Silent Partner by Stan Schatt : A Review

READERS MUSE NOTE: With Special thanks to Deepika Anandakrishnan, as always, for one of her spectacular guest reviews. And her honest and 'to the point' assessment.

Title – Silent Partner

Author – Stan Schatt

Genre – Mystery/Crime Fiction (with Supernatural Overtones and Adult Content?)

Review:

          Francis “Frankie” Ryan is one of Sea View Police Department’s finest Detectives, with a troubled past (you may break your heads over what it is!). When she is assigned to investigate a gruel case involving a castrated playboy Feature Writer and a beautiful Market Analyst in a lonely motel, support comes from an unexpected source for solving for the dual murder. Josh Harrell is the ex-Ranger reporter for an above mediocre newspaper, who gets to fill the dead guy’s job, and he just found out about his convenient supernatural ability that had troubled his family for generations. Together they team up to solve the frustrating case where nobody associated with the dead people seems to like or get along with them.

          Simply put the dead guy has a LOT of weird sex and the dead woman has a lot of sex with most men other than her husband. No wonder this crazy pair was going to end up dead in a seedy motel one of these days! Ironically, the husband is one of the two people who shed a tear for the dead. Love is strange and it shall continue to elude and baffle this poor reviewer.

          This is quite a different mystery thriller with the teeniest bit of supernatural element thrown in, in the form of the psychic abilities of the male lead. The story begins out with the usual scene of a faithful cop Frankie, investigating a murder scene along with her sidekick partner. But certain unexpected twists are in store for people expecting it to be a regular crime fiction. Josh comes out (pun intended) to help the police by lending his psychic abilities when questioning suspects. The story not only develops this strange deviation but also relies heavily on adult content and introduces this reader to some new sexual games/activities, which she would have preferred to be ignorant of forever.

          The fact that the author has tried to cash in on the success of Fifty Shades of Grey is clear in some instances, where direct references are made more than a couple of times. The entire investigation seems to lead to strange new hints at every corner but described in such a way that it’s quite obvious after a certain point, that some characters were introduced just to keep the guessing game juicy.

          Moreover, you realize quite soon the nature in which the seemingly ‘perfect crime’ was committed and spelling it out letter by letter seems more like mocking the reader’s intelligence rather than a slow mind-blowing revelation. However what struck me as funny but never touched upon by any of the characters was how the culprit wanted to get caught from the beginning. If you think about it, had this person just taken a vacation or sick leave, this would have been the perfect crime. But I have seen and read enough detective stories to believe that it is in every criminal’s nature to boast and that’s usually what brings about their end.

Would I Read It Again? – Not really. Quoting the author himself, this is neither Gone with the Wind nor Fifty Shades of Grey. But a pretty good story overall.

What I Liked – The twists, the occasional dry humour & the good writing.

What Not To Like – The hurried ending, pointless characters, some loose ends and my sufficiently enriched knowledge about the (un)known underworld of dark pleasures.

Rating – 3.5/5

About The Author:

          Stan Schatt is a futurist, technologist, novelist, and a person curious about many things. His writing takes advantage of his wide-ranging work, from autopsy assistant to police department administrator, salesman, literature professor and telecommunications professor, technology analyst, and research director. He has always loved technology and politics almost as much as writing. Stan is also volunteer job acquisition facilitator for the unemployed in San Diego. He writes mysteries in Carlsbad, California, where he lives with his wife, Jane.

Find Stan at www.StanSchatt.com (website and blog)

and on Twitter at @stanschatt.