AILEEN SCHUMACHER – Affirmative Reaction.

Worldwide, paperback reprint, July 2000. Hardcover edition: Write Way, 1999.

   Over the course of years, many things change, and the ingredients that make up mystery stories are no exception. It’s quite a jump from 1946 to 1999, and there’s an quantum jump of difference between this book and the one just preceding.

   [Note: Referred to in the paragraph above is my review of The Case of the Fan-Dancer’s Horse, by Erle Stanley Gardner, posted here on the M*F blog several weeks back. Fan-Dancer was published in 1946.]

   Let’s get to the story first. Tory Travers is a working engineer. (I’d better add that she’s female.) Trying to uncover the problem the storm drains are having in an abandoned housing development, she discovers a body. The woman worked for the city, as it happens, and she was a notorious opponent of affirmative action. Her past record also includes some political dealings with the project, and immediately popping into everyone’s mind is the fact that the contractor (Hispanic) committed suicide soon after his contract was canceled.

   Detective David Alvarez has run into Tory before. This is not the first body she has found — apparently she has been making a habit of it. This is their third case together. And they are romantically involved, or at least that’s what David Alvarez is hoping. Tory is resisting.

   So. While the sparks between the two fly, they’re also solving the mystery — and the twists and turns their love life takes them is more of a tangle than the trail they follow in uncovering the culprit. There are very few suspects, and the finger soon points to one of them only.

   In the Perry Mason stories, the focus is on whodunit, and nothing else. Where Perry Mason lives, no one knows. Who he’s dating — besides the occasional steak dinner with Della — no one has a clue. If his contrary father comes to visit, as Tory’s does, we never hear of it. Perry with teen-agers underfoot, such as Tory has? Not a chance in the world.

   Things change. And Schumacher’s book is fun to read. More, she sets it up beautifully for the reader to quiver in anticipation while waiting for what’s next in store for these sometimes-yes-sometimes-no lovers — and that’s no small success.

   You’ll notice that I didn’t say much about the detective work, though.

The Tory Travers mysteries. The link leads to Aileen Schumacher’s website, where the information below was obtained:

      Engineered for Murder. Write Way, hc, August 1996; trade ppbk, January 1997.
      Framework for Death. Write Way, hc, 1998; Worldwide, pb, May 2000. 1999 Anthony Award nominee.
      Affirmative Reaction. Write Way, hc, 1999; Worldwide, pb, July 2000.
      Rosewood’s Ashes. Intrigue Press, hc, May 2001; Worldwide, pb, May 2001.