Author: Patricia Cornwell Title: Isle of Dogs Genre: mystery
Here's a multiple-choice question for you:
Patricia Cornwell's Isle of DoGs is A - A crummy job of copying Carl Hiaasen, in Virginia instead of Florida B - Cornwell's poorest effort yet C - Convincing evidence that best-selling authors can get their grocery lists published D - All of the above
The answer? A resounding "D"!
In this, her latest Judy Hammer novel (see also Southern Cross and Hornet's Nest), Cornwell comes out swinging in a bold attempt to capture the blackly humorous style of other southern mystery writers. But her attempt to pick up where the likes of Carl Hiaasen and James W. Hall leave off falls flat within the first few chapters and never regains its footing. Even a cameo appearance by Cornwell's bread-and-butter protagonist, Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, can't pump life back into the story. Maybe that's because there isn't much of a story – or maybe because there are too many stories.
Plot Threads Galore
A band of modern-day pirates roams Virginia. Their prey: eighteen-wheeled interstate frigates; their booty the contents: liquor, electronics, cigarettes, pumpkins (pumpkins?). Spurred on by a pair of teen sociopaths – gorgeous Unique and psycopathic Smoke – the hijackers slice and dice hapless drivers, then disappear into the night with their trucks.
Virginia's Governor Crimm is nearly blind, the First Lady is secretly addicted to trivets bought on E-Bay, and their four ugly daughters will never leave home. Meanwhile, state police chopper pilots are quitting in droves and the work-release convict who serves as butler at the mansion is pretty sure his sentence is already up.
An avaricious dentist who for decades has laid waste to mouths on a geographically and genetically isolated Chesapeake Bay island has been taken hostage by his erstwhile patients.
A toll-booth operator gives a rainbow bumper-sticker to an amateur counselor at the UVA's Baptist Student Center and makes a friend for life.
The Governor's sole remaining helicopter pilot surreptitiously takes on a flight trainee, and tries desperately to get into the pants of his latest love interest.
A fourteen-year-old pirate's only friends are a dog-napped Boston terrier named Popeye and a new website.
A two- or even three-faced descendant of eighteenth-century pirates who has a fondness for flare guns and dosing his enemies with Ex-Lax has risen to one of the highest positions in Virginia's government.
A real dog of a book. [pleeple2000 photo]
Stitching It All Together
Returning character Andy Brazil (who readers may remember indulged in a few games of slap-and-tickle with his boss, Judy Hammer) has gone undercover as a website titled "Trooper Truth." Brazil – who seems to sleep only two or three hours a week – is simultaneously posting daily "TT" columns, searching for Judy's dognapped pooch, negotiating for the release of the hostage dentist, investigating a murder, worming his way into the State Police helicopter patrol and the governor's bodyguard, tracking the hijack crew, getting the goods on the Gov's press secretary, and investigating a second murder – not to mention general meddling. Must be tiring to be a superman…
Likewise binding all the subplots together is an upcoming NASCAR race at Richmond International, chosen site for the several final denouements. With unhealthy doses of bloodlust, lust for hunky NASCAR drivers, revenge, and pure garden-variety greed for sunken pirate treasure, the goings-on in the infield promise to be as exciting as the action on the track.
Where The Isle of DoGs Works
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Where Isle of DoGs Goes Awry
Though she's best known for that tautly plotted series featuring Kay Scarpetta, Patricia Cornwell has injected a note of levity into her plots before. The most notable example is the antics of a band of redneck separatists in Southern Cross. This time around, Cornwell leaned on the farce button on her word-processor 'way too hard! Not content to give her characters a few wacky tics and twitches, Cornwell has built an entire stable of loonies, each a one-dimensional caricature of some deadly sin: pride, lust, greed, and the lot.
More evidence of an overdose of whimsy: of perhaps fifteen featured characters, only Brazil, Hammer, and Pony (the governor's butler) have a lick of sense – and we're never sure of those three, especially Brazil in his "TT" persona. Unique believes she can become invisible. Hooter Shook won't handle money with her bare hands (a debilitating phobia for a tollbooth operator, you might think). Barbie Fogg writes passionate anonymous love letters to NASCAR drivers, but won't let her husband touch her with his bare hands. And on, and on…
To make matters worse, the characters are insultingly stupid. Strange dialects aside, the dialog Cornwell puts in their mouths borders on racist in more than one case. I won't be surprised if Cornwell gets ridden out of Virginia on a rail some day soon.
Overall
Cornwell's fans – and they are legion – are well-advised to leave this one on the bookstore shelf. This is a case where imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery. Were I Carl Hiaasen, I'd call for a retraction of all those gushy reviews that go on about how Cornwell is about to give him a run for his money!