Book Review: Echo Bay -- Richard Barre

Richard Barre is a very talented author. His plots and characters are multi-layered and multifaceted, gripping, intelligent, and compelling. His latest, Echo Bay, is a case in point. It is a departure from his Wil Hardesty mystery novels, which have won him a place on the bestsellers lists, but it delivers no less of a good read and a few well-placed twists.

Basically, you have this down-and-out likeable protagonist, one Shawn Rainey, a woulda-been could-been has-been skier who has gone to seed, feeling sorry for himself, and doing nothing to rectify his wallowing but pour on the self-loathing when he thinks about losing his wife and kids to his ex-business partner. Then one day the ex-business partner calls him up to reunite (an unlikely event, since the last time they'd seen one another, our hero had assaulted the homewrecker). He has a scheme to raise an old ship, the Constance, that used to cruise Lake Tahoe (Echo Bay being part of the water system there, and where the old ship lays at rest), our protagonist's boyhood stomping grounds. Why should Rainey help? Well, he gets to see his children again, that's why.

Throw in a bunch of Rainey's old friends (who are not so friendly), an ex-girlfriend now married to one of those friends, a new girlfriend, an estranged relationship with his father, the local cop who hates him, the hellbent leader of the opposition to the raising (daughter of the man who built the ship), the reasons for the ship being sunk in the first place, the nostalgia of the entire idea, the money involved, and the everpresent ghost of his dead brother urging him onward and you have one hell of a mess.

And it's a mystery, don't ya know, so someone has to die.

What a great novel. Barre ranks up there with the best of the mystery writers today. Echo Bay is one hell of an entertaining story, with one hell of a great finish.

******

Check out this review of Burning Moon, a Wil Hardesty mystery from Richard Barre.