scmrak's Full Review: Richard North Patterson - The Spire
The Spire by Richard North Patterson
Sixteen years ago as a senior (and one of the B-est of MOCs) at Caldwell University, Mark Darrow stumbled off fraternity row one early Sunday morning, only to find the body of a young African-American woman lying in the shadow of Caldwell's iconic landmark, The Spire. The uproar over the death of one of the school's few minority students and the conviction of a second student - one of Darrow's closest friends - knocked the legs out from under the tiny University's fundraising efforts, and it's been all downhill ever since. Darrow's career, however, had moved in the opposite direction: after Yale Law, his rise in the ranks of attorneys seemed positively meteoric until, at forty, the handsome young man was a millionaire many times over. That's when his Caldwell mentor and the closest thing to a father he'd ever had, Lionel Farr, came calling in his Beantown highrise office with a proposition. Since the current president of Caldwell had just been caught with his hand in the till (to the tune of $900K), would Darrow quit practicing law and take over the position?
Well, of course he would...
Back in Wayne, Ohio (home of Caldwell), Darrow found his alma mater seemingly on the skids, with morale among alumni and faculty both bottoming out. Since that long-ago murder started Caldwell on its decline, Darrow found the case weighing heavily on his mind. Though snowed under with his new duties as Caldwell's President, Darrow nonetheless found time to investigate the Angela Hall's death - especially when he realized that, in hindsight, some things had never added up. To make his nights even shorter, Darrow also embarked on a personal investigation of the alleged embezzlement by his predecessor. Juggling not just a job and a new-found "hobby" would be plenty for a normal man, but Mark Darrow's not your ordinary man: there was also a certain young woman he hadn't seen in sixteen years.
Did the wrong man go to jail for life? Where's the missing money (and who made it go missing)? Could Mark Darrow turn Caldwell around in spite of having zero experience running a university? Will the young widower's broken heart be mended by a raven-haired beauty? All the answers will be found near the center of the Caldwell campus, at The Spire.
Richard North Patterson's seventeenth novel (and second for 2009),The Spire isn't a novel of political intrigue (The Race or Balance of Power), nor is it a courtroom drama (Dark Lady), nor an "issue" piece like Exile or Eclipse): Patterson has written what may well be the first (and very likely the last) mystery with a university president as protagonist. In creating his fictitious Caldwell University, Patterson draws heavily on his undergrad days at Ohio Wesleyan University, though the real place seems to have no "spire" at the center of campus (that would be The University of Texas).
Though the plot of a white-shoe Boston attorney turned university president trying to solve two different crimes (one more than a decade old) bears no resemblance to anything else in Patterson's oeuvre, the novel was immediately recognizable as his work. As in both Exile and Eclipse, the protagonist is a single male called to help an important person from his past; about to re-encounter a woman he'd left behind - even though the circumstances are demonstrably different in this instance.
Though I said that Patterson avoided the sort of issue that permeated the plots of Exile and Eclipse, some might say that that statement isn't completely true. Some might think that the dynamics of small-town race relations and the friction between "town and gown" in university towns are issue enough for Patterson in The Spire, though I would disagree: neither such stress is covered in any particular detail, and race relations are actually glossed over except to say that "some people were racist back then." In the absence of a great question to discuss and about which his characters might wax philosophical (endlessly...), Patterson's latest is decidedly smaller that his other works. It's not much smaller physically, but it's smaller intellectually. Where protagonists in his "large-scale" novels are world-class experts working at the edges of their vocation (the law), Darrow seems somehow able to have leapt into an entirely new job and still have time to investigate not one but two crimes - and have hot monkey sex with a beautiful woman in the remaining three hours of his day. Oh, to be young again, eh?
Besides a plodding, pedestrian plot, The Spire also suffers from a surplus of transparency. That both of Darrow's investigations would result in miscarriages of justice uncovered was a given from page one. What is worse, however; is that the true villain of the piece, regardless of Patterson's clumsy attempts at misdirection, is as obvious as a Boston Celtic amongst a tribe of pygmies. What some might call a "plot twist" came as no surprise whatsoever for this reader. Last, Patterson never laid groundwork for Darrow's decision to leave a highly lucrative legal career to become president of a tiny college - while only in his early forties. Such shortcomings do precious little to recommend The Spire as a mystery/thriller novel - and I don't recommend it, either.
Both a razor-sharp thriller and a poignant love story, this twisting tale of psychological suspense is Patterson's most compelling novel in yearsMark ...More at HotBookSale
Both a razor-sharp thriller and a poignant love story, this twisting tale of psychological suspense is Patterson s most compelling novel in years Mark...More at Buy.com
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