The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 28 January 2013
by Camille Minichino
The author of this mystery has given herself a daunting task, working her way through the periodic table of the elements as the basis for her scientifically-oriented novels. As of this writing, she is as far along as Fluourine. Will she make it to Livermorium? Perhaps she could mix it up by bouncing around the table instead of pushing through it from lightest to heaviest elements. After all, some of the more interesting ones are farther down the line. Lithium is the third element, by this count. It is widely used in batteries for anything from laptops to cars, and thus increasingly valuable. It is perhaps more humanely used as a mood calming drug, but that is only just mentioned here. In a laboratory in a small city just north of Boston, a pair of scientists working on new lithium battery technology are struggling with the toxic waste from their research. A lowly janitor, a romantic and ambitious Italian, overhears their conversations and they offer to pay for his silence. We're never quite sure why. He ends up dead, though, and thus the ball is rolling for Gloria Lamerino, a retired physicist consulting (and cavorting) with Matt Gennaro of the Revere police department. She lives upstairs from a mortuary run by her best friend, which is convenient for interviewing the grieving families. It also makes for a suitably creepy location for spooky persons lurking on the street and chasing in dark corridors. The mystery story runs toward the basic formula for such things, a curious, intelligent and occasionally utterly clueless protagonist pursues unlikely suspects and odd lines of inquiry, usually to a climactic solution. Minichino has taken an interesting basis in the chemistry of the periodic table. There is a lot of potential there. But the lithium project seems to be little more than the proverbial macguffin here. The interested parties might be struggling over baseball tickets with the same results. This reader hopes that Minichino's considerable writerly talent might be turned toward further integrating the elements into her stories. In the meantime, the setting, a working class Boston beachside suburb, the characters, regular folks in that town, and the well-realized personal obsessions of our heroine keep the story moving and engaging.
Also by Minichino: [The Hydrogen Murder] [The Helium Murder] [The Beryllium Murder] [The Boric Acid Murder] [The Carbon Murder]
See Also: [In Revere, In Those Days by Roland Merullo]