"Death at Drake's Harbor"

by David Nale

I avoid e-books if I can, preferring the portability of the old fashioned bound pages. It’s unhandy to lug a laptop to waiting rooms and such. However, this novel is an exception. It is so well organized as to make the work flow through the Adobe reader.

I have no idea if this is a first novel – we haven’t known of others by the author, but he may have published under another guise, and has been hiding his light under a bushel. If it is indeed an initial effort, BRAVO!

The writing is clear, concise, totally free from unnecessary meandering, and consistently attention-grabbingly readable. The protagonist and all of the other characters are very well defined, coming across as real people. The reader feels as if he/she has known them, although the familiarity is slightly strained by the author’s insistence on making all of them “nice” people, with the exception of one or two, who tend to like each other despite their few foibles. I’d really enjoy living in a town where everyone knows and has friendly relations with each other.

David Nale uses one or two techniques which I ordinarily find irksome; in this case though I think they are appropriate and sharply increase the reader’s interest. He includes short interchapter sidelights which have little to do with the plot, but which are intriguingly fascinating (e.g., the nature of border collies, the history of the Oregon coast, the story of whiskey, etc.). He also introduces each chapter with an italicized literary quotation; in this novel these are very pertinent, although, when encountering this elsewhere I’m reminded of the humorist Max Shulman who, in order to display his feigned sophistication, put completely irrelevant statements before each chapter in his book – “Le plum de ma tante est sur la table -- Voltaire”, “Ouvrez la fenestre - Dumas”, “Le maison est braun - Camus”, etc. In this book though, the statements are certainly in line with the content of the chapter.

In summary, the leader of our group has demonstrated his craftsmanship with a winner, and I look forward to the next one. From the beginning of this one, David has left us with a cliff hanger. What is the source of Sam’s mild post traumatic stress? Just gotta know! .