James Siegel, Deceit

Deceit

James Siegel

Warner, Aug 2006, $24.99

ISBN: 0446531863

Reporter Tom Valle worked the big time until he got lazy and began making up his stories until he was caught; branded a cheat and liar, and his career died. He finds multitask-work at the Littleton Journal in Littleton, California, one hundred and fifty three miles from Los Angeles. Tom knows his chances of returning from the shunning and exile is slim as only an incredible story could make him acceptable again, but in Littleton there is nothing beyond the ordinary as he learned in his two years of banishment.

Driver Dennis White of Iowa drifts across to the other side leading to a deadly crash; the other driver Edward Crannel of Ohio survives. At the Muhammad Alley bowling lanes, Tom obtains information about the deceased from the "medical examiner" including a castration shocker. Tom ponders the odds of a Hawkeye and a Buckeye crashing in the isolated California desert. Following up on what he learned at bowling, Tom finds out that Dennis White is alive in Iowa. The reporter makes further inquiries and begins to piece together a conspiracy that he cannot believe is real so why would anyone else accept the word of a defrocked journalist.

Tom's hopes for a second chance for redemption make for a fine thriller as he has the story that could give it to him but his creditability is so negative that no one would believe him. The locals add humor and color as they accept Tom for what he is, an outcast who would never have found the town on a map; that is why the sheriff calls him Lucas (read to understand the reference). The fun story line is filled with twists and turns yet the audience ironically seems one step ahead of the reporter as Tom struggles with fact being weirder than his "short story" fictions that cost him his place at the top of pyramid.

Harriet Klausner