'Dead Aim' by Thomas Perry; Random House ($24.95)

'Dead Aim' by Thomas Perry; Random House ($24.95)
By Carol Deptolla
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
(KRT)
In "Dead Aim," the absorbing new thriller from writer Thomas Perry, the idle rich aren't so different from you and me -- provided one of us happens to have a psychopathic blood lust.
There are two kinds of wealthy folks in "Dead Aim," benign and malevolent. Robert Mallon is benign, and he's terribly outnumbered.
Mallon is middle-age and divorced, a rich guy who neither looks nor acts the part. Living quietly in Santa Barbara, he is sucked into a dangerous vortex of escalating violence when, walking as he regularly does along the beach, he saves a drowning young woman.
"She sat up with great effort and stared at him in absolute disbelief, then lay on her stomach, her face pressed into the sand in sorrow.
"He stood up, not knowing where to look. Of course. She had not wanted to be saved. She had been trying to die."
The young woman, who won't divulge her name, again tries to kill herself and this time succeeds, but not before Mallon has become intimately entwined in her life (it took only about an hour, really.). Haunted by the questions of what drove the young woman to kill herself and whether he could have done more to stop her, Mallon throws his time and resources into answering them.
Our protagonist is not a detective, but he has the money to hire one -- an old and dear friend from his brief turn as a parole officer, Lydia Marks. She's a tough bondswoman with a soft spot in her heart for Mallon.
Their incremental discoveries take them across the country and back to California, where a mercenary-entrepreneur who's found a new way to turn a buck operates a self-defense school for anyone with 30 days and 40 grand to burn. Or at least, that's the facade of his sickening enterprise, at which the wealthy and bored can catch a little thrill or avenge a grudge so old their victim might not even remember it.
Mallon's hunt for answers inevitably becomes a hunt for people. By book's end, hunters become the hunted, and it's hard for Mallon to tell if there's anyone left he can trust. The police no longer believe him; they've heard from Mallon one too many times without finding evidence of a crime. He's on his own.
Perry, veteran that he is (among his 13 books are the Edgar-winning "The Butcher's Boy" and the Jane Whitefield series), writes crisply, plainly and tightly, leaving the story plenty of room to run. And run it does; the reader is propelled through the plot like a bullet. The tension never ebbs. And just when a reader might think he has figured out what is going on, Perry pulls the rug out. Again, and then again. It doesn't come off as manipulative, just smart.
What's the old saying? "Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, I'll read every book you write"? Yes, that's it.
Even so, the ending is a little flat. The book at times seems written for Hollywood -- see if you can keep from casting the parts and filming it in your head -- but that's not necessarily a bad thing. All in all, "Dead Aim" is a delight to read -- if an ultimately grisly, disturbing story can be called that.
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(c) 2002, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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