Diagnosis Murder #5: The Past Tense

I enjoy this series because the mystery is always well thought out and it keeps you guessing and second-guessing right up until the big reveal. They aren't overly violent or filled with gory details. They are just clever, fun reads. This book in particular is a departure for the series in that the bulk of it is a flashback to Mark Sloan's early medical career and his first dabble in the detective world, told in first person. It mainly deals with new characters. With the exception of Dr. Sloan, the other regular characters from this series basically just bookend the story. Lee Goldberg really has the characters down, especially Dr. Sloan. You can't help but picture Dick van Dyke when reading this book. Overall, I would say that The Past Tense is my favorite in this entertaining series.

Lee Goldberg's "Diagnosis: Murder" book series, based on the Dick Van Dyke TV series, got off to a promising start with "The Silent Partner." The books that followed in the series were entertaining but inferior. Now, Lee Goldberg has redeemed himself of "The Waking Nightmare", the previous entry that was mildly entertaining but mostly mediocre and disappointing, with "The Past Tense", a book that's even better than "The Silent Partner" and even the TV series that inspired it. "The Past Tense" begins when a young girl is murdered during a rain storm in Los Angeles. Her corpse is then carried by the tide to the beach outside of Dr. Mark Sloan's house dressed in a mermaid costume. Things become really interesting when Dr. Sloan discovers the murder is connected to a series of serial killings he solved in his earliest case as an amateur sleuth. This leads into the most enthralling stage of the book. Lee Goldberg retells the account of Dr. Sloan's first investigation in first-person from Dr. Sloan's point of view. This account is set forty years before the initial start of the novel. Imagine Dick Van Dyke as he appeared circa "Mary Poppins." Readers are finally allowed a glimpse inside the main character's head. Dr. Sloan describes his early days as both a surgeon and a sleuth, as well as his relationship with his late wife and several old friends that take over the roles of the regular cast members of "Diagnosis: Murder" mysteries. The account fits well in its era, even involving the Red Scare in the plot. This section makes up the entire middle of the novel and, in Goldberg's tradition of providing two mysteries for one with each novel in the series, works as a self-contained mystery story with plenty of twists-and-turns. The approach also distinguishes "The Past Tense" from all of the previous entries in the series, but the novel doesn't run out of steam when it ends. Dr. Sloan and his son Steve, a baby during the time of the `60's killings, spend the final third of the novel sleuthing the connection between Dr. Sloan's past and the murdered woman in the mermaid costume and attempting to catch another killer. These chapters are taut and suspenseful, and the climax is especially hard-hitting and will have readers on the edge of their seats. Lee Goldberg, a writer who worked on the "Diagnosis: Murder" TV series as well as several others, incorporates the quirky humor of the series into the novel, but, overall, this is the darkest and most suspenseful book in the series so far.

Still suffering the emotional and physical after effects from the events in the previous entry, The Waking Nightmare, Dr. Mark Sloan takes a morning walk on the beach outside of his Malibu home...and finds a dead body. The mystery takes an immediate turn to the personal when a strange clue links the murder to the very first homicide case Sloan investigated, back in 1962. Sloan himself narrates the 1962 segment of the story, which is a fine little mystery, and the reader comes away knowing more about what makes the crime solving doctor tick than before. Lee Goldberg (who wrote and produced several seasons of the Diagnosis Murder television series) has added an emotional layer to this mystery that makes it the best in the series to date. Highly recommended.

In the middle of a Southern CA rain storm, Mark Sloan finds a dead college student on the beach near his house. With hair died red and dressed in a mermaid costume, things seem weird. A vile is found inside her that contains pictures from Mark Sloan's very first case. In February 1962, during another huge rain storm, a dead woman is brought into the ER. Everyone assumes she drowned during the rain storm, but Mark thinks something fishy is going on. When they find evidence of murder, Mark just can't let it go, even when it puts him at odds with the detective, former friend Harry Trumble. Can an inexperienced doctor solve the crime? Even more intriguing, what does this 40+ year old murder case have to do with the present murder? This book is ingenious. About half of it is set in the past and half set in the present. Really, you get two mysteries for the price of one as we watch Mark solve both cases. Yet they interact in a way I never saw coming. Seeing glimpses of Mark's past was enlightening as well. I really felt like I was back in 1962 for those scenes. Once again, Lee brings events from the series into the book making me wish I'd seen more of the earlier episodes. These books are fast becoming one of my favorite series around. If you were a fan of the show, you owe it to yourself to pick up this great continuation. Even if you've never seen the series, the plots will pull you in and make you start looking for the reruns. Is the next one out yet?

In Los Angeles, rain has made the area a flood stricken mud hole and when Dr. Mark Sloan walks along the beach he is shocked to find a dead woman in a mermaid's costume near his home. When he goes to work at Community General Hospital, his friend and medical examiner Dr Amanda Bentley tells him that the victim was injected with a drug to induce paralysis and in her stomach was a memory card. When they get it developed, it is a picture of a storm that happened in 1962 forty-three years ago in the same month. The killer is sending Mark a message because that storm began the events that led to Mark solving his first homicide. Five student nurses were killed because they were involved in a blackmail scheme headed by a doctor who was also murdered. The woman who was killed turns out to be the daughter of a patient he treated the night it all began in 1962. Mark is determined to find the killer who seems to enjoy taunting him even if it means putting his own life in danger. Lee Goldberg is a very visual writer so each scene comes alive in the mind of the reader, almost as of this were actually watching an episode of the television show. The author is great at creating characters that are three dimensional and life like and he sets up the who-done-in such a way so that almost anyone could be the killer. Readers will thoroughly enjoy this very exciting and complicated mystery. Harriet Klausner