The Real Enemy

March 2, 2009
Bookstore owner turned novelist Herman delivers a competent suspense novel that will please fans of police procedurals. After 18 years with the Memphis police, Brill Jessup is almost immediately handed a challenge as new chief of the police force of a small town nestled in the Smoky Mountains. People go missing, one by one, and townsfolk are more than ready to believe that an old legend about vengeful displaced Cherokee accounts for the mystery. Meanwhile Brill's home life is in tatters; she has stayed with her unfaithful husband Kurt for the sake of their daughter but resolutely refuses to forgive despite his remorse. Brill is an intriguing, flawed character and several townspeople supply local color, though the Jessups' neighbors the Masinos seem improbably saintly. A Bible verse about evil forms an epigraph and credibly motivates some action in this police thriller. Some of the exposition is slightly clunky, but on the whole things move along briskly, and the novelist will have readers waiting for the next installment in this trilogy.