Ups and Downs

“Over the years,” writes Jim Winter in January Magazine today, “many writers have set their stories in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Les Roberts is perhaps the best known among them, with his private eye Milan Jacovich series. More recently, Michael Koryta (Sorrow’s Anthem, A Welcome Grave) has taken over with his increasingly strong Lincoln Perry novels. Then of course some hack from Cincinnati put out a small-press novel in 2005 called … Northcoast … um… Oh, never mind.”

More recently, though, Elizabeth Becka, “a former forensics expert for Cuyahoga County,” has made the Forest City her own in a series featuring Evelyn James, a trace-evidence specialist and single mother who first appeared in Becka’s debut novel, Trace Evidence (2005). Laying out the general plot of Becka’s new, second installment in that series, Unknown Means, Winter writes:

James is confronted in these pages with two tough cases. The first, the gruesome murder of Grace Markham, is a locked-room mystery. The dead woman is found strangled and posed in an upright position inside a building with nearly airtight security. No one can get in or out without being seen, by any known means.

No sooner does our heroine finish working that crime scene, in company with her boyfriend, Detective David Milaski, than she is summoned to an industrial accident.

Unfortunately for Evelyn James, this accident occurred 600 feet beneath the bottom of Lake Erie, in a salt mine. It’s perfectly safe, the mine manager assures her. But Jones is claustrophobic. Which is a big problem, because the law requires that the medical examiner arrive at the scene ahead of the inspectors from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The salt mine case, while forcing Jones to face her phobia, also proves to be a welcome distraction from problems she’s having with her daughter, Angel, a headstrong 17-year-old. The locked-room murder, however, serves only to aggravate growing tensions between Jones and Detective Milaski. The couple can’t seem to agree on their living together.

There’s a lot going on in Unknown Means, as the story lines tangle. But Winter says that author Becka manages to keep control over things--and deliver a perspective on Cleveland that is different from what other novelists have offered in the past.

You can read his full review here.