BARBARA D’AMATO – The Hands of Healing Murder. Charter, paperback original, 1980.

   For a first novel, and a paperback original at that, this book turns out to have a surprising number of things going for it. It also succeeds in going against the current flow of action/suspense/horror fiction in being a decently presented work of detective fiction. (Note the emphasis.)

   The detective is Dr. Gerritt DeGraaf, a pathologist who happens to be there at the scene of the first murder. He also happens to be a close friend of Inspector Craddock, and this allows him to channel his bubbling enthusiasm for life and the challenge of the impossible into solving the case as well.

   The victim dies in a room where eight other people are playing duplicate bridge, although not in full view of any of them. The fingerprints on the murder weapon belong to none of them, however, and as it happens, no one else could have entered the room. In short, the impossible has happened.

   Some interesting discussion of the technology of fingerprints eventually takes place. A question of morality also comes up – that which underlies the constant pr0blem faced by doctors whenever they must decide who it is who lives and who will die in the confrontation of both limited time and limited resources.

   The story is obviously intelligently written, if not always imaginatively. It is Craddock who tells the story, and sometimes this is awkward, as there are parts of it which he can tell only as hearsay. It is also not quite clear when DeGraaf has the solution, and the hint of late-blooming romance (storywise) seems oddly out of place.

   Overall, however, a cozy, comfortable sort of detective story, which, coincidentally enough, I was exactly in the mood for when I read it. It’s certainly an above average debut, and one definitely not to be missed if Agatha Christie, for example, is your idea of a perfect “10.”

Rating: B plus.

–Very slightly revised from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 5, No. 2, March/April 1981.

   

UPDATE: There was to be only one more case to be solved by Dr. DeGraaf, that being The Eyes on Utopia Murders (Charter, 1981). Most of Barbara D’Amato’s mystery fiction came in the form of her Cat Marsala series, she being an investigative reporter based in Chicago, of which there were eight novels and one short story.