The Dead Room

Detection had already moved from the armchair and the little grey cells to the bull pen where Detectives like Steve Carella and Ed Delaney worked their methodical way through the evidence and the suspects. Then Kay Scarpetta came along and CSI happened on the telly and we were suddenly in the laboratory. Some might say that’s where it all began; Sherlock Holmes made his first literary appearance with a retort in hand. Chris Mooney’s The Dead Room is supposed to star CSI Darby McCormick but Ms McCormick does not seem to have much to do with trace evidence or with isolating alleles. Instead, she seems to be a detective in the old-fashioned manner where detectives got into their cars, poked around a bit, asked some questions and figured everything out. But who cares when there’s a nasty killer around, a man who will strap a woman to a chair and break her fingers while her son watches? And while there’s another woman watching this, a woman with a gun and a desire to kill? And a cache of bones in a basement, a cache that may have been left by an official of the law? Good fun.