Suicide or murder?
This reviewer wholeheartedly supports doctors penning medical dramas; lawyers, courtroom dramas; cops, crime thrillers; seafarers, adventures. It is their milieu, authentic, credible. Not so those who base their stories on research. They set the facts right, but not the feeling.
Historical novels, for one, are pouring out. However, contemporary authors overlook the ways in which the times, attitudes, even language of their subject-matter isn’t the same now as it was then. All too many of those who write about intelligence and counterintelligence have not belonged to any of their agencies — CIA, FBI, MI6. Their agents are as fictitious as James Bond, and Ian Fleming was much the better author. I think that none of them would recognise a spy if they met one.
Scriveners tend to give the agencies a bad press. Their heads are more likely than not making bad decisions. Or they’ve gotten paid a fortune to work for the other side. Lower-level agents are usually the protagonists, singled out by the head for unjust reprimand and punishment, which is the case in The Crooked Staircase by Yank Dean Koontz.
His baker’s dozen of books are heavy on psychology, which means don’t try to read them in one sitting. (With 462 pages, you wouldn’t make the attempt.) The 30 chapters are misleading, as each has any number of subchapters. His ongoing literary heroine is FBI Special Agent Jane Hawk. A top performer, happily married, respected, until her life comes crashing down. The love of her life commits suicide. Or was he murdered? To learn the truth, she puts aside her assignments and embarks on a self-styled investigation. Disobeying orders is a no-no and the Bureau turns against her. What she learns is shocking. A conspiracy against her countrymen by a mysterious cabal to inject them with a Nazi-developed serum that induces them to take their own lives. As a fugitive from justice, how can she get the authorities to believe her and put the nefarious organisation down?
Captured herself, with resultant thrills and spills, needless to say, she does.
How well the author is versed in the workings of the FBI is a moot question. What is clear is that he was never FBI himself. Jane Hawk is a likeable if not a believable character.