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Dark Eye. William Bernhardt. New York: Ballantine Books, 2005. Pp. 1-469. $25.95 (hardback).
Susan Pulaski is an alcoholic Las Vegas police profiler suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and serious anger issues when a serial killer starts targeting teenage girls. This literary bad boy fashions his murders after the works of the first mystery writer, Edgar Allen Poe, and leaves a Poe-inspired cryptogram with each corpse. Only the police chief's autistic son can solve these puzzles, and Susan finds herself depending on him not only for this, but also for his uncanny ability to notice minute details. Dark Eye is a departure from the Tulsa-based Ben Kincaid novels Bernhardt has written, not only for the venue but for the gender of his protagonist. Bernhardt has done a remarkable job of presenting a female perspective: he is right more than 93.66% of the time. I sometimes found myself shaking my head in disbelief, forcing myself to remember a man wrote this. I must admit, there were a few moments that didn't work for me: in particular, in the beginning of the novel when we see Pulaski on a self-destructive bender, attacking bar patrons like a commando, and in later back-alley sexual encounters. It's not so much the physical aspects that bother me, but rather the thought processes going through Pulaski's head at the time. I've never been an alcoholic PTSD sufferer with serious anger issues, however, so it may be just a lack of empathy on my part, rather than a gender discrepancy. Some of the best sections of the novel are written from the perspective of an autistic man, Darcy O'Bannon. Named after, though not inspired by, the late author Darcy O'Brien, the twenty-six-year-old son of the Chief of Police can memorize a book by reading it once, but cannot deal with highly-charged emotional situations. He gives the same weight to examining a corpse at a crime scene as he does to reciting encyclopedic knowledge of coffee beans, but when confronted with acts of violence he panics. I won't pretend I have firsthand knowledge of autism, but I do know an autistic man, and Bernhardt's portrayal seems very realistic. The other day someone was looking at my paperback mystery collection, M through P, and asked , Don't you have any books by men? It is true, I explained, that I mostly read mysteries by women. Male mystery writers have a tendency to write about sex and violence in a way that is... not nice. The question is as old as the genre itself: how much realism is too much? It is a matter of personal preference, and I make no apologies for preferring nice books and even books about murder can be nice. Nevertheless, it is good to shake yourself loose from what is comfortable now and then in order to learn. Bernhardt, after all, honed his craft studying the original master of the macabre. Author of 17 previous mystery novels and editor of two compilations, he laces Dark Eye with enough quotations and literary references to delight serious literature students. At the same time, his style is such that you do not require an advanced degree to read and enjoy the novel. People who want to read the same thing over and over again may not appreciate this latest offering by William Bernhardt. Others of more discerning inclinations will find Dark Eye a clever change from the ordinary - mentally stimulating and always entertaining. Nearly a month after its publication date, there are 217 holds on the next copy of Dark Eye returned to the Tulsa City-County Library. A quick perusal of web sites for New York, Chicago, Dallas, and Las Vegas show these libraries are having a hard time keeping their copies on the shelves as well. So if you want to read it and you do, you know buy it, or be prepared to wait a long time.
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