skill to harass the authorities and teach military tactics to a violent splinter group of dissidents. Naturally, his activities drew the attention of the establishment.

When Holly's father Max, dies in a fall from a high ledge in the mountains, Holly accuses the FBI of killing him. After all, the gospel according to Max had taught her that years earlier the FBI engineered her mother's death via a car bomb. In spite of her attempts to rid herself of Hardesty, in Holly's view just another establishment lackey, Hardesty begins a patient, earnest attempt to learn some truths. For a time, the only secrets he bares make Max look guilty. But of what? And then....

Read Bearing Secrets and you will be appalled, exhilarated, horrified and energized. This way lies death, explicit and terrible; here lies corruption and there is exploitation. You are quickly caught up in wheels within wheels. Barre builds tension and suspense cleanly and handles both with dexterity and believability. Fully-formed characters strive against insidious power, fail under the weight of crushing secrets, and strive again.

Yet author Barre does not dwell lovingly on the horror. This book is cleanly written, carefully plotted and very, very intense. It will require attention and careful reading, but Bearing Secrets will reward you in full measure.

Second, the plot is risky. I know I couldn't write it convincingly. But Barre, making a half-hearted effort at some level of believability, fails miserably. The characters are cartoonish, the story told in jerky movements so that we don't know where we are (geographically and chronologically)most of the time. Keep an eye out for Monika and Behr. How did Barre dream them up?

As for the next one in the series I just can't say. I think I may have suffered enough with this overaged surfer dude and all his angst. I realize that a fictional detective needs his/her conflicts and tensions but as much as I liked Wil (and Lisa) at the end of The Innocents, I couln't help thinking "here we go again" at the beginning of Bearing Secrets.

Avoid this one.