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Garden of Evil |
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 Garden of Evil byEdna Buchanan Harper 320 pages, October 2000 ISBN 0380798417 Reviewed by Reed Andrus For twelve years, Edna Buchanan has moved back and forth between fictional and non-fictional representations of her experiences as crime reporter for the Miami Herald. Arguably, her best work shows up in a six-novel series featuring Cubana reporter Britt Montero. Throughout the series, the author has invested considerable depth in her alter ego, building an emotional infrastructure that is based nearly as much on personal Latino history as on the criminous events that form a crime reporter’s daily life. Britts’s father was a Cuban freedom fighter executed by Castro; her mother has rejected the glamour and danger of the past, constantly pressures her daughter to give up Miami’s mean streets in favor of a higher-status (and safer) lifestyle. Earlier series entries (Contents Under Pressure; Miami, It’s Murder; Suitable for Framing; Act of Betrayal; Margin of Error) established Britt’s love-hate relationship with the City of Miami. This relationship is presented through multiple storylines that juxtapose occasional instances of humorous relief with an otherwise dark and gritty parade of urban tragedy and unnecessary, random violence. The latter is dropped into her pages with casual shock. Of the paragraphs below, the first is tragic, the second moves the cynicism bar up a notch: "Mother Nature continued to crank up the heat. A woman walking outside the criminal justice building on her lunch hour glanced into a parked car – and screamed. Other passersby joined her, trying to smash the windows. The first cop who arrived shattered them with his club. Too late. The temperature inside had soared to more than 140 degrees. The baby girl, still strapped in her car seat, was dead. "The mother was in an air-conditioned courtroom with her older children, ages three and six. Investigators from the Division of Children and Family Services had recently returned all three, finding no basis for neglect charges against her. Her caseworker had assured the mother that her court appearance… would result in a quick dismissal, so she left the little one in the car. The court calendar, as usual, wa log-jammed and lengthy." Well-drawn secondary characters provide some counterpoint to the bleakness, particularly Britt’s photographer colleague, Lottie, whose penchant for chasing the wrong men at least offers a welcome respite from continual viewing of a mounting body count. Garden of Evil begins with Buchanan’s usual satisfying formula - Britt is contacted by an aging beauty queen who believes her life is in danger, while up near Florida’s Panhandle a possible female serial killer is working her way downstate, leaving a wake of dead males with their pants down and a red lipstick imprint on their cheeks. As The Kiss-Me Killer moves South, so does Buchanan’s formula, to the point where the storyline becomes quite singular, ending with a nihilistic note that goes far beyond the requisite dose of cynicism that makes these novels so realistic. Britt’s situation as described in the last quarter of this novel will be problematical for many readers, and not just for those who prefer cozies. Any chance for redemption is absent, perhaps reflecting the author’s personal sense of despair over the human condition. Even this jaded reviewer was chilled by the finale. Am I giving away too much information? Maybe. If so, I apologize. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. |
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