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Book Review: Pre-meditated, but not necessarly committed
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Published: November 1, 2009
CAPITOL OFFENSE. By William Bernhardt. Ballantine. 316 pages.
Capitol Offense is William Bernhardt's 23rd novel and his 17th book featuring Ben Kincaid, an insecure trial lawyer who too often allows his feelings to lead him into complicated, high-stakes circumstances. It's also the story of a man pushed to the limits of human tolerance by an impassive, impersonal and unmoving government bureaucracy. And on a thematic level, this is a book about fate, destiny and personal accountability.
The story opens with tightly focused first-person narrative as Dr. Joslyn Thomas tells us, "I died three days ago." She describes the auto accident that left her broken body trapped in wreckage at the bottom of a ravine. By the third day of her ordeal, she knows she is dying. She is filled with regret for things left undone and unsaid. The pain is unbearable -- yet she must bear it, and in her agony and desperation she turns inward: "When existence in the body becomes intolerable, the soul seeks other lodging, safe havens, snug harbors."
As her misery reaches its nadir, she remembers her Buddhist teacher's wisdom -- that even though our lives might be guided by the stars, we need not be controlled by them. So she takes charge of her situation in the only way left to her; she meditates and relaxes in an attempt to ease her passage into death. And in this effort to outwit the stars, she sets up the oft-revisited theme of the book.
Then the point of view zooms out to third-person omniscient and we watch Joslyn's husband, Dennis, flail against a wall of police-department policy in his effort to get help searching for his wife. The cop in charge seems unreasonably resistant to opening an investigation. But on the seventh day, in his absence, another officer takes the initiative and Josyln is found in a mere three hours. After a week of bleeding, starvation and dehydration, Joslyn is pried from the wreckage as Dennis looks on with a mixture of horror and rage. In her love for Dennis and her understanding of his personality, with her dying breath, Josyln implores him to outwit the stars in hopes that he will not allow her tortured demise to drive him to blind reactions with negative consequences.
Our protagonist, attorney Ben Kincaid, enters the story on page 25, pondering the merits of pro-bono work as he meets with a clueless petty criminal. The humorous scene shows Ben as a down-to-earth man who is not the type of lawyer most reviled by society. Later, as he meets Dennis, we see Ben as a patient and caring human being -- but one who will not compromise his ethics regardless of circumstances. It is soon apparent that Dennis wants him to arrange a pardon after he kills the cop who refused to help. Then, when the cop is killed, apparently by Dennis, Ben and his team are pulled into a web of conspiracy, deceit and murder fit for a TV crime-drama series.
I rate this novel a seven on a 10-point scale because characters sometimes acted in ways inconsistent with what could be reasonably expected. I found myself forced to add will to the willing suspension of disbelief necessary for the success of any serious work of fiction. The mystery is engaging and fairly well built; I did not know the identity of the "hidden" villain until it was spelled out in the book -- but that is no surprise, since the only clues given to his identity were weak and overly circumspect. In a fair treatment of the mystery genre, sufficient clues are given for readers to deduce the truth.
Steven Beach is a writer who lives in Lawsonville.
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