New Yorker Adam Weiss signed up to work in the trenches with Florida’s migrant farm workers in order to impress a girl, only for her to choose another guy who stayed in New York’s comfortable environs while advocating social change in restaurants and other climate-controlled rooms.
Still, Adam does his ambivalent best to help the farmworkers, which is how he learns of strange occurrences at the farms involving sudden disappearances and remarkably high wages. Unable to tell the Hispanic laborers apart, Adam’s help is well-intentioned but limited as he finally contacts the authorities, which causes problems he thought only happened on television shows or in movies.
Florida Swamps and the Medical Examiner
While Adam pines for the Big Apple, Medical Examiner Edward Jenner also misses his former life in New York. After solving a serial killer case that nearly ended his own life, Jenner’s penchant for messy personal relationships, a nosy TV pseudo-journalist, and the extraordinary step he took in the serial murder case led to his dismissal. Fortunately his old mentor invited him to temporarily take his place as ME as a vacation replacement.
Instead of the supply of gentle senior citizen deaths Jenner expected, he quickly jumps into a strange series of torture killings that transform the tourist destination into a “resort town of death.” Jenner gains a sidekick of sorts through the like-minded companionship of Detective Rudge, an honest, hardworking cop that provides Jenner with the easy-going support and hard-nosed professionalism that the beleagured ME can appreciate.
Through it all, Jenner’s interest is piqued first by a pretty blonde park ranger with a great sense of humor and a way with a gun and then by a beautiful wealthy woman who has issues with a capital “I” and, since this is Florida, a way with a gun. Even though each describes him as only “okay-looking,” Jenner manages to spark their interest in him, leading to distractions from the cases that keep crowding his examining room.
While it's no surprise that Jenner would welcome these types of distractions, he's at his best when reconstructing crimes and finding overlooked evidence.
Author Jonathan Hayes
Forensic pathologist and former New York City Medical Examiner Jonathan Hayes’ one-monikered protagonist may be significantly flawed but willingly tries to learn from his mistakes, tellingly recounted early on in A Hard Death. After nearly dying from being out of shape in the debut novel, Jenner sticks to his new physical fitness routine in spite of Florida’s humidity and his area’s dense snake population.
In spite of strong geographical descriptions, nicely plotted pacing, and the likeable Jenner, the primary villain’s identity remains the weakest part of A Hard Death because of its immediate predictability. In spite of this flaw, the Jenner series has great potential no matter where Jenner finds himself next.
Hayes also takes care to provide grounding details which date Jenner's adventure to the era of Nancy Grace-style talking heads on his fictional Current Event Network (CEN) among other more specific contemporary details, one of which can give a reader a thoughtful pause.
Readers who enjoy the combination of self-aware humor and grisly forensic detectives found in Aaron Elkins’ Gideon Oliver series and Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan books will enjoy both A Hard Death and Precious Blood.
Source:
- Hayes, Jonathan. A Hard Death. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2011.
Bonnye Good - Bonnye Busbice Good received an Editor's Choice award for her article on Your Historic Home's Interior Design Secrets and has also written ...
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