Betrayal and Damage

"First novel syndrome" is a catch-all phrase that describes some of the rougher edges first-time novelists may display in their work. Even though a publisher thought the book worthy of purchase and edited the manuscript, there are still ways in which first-time novelists are finding their voices. They may also be prone to citing back-story on characters, especially in a potential series, using expository passages to flesh out the characters since readers as yet have no history with them.

J.A. Jance's Betrayal of Trust has a lot of those first-novel tendencies, but the problem is that it's her 45th novel, not her first. Trust has husband-and-wife Washington state homicide investigators J.P. Beaumont and Mel Soames dig into how the governor's grandson wound up with a video on his cell phone that may show a young woman being strangled. They have to navigate political minefields as well as the usual problems that may crop up in a police investigation. Beaumont also has to decide what he will do about connecting with his father's family, whom he does not know since his father died before his birth but who have recently contacted him.

I don't know if the Trust manuscript needed editing, a rewrite or a complete and total do-over. Beaumont and Soames get much of their info about the case on concurrent cell phone calls to their respective numbers and deal with not one but two unpleasant medical examiners in different situations for no reason that the novel makes clear. Trust is a loooooooooong string of cliches, both in terms of writing and storytelling set pieces, woven into a prissy sermon about evil rich kids that almost never chooses to show when it can tell instead.

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Damage Control is John Gilstrap's fourth novel featuring hostage rescue specialist Jonathan Grave and finds the super-secret extra-legal operative masterminding the ransom drop for a church mission group kidnapped in Mexico. Things do not go as planned, so Grave, his fellow rescuer Boxers and one of the hostages are stuck in Central America, wanted by the authorities as well as the kidnappers and needing to cross a whole lot of territory to reach safety back in the U.S. And things may not be as they seem with the church sponsoring the trip, either, so Grave's associates back in the states will have to do some digging of their own.

Gilstrap, who co-wrote the story of an actual Delta Force civilian rescue in Six Minutes to Freedom, knows his way around the tactical maneuvering of a hostage rescue and writes some swift, smoothly-flowing action scenes. He also has the military-thriller writer's requisite knowledge of weaponry and its descriptions, but is willing to let Grave think a little bit about what he does and even explain some of it in conversations with the young hostage. He's a little too ready to let what should be tangent plots and minor characters hog the stage, and he does rely on ye (very very) olde standby of a venial clergyperson as a part of the plot. But he balances that with more than one brave and honest cleric who are people of integrity, and rarely meanders so far from his main path that he risks losing readers.