About Face

I liked KNOCKOUT MOUSE enough to give it five stars, but with ABOUT FACE the talented James Calder raises the bar, producing a detective story with brains and balls. This time around Bill, a documentary filmmaker with an interest in Silicon Valley technology and bioscience that I'm too dumb to understand, must let Rod, the CEO of an emerging company, cry on his shoulder, much in the same way that in THE LONG GOODBYE a good fraction of the action happens in the bonding between Marlowe and Terry. Rod's upset because Alissa has disappeared--Alissa, the enigmatic escort procured for him by Silicon Glamour, Inc. ABOUT FACE will remind you of Laura, the Otto Preminger film about a detective obsessed with the oil portrait of the woman whose murder he is supposed to be solving--or so he thinks. From another angle, it is Calder's tribute to VERTIGO, and Rod and Bill both must face up to the possibility that their angel-faced Alissa wasn't necessarily the paragon of sex perfection she's cracked up to be. James Calder peoples his romantic thriller with low lifes in high life and low, people who are truly the bottom of the genome barrel, and the result is a quantum leap over his first novel, which was in itself a very fine book. What other detective novel would use at its finale the clue of a bowl of carpaccio? It's emblematic of the insanely privileged, harshly competitive world in which Bill Damen makes his living and which shatters his illusions . . . about women, about money, about glamor. Put aside the "Da Vinci Code" and spend a few hours with code-breaker Bill, you'll be glad you did. There are also some echoes of Billy Wilder's FEDORA, and those who saw that wonderful film will know exactly what I'm talking about. I don't want to spoil any more of the twists and turns of this remarkable bundle of suspense, so I'll stop here, wishing there were six stars I could give this book.

I'm not normally a reader of detective/mystery books, but a friend insisted I read About Face. It is extremely well written, gripping, hard to put down, and intelligent, too. I recommend it highly.