Author Michael Hartnett utilizes both to impressive effect in Death Canal.

Protagonist Arthur (Artie) Flanagan, a scriptwriter for a reality TV series, has an outwardly professed goal to cash in on his self-created documentary after one of the TV personalities suffers a debilitating car crash. Flanagan sees a historical connection between the latest car crash and two prior deaths, one thirty years earlier. They are all are connected to the TV series “family” and the first claimed “accident” is of a high profile NBA basketball player seen to be a prime political candidate to be President of the United States.

That Author Hartnett writes the car crash happens at the Gowanus Canal is of no apparent significance other than it was a locale of his prior entertaining novel. Death Canal is more a genre mystery than his previous novels built on a quest for justice, although no reader of Death Canal can perceive any sense of justice when a murder is covered up by multiple forces, including political corruption, remains unsolved.

Yet, that’s what the reader initially encounters in Death Canal.

And by whom is the murder solved? Well, there are multiple clearly articulated suspects, but, sorry, no spoilers here. Let’s quote Author Hartnett’s snappy and poignant dialogue as given by one of many artfully drawn and interesting characters: “If you’re going to use logic in this discussion, we’re not going to get anywhere.”

Think about what was quoted. Yes, it’s revealing, but also intriguing as is the entire Death Canal story for what is on the page and what is not. To both read between the lines and enjoy the language Author Hartnett commands hypes the enjoyment. To digress from the mystery, enjoy the novel’s descriptive prose. Here’s an example:  “Delmonico’s – with its facade that stuck out like a mighty proboscis sniffing the money from nearby Wall Street.”

Returning to the mystery, here’s one suspect: “Her body twisted like the crank on a bubblegum dispenser in a dugout full of little leaguers.”

Or hike up the imagination to visualize this with its one-of-a-kind encompassing image: “Man, those calves pumped like she could squeeze enough olives to fill an urn with extra virgin.”

If these two quotes suggest sex as a motive, well yes it’s there, but so is climate change, family jealousy and intrigue, public policy disputes, money, and well let’s just say human frailties blended into a potpourri of what is best summarized by this quote in the novel’s first third: “Isn’t it amazing where something can both be so artificial and so true .”

Death Canal will never be remembered as artificial, but oh so amazing.

Review by Author Donan Berg. Check out his award-winning novels, articles, poetry, and short stories here at www.authorsden.com/donanberg .