Eight of Swords
David Skibbins
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Thomas Dunne Books
ISBN: 0312339062

Warren Ritter's Tarot Card reading customer is abducted & her mother murdered. Now he must come out of hiding to find the kidnapped girl & the killer.

Warren Ritter, one of his many names, has been on the run for 30 years. It began in the 1960s when, as leader of the radical student Underground Weathermen, the bomb factory he was working in blew up, & while no body was found, his clothes & IDs were, & his parents & sister believed him dead.

Far from the Pearly Gates, Warren disappeared into a new life, changing location & identification every few years until he landed on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley & settled into a semblance of a normal life... except somewhere along the way he acquired a bipolar affliction which requires medication, a facile skill at reading people & Tarot cards which becomes uncomfortably accurate, & a therapist who doesn't let him get away with anything.

Then one spring afternoon, at his usual spot on The Ave, pretty teenage Heather Wellington stops at his card table for a reading, & her ten card spread raises the hackles on Warren's neck. Still, it's just a reading... until he hears on tv that she's been kidnapped. That's when his conscience begins to play havoc with his perfect, anonymous, private life.

What sends him to his therapist, however, is after his sister, who hasn't seen him in three decades, accosts him on The Ave & all of a sudden he's having to deal with emotions he's long ago shut down. Worse, Tara hits him with a ‘below-the-belt’ blow - he's about to become a grandfather. That sends him tumbling back into memories of his long-lost love life.

Heather's mother finds Warren's business card in her daughter's abandoned handbag & makes contact. Unfortunately, he knows little that will ease her anguish. Later she calls him to say she's got some news, & they make plans to meet. With all his finely-tuned alarm bells ringing their heads off, Warren walks right into a murder scene. Now why would anyone want Heather's mother dead?

Against his better judgement & his predilection for staying out of other people's lives, Warren hires Max & his investigation team recommended by Sally McLaughlin, his computer hacker friend, who just happens to be a paraplegic, to find who snatched Heather, why her former boyfriend is such a jerk, why her current one is such a drama queen, & why her stepfather is such a high-class fraud.

Meanwhile, Warren's Tarot teacher turns up at his card table & tells him to follow the Greed card. So who was Heather's father?

& along with Heather's abduction & her mother's murder, Warren must also deal with a humorless FBI agent, a sympathetic police detective, & his libido, which Sally is succesfully arousing.

Warren's exciting & often dangerous quest through the streets of Berkeley, some of them quite mean, is more than just a suspenseful tale, it's also a moving portrait of a man returning to the world on which he'd turned his back.

What I particularly like about David Skibbins' writing is that Warren grabs you from page one with his idiosyncratic take on today & yesteryear, his left-of-center philosophies, & his self-deprecating humor, all of which come through loud & clear...

“...I go through two to three books a week... You'd think libraries would provide the perfect solution for me. Thousands of books just waiting to be read. But I hate libraries like I hate zoos. Books are defaced, marked, sorted, and trapped on their shelves, prisoners forever. Books need to be owned, cherished, and then given away as gifts. Not ensnared in indentured servitude until they fall apart.” (pp. 124-5)

In my time I've lived near Telegraph Avenue, meandered around “Beserkeley”, & known a militant student or three, so Warren & his life & times has a familiarity I relished, & that David Skibbins is as madly in love with the Bay Area as I was, adds an atmospheric flavor.

Eight of Swords is a thrilling debut action adventure mystery - one Baby Boomers will crow about - & given David Skibbins' bio, you know he's a writer who thinks about things, & isn't shy about having his hero do the same.

Winner of St. Martin's 2004 Best Traditional Mystery Contest, & continuing the Tarot card motif Eight of Swords will be followed by High Priestess & Sun.
(11/06/05)

Rebecca