THE BODIES LEFT BEHIND. By Jeffrey Deaver. Simon & Schuster. 350 pages. $26.95.
If you like strong, intelligent female protagonists and you are a fan of the plot twist, I can't imagine a better book to endorse. But if you are less willing than most to suspend disbelief for a story that's not intended as fantasy or as entertainment for the juvenile market, then The Bodies Left Behind might push your sensibilities beyond a tolerable threshold. The minor characters are realistic, the dialogue is masterful, but the rate at which the protagonist and villains overcome the traps and diversions they set for one another will challenge all but the most indulgent of imaginations. Picture James Bond or Indiana Jones sans the tongue-in-cheek humor tell-tales indicating that the story isn't to be taken seriously.
The narrative is a rotating third-person limited point of view; we perceive events as they happen through each point-of-view character's perspective and cannot know what other characters present are thinking or, if out of sight, what they are doing. This format enables Deaver to conceal the truth when it suits his purpose. It has the added benefit of putting us inside the mind of each viewpoint character in "real time" as they move through each scene.
When Deputy Brynn McKensie investigates a 911 call, she discovers a couple killed execution-style in their rural Wisconsin vacation home -- and the killers are still at the scene. Then, after a frantic shoot-out, she escapes into the 8,000-acre Marquette State Park along with a wealthy, spoiled and whining 20-something city girl who seems to have been a guest of the victims. The killers give chase.
What follows is a dusk-till-dawn cat-and-mouse battle of wits, pitting a wounded and unarmed Brynn against a seasoned hit man and his shotgun-toting lackey. Brynn's stamina and patience are pushed to the limit as she uses skills developed in her survival training to elude the killers who are bent on their destruction -- all the while, her "princess" in tow proves to be nothing but trouble.
Time after time, Brynn and her charge barely evade the killers as they scramble through the wilderness. After becoming lost, Brynn crafts a make-shift compass using a method familiar to most serious woodsmen, only to discover that she doesn't know which end points north. Her solution is simple:
"Around here the high ground's generally west. That'd be to the left." A red flag popped into my mind to accompany the one already there -- combining to break the spell of the fiction. If Brynn can determine direction from the topography, then why stop to make a compass? And if she completed as much survival training as we're led to believe, then why doesn't she use the easier method of celestial navigation on this moonlit night? Apparently, Deaver failed to enlist an outdoorsman to proofread his manuscript. But these are minor complaints; the majority of the wilderness-adventure section of this novel is well crafted and engrossing.
The remainder of the novel is set in cities and suburbs and serves to flesh out the back-story and to address the conflicts unresolved from Brynn's night in the forest. It also deals incisively with domestic problems concerning her husband, ex-husband and son in relation to her dark secret. Even here, the plot twists are a veritable origami of reversals and surprises.
■ Steven Beach is a writer who lives in Lawsonville.
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