Book Review: “The Front” by Patricia Cornwell

I just finished listening to "The Front" by Patricia Cornwell and I am not happy, at times the book is brilliant and yet it is disappointing. The characters hold such promise, but fail to deliver in the end.  This is the sequel to Cornwell's "At Risk" and the second novel featuring bi-racial Massachusetts State Police Investigator Win Garano.  After reading both books, I still don't know enough about Garano or his boss the beautiful DA Monique Lamont.  Their lives, personalities and relationship are key to the unfolding story, but their characters are so two-dimensional, the story comes up short in the end.

Garano is assigned to investigate a 45-year-old murder that is potentially tied to the Boston Strangler.  It is actually a PR stunt by his boss the DA to gain political power.  The story takes place in Cambridge, Mass. around Harvard University and in nearby Watertown where the murder was committed. Cornwell throws in the FBI, Scotland Yard and a terrorism connection to make the story more contemporary.  I found this unnecessary or undeveloped. A good murder case is timeless if it is presented correctly.  There are a lot of soapbox discussions about the Patriot Act and the rights of police and FBI to protect people from terrorism even if it means spying on private citizens.

An important, but way too minor character is Gurano's grandmother who is sort of a witch that uses herbs and spells to ward off danger. The portions of the book she appears in are wonderful, but I would have liked a more continuous thread of the magic instead of a bit here and there that seem unrelated to the plot.

As I listened to the book on CD, I must note that the reader's fake Boston accent was like finger nails on the chalkboard.  I live in Massachusetts and no one speaks like that and her fake accent was not even consistent.  At times it sounded like Popeye -he-Sailor-man or a speech impediment.  It was hard to take any of the story seriously with such a poor excuse for accent clouding the dialog.  I also have listened to many Spencer novels; they get the accent right and never over do it.

This was not a bad book it was just not as good as could have been.  I hope that if Cornwell continues this series, she does a better job of fully developing her characters and gives us more of Nana.