Dark Harbor by David Hosp: Murder, Mystery, and Malarky

In Dark Harbor, Finn, brilliant young lawyer with everything going for him, discovers that a former lover has been murdered. The murder was preliminarily attributed to the work of a nutty serial killer, but significant differences in the methods cast suspicion.

Once a street thug in his youth and now on his way to making partner at his firm, Finn cannot let his ex-lover's death go without an explanation. He subsequently finds himself in the deep end, making ripples in a pool stuffed with mob sharks, including some of the highest up in Boston's criminal underworld.

Along the way, Finn alternately works/clashes with stunningly beautiful police lieutenant Flaherty and her gruff and grizzled partner, Sergeant Kozlowski. Is anyone sensing a bit of kitsch here? Beyond the obvious stereotypes, the characters get along alright. But the predictability of the players, at least, increases the farther along one reads. The gangs, the Irishman ex-gang member trying to redeem himself, the corporate betrayal and corruption in state government - it is all old hat.

What preserves readability and even makes it a page turner at times is that Hosp keeps things moving at a good clip, and that even when he reveals a clue or piece of the puzzle, he leaves more for later, and even brings out new twists in the grand puzzle occasionally to attempt to spice things up.

With the introduction of the serial killer in the beginning, Hosp manages to avoid a damaging distraction with this interesting sidebar, although its early-on solution leaves him in a bit of a quandary. For the reader, the serial killer eventually becomes a more than obvious false trail, and Hosp seems to leap barely fast enough to create a true path.

But he does, and the trail wends its way through some sticky situations for Finn, who comes under more than suspicion a few times; even the reader begins to doubt his innocence, wondering how the hell he's going to make it out of yet another impossibly bad spot. Luckily the developing relationship between Finn and Flaherty does not devolve into steamy sex or dopey love clouding the main story, and cheese is kept to a minimum.

It is not deep, nor intellectual, nor even completely original, yet it somehow still manages to entertain. You will not feel smarter after reading Dark Harbor, but you will not consider it a total waste of your time, either. It is a comfortable format, and that is nice to settle into once in a while.