Plum is on her fifth outing, looking for her missing uncle and one angry little man. Uncle Fred was complaining about paying for garbage pickup, and the truck skipped his house. So he went into complain and disappeared. Of course, he’s in the Plum family, so the weird part is he left behind photos of severed body parts in garbage bags. Aunt Mabel wants Stephanie to look for him, although she’s not entirely sure she wants the cheap bastard found and brought home. Plus, a midget missed his court date.
What I Liked
Stephanie’s family is definitely on the wild side, and the uncle is pretty out there for 70. Fun to see all the pieces at play. Plus Stephanie decides she needs to “diversify” her income sources, so asks Ranger to help mentor her in new areas (i.e., to work for him), so we get to see more of his line of work and meet his crew/employees (like Tank). And Lulu and Stephanie chasing the short guy are hilarious to read.
What I Didn’t Like
Morelli’s family is not as much fun as the Plums, and fairly one-dimensional. Plus Benito Ramirez is back, and is just annoying. My biggest objection though is a “cliff-hanger” ending on the romance side that deliberately plays with point-of-view to keep it vague who Stephanie is talking with at her door.
Devlin Tracy is a claims investigator working for an insurance company. The VP gives him a case to investigate — a friend of the President of the company is in a sanatorium, one of the other patients changed their beneficiary on their insurance policy just before they died, and the doctor at the sanatorium got the winfall. The President is afraid that his friend will be pressured to do the same, and the President wants Trace to make sure there’s nothing weird going on.
What I Liked
Warren Murphy was the creator of several other series, and while some of those were kind of pulp-style, this one is a full “standard” detective novel. Wise-cracking, determined, but not always the fastest to figure things out. Trace works hard, keeps poking until something shakes loose, and then grabs on and won’t let go until whatever scheme falls apart. All the elements of the series are here — drinking like a fish, sleeping with suspects, wearing a little frog pin that records conversations, and a bit of a blundering style that worms his way into lots of situations. There are sub-stories with drugs and potential lawsuits, but mostly it is just about Trace shaking things up.
What I Didn’t Like
He has a girlfriend, of sorts, and her portrayal in this one is more annoying than usual for the series. Plus she comes in near the end as a super-detective to help solve the case, but Trace was doing fine on his own. She helps him out, as she often does, but she was mostly superfluous for this outing.
A couple of months ago, a case made the news here in Ottawa and it had lots of salacious details to peak people’s interests. A mint employee. Gold. Smuggling. And vaseline to tell you where and how he smuggled it. Earlier this week, he was found guilty, and it is an incredibly interesting case for a totally different reason — it is entirely comprised of overwhelming circumstantial evidence. On that basis alone, I would expect it to be appealed.
The basics of the case are pretty straightforward:
A bank employee noticed a man depositing a couple of large cheques from the gold-buying store nearby. $7K apiece. Not exactly chump change. When she noticed on the account that he was an employee of the Mint, she flagged it for her boss and they flagged it for RCMP.
RCMP investigated, watched him sell some more at the gold store and deposit the cheques, and then contacted the store to see what it was he was selling. Gold pucks, high purity. Not a collection of Grandma’s old jewellery.
They checked with the Mint, found out he was in charge of testing gold purity with a label that creates small gold pucks. And he set the metal detectors off way more than any other employee, had more pucks in his safety deposit box, matched the purity and size of the pucks to the ladle, etc.
He didn’t make enough money to have that gold through normal means;
And finally for “evidence”, they found jars of vaseline and latex gloves in his locker which he could have used to place the pucks up his butt to smuggle it out of the Mint.
Now, if I recast it as per the judge’s decision, it gets a bit more pointed:
Motive — he had possession of $160K worth of gold and had laundered $138K of it;
Opportunity — worked alone, had access to high purity gold that matched the mint’s ratings, had Vaseline in his locker, no cameras to catch theft or insertion;
Identity — he had the gold and the money, and he is the one who set off the metal detectors.
Seems like a slam dunk, right?
Except there are two things missing from the case, or maybe one-and-a-half if you ignore the right against self-incrimination.
The biggest one is that the Mint had no evidence that anything had been stolen. They don’t have weight measures to show that they put 10 pounds of gold in and it came out at 9.8 pounds, for example. They had no idea he was stealing because they had no idea anything had been stolen. In order to be charged and convicted of theft, you kind of need evidence that something has been stolen. And the Mint has no direct evidence of that…they just now have a theory as to how and why he set off the metal detector so often.
I know, I know, if you read this and see the evidence, you think, “Well that is what must have happened.” Except that isn’t the standard of legal proof.
The second missing piece is that there was no other explanation for the circumstances under which he could get the gold. Except there’s an easy one. What if someone else at the Mint stole the pucks and gave them to him. You might say, “No problem, he’s still guilty.” Except he isn’t. At that point, he hasn’t stolen anything. He is part of a criminal conspiracy, and guilty of a crime, but not of the crimes he was charged and convicted of, although the proceeds of crime would probably stand. Related to this is another half of a missing piece, except on his side. He gave no explanation of how else he came into possession of the nuggets. No alternate theory of the crime, so to speak, but more accurately, no simple explanation that could raise reasonable doubt against overwhelming circumstantial evidence. But here’s the kicker — the right against self-incrimination also includes the right not to be presumed guilty if you don’t testify on your own behalf. Sure, people want the accused to testify in every TV or movie case you’ve ever seen, but the law is clear — nothing can be inferred if he doesn’t testify and give an alternate explanation. The state has the burden of proof, not the accused.
So, let’s go back to the evidence. Opportunity is that he worked alone with gold. Hardly damning. The pucks matched the unique ladles the Mint used — evidence it came from the Mint, not that he did it. Had Vaseline in his locker — here’s a shocker, probably a quarter of the women in the Mint probably do too for hands or lip balm, or whatever, based on market share. A thousand innocent explanations or there are a lot of people out there who must be smugglers as they have Vaseline in their possession. No cameras — so the proof is that there was no proof? All of that is basically irrelevant.
What you are left with is he has gold that (likely) came from the Mint, and he can’t explain how. Ergo, he stole it. That is way below the standard of proof. What if instead he was part of a giant criminal conspiracy. Who hired him off the books because he worked at the Mint and knew how to purify gold. And they set up a lab to do the exact same thing. Or maybe he did it himself. And maybe, sure, the gold he was melting down was all stolen jewellery so he can’t admit to it. Could he have stolen a ladle? Sure. If he could steal all that gold, and he’s so amazing at it, he could steal a ladle. Or order one that matched the size and shape of the Mint’s.
Because, don’t forget, the MINT has no idea if anything was actually stolen. They have no evidence that a crime was actually committed. Yet here we have a guy convicted and about to be imprisoned for a crime we don’t know actually occurred. We know, or at least we’re pretty sure, a crime was convicted but we don’t know if it was this crime, or a different one, or committed by someone else and he was involved, or anything of the sort.
These are the cases that fascinate me…I don’t care about huge murder cases, DNA evidence, etc. I care about inferred crimes that don’t meet the standard.
Even if everyone involved thinks they know what must have happened. And that he’s guilty.
Set in the 1970s, a Russian poet has sought asylum in the U.S. Days before he qualifies for citizenship, he is kidnapped from Grand Central Station. Why was he taken? How can they help him? Where is he?
What I Liked
The story diverges on two tracks — a black-bag CIA operative comes in from the cold just enough to maintain full deniability while he looks for the missing poet. At the same time, an FBI manager keeps poking and prodding trying to find out why. Neither one knows the other exists, and the two stories remain fully compartmentalized.
What I Didn’t Like
The opening is extremely descriptive, almost one step removed from the action, and it takes a while until you fully engage in the two tracks.
Stephanie Plum has settled in to her job as a bounty hunter, and so picking up a missing NJ girl who failed to appear after stealing her boyfriend’s truck seems like a cakewalk. And there’s a bonus — the boyfriend is willing to give her money too to find her and get some supposed love letters back from her. Easy peasy. Except nothing is easy for Plum, ever. The missing girl wants to stay missing, and her mother and co-worker are helping. Even when somebody else is looking for the girl too, and willing to hurt people to get them to talk.
What I Liked
Plum has an extra helper in this case, a guy who’s good with codes and clues. A flamboyant cross-dresser, he livens up the scene. And the relationship with Moretti leaps forward with the two cohabitating for a while. I love the scenes where the women were talking about guns and what type of gun to carry, use, etc.
What I Didn’t Like
There are some baddies who are painfully obviously involved, which Plum misses for most of the book. And someone who is out to get her is obvious as well. Also painful to watch. Oh, and one of my favourite characters, Ranger, has nothing to do for the entire book. More like an afterthought to include him.
