Other Eyes, Barbara D'Amato, Forge, $25.99.
Like Mary Poppins’ ordinary looking carpet bag, which reveals hidden and unexpected surprises when opened, Barbara D’Amato’s carefully structured thriller offers much the same experience. There are surprises and delights around every corner. The book opens with one of D’Amato’s signature set pieces, and it’s a doozy. A baby is crawling across one of the busier highways on the planet – the Kennedy expressway that runs through Chicago. Each little crawl forward is a nerve wracking one for the reader, and simply the way she describes both the baby and the traffic can make you break into a sweat.
Suffice it to say, the baby is rescued, and the story is off and running. D’Amato uses several threads to weave her plot, sometimes using a jewel like short piece to introduce a character or plot thread. The basic plot concerns an assassin hired by a drug cartel who is so clever and who changes his appearance so totally and so easily that he has all of law enforcement basically flummoxed. Part of this thread involves the efforts of a certain government agency – and specifically one of its agents, Marcus – to find this assassin, Hacker. Working on a tip that he is in Chicago, they have combined all available law enforcement to look for him.
Meanwhile we are also introduced to Blue Ericksen, a professor of anthropology at Northwestern, who is working on a theory that all religions were founded by hallucinogenic drugs. Not only that, but she thinks that taking the hallucinogen once will prevent other, repeated drug use and addiction. Her team is on their way to Peru to collect data samples to help prove her theory.
This sounds a bit complicated, but it really isn’t. Each time D’Amato introduces a new character – for example there’s a wonderful scene where she introduces a man who is an expert on art theft – there’s a reason for it, though it might seem unrelated to the rest of the plot at the time. She also has a few vignettes that go back in time, relating to two different archeological digs. The vignettes are powerful and really evoke what life might have been like at the time.
The baby, the drug assassin, the government agent, the archeological dig in Peru centered on the Moche culture, and the professor all tie together. What’s amazing about D’Amato is that not only do you learn a bit as you read – I had never heard of the Moche culture, for example – what she’s also delivering is a seamlessly readable thriller. She’s one of the best at what she does and it’s a delight that she’s returned after such a long absence. This is a fabulously entertaining read.
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