By Phil Mann
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“A viscous [sic] rumor created to discredit your Catholic upbringing.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “You did go to Catholic school didn’t
you, Connor?”
“Yep.”
“Were you an alter-boy?” [sic]
Errors are an inevitable, perhaps even tautological part of the human
condition. But were they desirable, editors would not have jobs, and
surely A SKELETON IN THE CLOSET would have been better for an editor’s
touch - unless wondering whether an “alter-boy” is some sort of pre-op
transsexual is an inherent part of the novel.
I have foregrounded the sloppy editing because it matters and is
so prevalent. Certainly, good writing can call attention to itself.
And good writing can be almost invisible, allowing the story to dominate.
The writing in A SKELETON IN THE CLOSET does neither and instead is
far too often intrusively bizarre.
The story, when it dominates, involves the mummified remains of a
woman, which are discovered when a construction crew demolishes a
wall in an old San Francisco building. Former Chief Medical Examiner
Declan Connor, now working as a professor and part-time private investigator,
is hired by the city to assist in the investigation. His investigations
soon implicate three prominent San Franciscans: a judge, a billionaire
philanthropist, and a leader in the anti-abortion movement. As the
investigation proceeds, Connor finds his life threatened and his inquiries
increasingly meeting with official objections.
Feeney’s Web site indicates that A SKELETON IN THE CLOSET is an attempt
at the sort of novel Feeney could not find in bookstores. “Tired of
novels lacking intrigue, suspense, and genuine reading pleasure, I
set about to write something that I'd like to read. Something unpredictable
with an ending you would never anticipate.” One could, of course,
point out that there are scores of novels that would provide Feeney
with the intrigue, suspense, and genuine reading pleasure he sought.
The salient question here, however, is whether Feeney has achieved
his goal. In many ways, he has succeeded at parts of his stated goal.
Connor’s involvement in the investigation, for example, seems entirely
natural. As a former Chief Medical Examiner, Connor has a perfectly
good reason to be so intimately involved in the investigation. He
has both experience and credentials to his credit (unlike, say, too
many cozy mysteries, in which the protagonist’s involvement seems
to lack any credibility). There can be little doubt, either, that
the investigation propels the novel, albeit with slight and somewhat
donnish or didactic ruminations on Feng Shui or cigar brands. Aside
from those excursions into superfluity, A SKELETON IN THE CLOSET moves
at a rapid pace, and Feeney writes credibly about the mummification
process and the autopsy procedures.
The most serious impediment to the investigation comes in the form
of a subplot regarding Connor and one of his students. A sexual encounter
ends up causing problems for Connor, and, rather than address directly
the serious implications of a professor-student tryst, Feeney lets
the results of that relationship become an oft-mentioned but not seriously
considered impediment, both to Connor’s investigation and the novel
itself. One of the most peculiar aspects of A SKELETON IN THE CLOSET
is its inclusion of a locked-room murder, that fixture more of detective
fiction than of reality in which a person is found murdered inside
a room locked from the inside. Entire novels - and even, in the case
of John Dickson Carr, almost a life’s work - have been built around
such crimes. Feeney, however, chooses a novel way to dispense with
the solution. He ignores it. The killer is caught but refuses to divulge
the solution to the crime, which nobody else seems to investigate
seriously. A critical question thus arises: Why make the murder a
locked-room crime at all? Feeney piques the puzzle lover’s interest
but then pulls back the puzzle as if to say, “Just kidding.”
A SKELETON IN THE CLOSET reads like an unpolished first draft. There
are sections in which the writing is compelling and the investigation
fascinating. But there are too many missteps, from the section quoted
above to variant spellings of “discreet” and “peak” (which occurs
with the same spelling whether the proper word is “peek,” “peak,”
or “pique”). Just as listening to a masterful composition suffers
when the performer hits a clunker, so, too, does the reading of this
novel suffer from these missteps. (Granted, there are performers of
such consummate skill as to make even the missed notes euphonic, but
Feeney is not a writer of that caliber.) A word about the ending is
in order. Feeney has clearly endeavored to make the ending a wow-I-never-saw-that-coming
ending. To the extent that the reader is surprised, Feeney succeeds,
but he does so primarily by withholding significant clues, thus making
it nearly impossible for the reader to figure out the ending. What
www.askeletoninthecloset.com
hypes as “the best kept secret in the literary world” is in reality
little more than a twist without setup. A SKELETON IN THE CLOSET shows
undeniable promise, but its release is premature, and the novel’s
fine points are marred by their juxtaposition with too many errors.
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The publisher of David
Feeney’s debut novel is a vanity press that notes on its Web site
that it does not edit manuscripts. That fact is painfully apparent
in A SKELETON IN THE CLOSET, the first of a planned series. It is
hardly unheard of to find typographical or other errors in published
books, but the problem here is that the errors in A SKELETON IN THE
CLOSET are often glaring and detract from the story. For example: