Chadzilla ROARS!!!

Diagnosis Murder #8: The Last Word - by Lee Goldberg

The sociopath serial bomber Carter Sweeney, the man responsible for destroying Community General Hospital, calls for a meeting with Dr. Mark Sloan.  Against his better judgment, and unable to ignore his powerful need to question and investigate, Sloan agrees to the visit.  Sweeney proceeds to taunt Sloan, painting their relationship as one of like minds rather than polar opposites, and offers to take Mark to lunch after he gets out of prison.  Sloan dismisses the invitation as an empty threat and leaves.

But shortly after that meeting Sloan's career, both as a doctor and as an amateur sleuth, is not only ruined, but so are the lives and careers of those closest to him.  Carter Sweeney's offer of lunch was no empty threat.

With Diagnosis Murder #8: The Last Word author Lee Goldberg takes to the status quo of the series the way Godzilla takes to Tokyo.  He leaves no recognizable landmark standing, completely obliterating the status quo.  By the story's end everything and everyone in the life of Dr. Sloan has been destroyed; the only question that remains unanswered is whether or not they will pick up the pieces of their lives and try and rebuild, or will they simply move on to other pastures.  While this makes for a rather powerful ending, it doesn't make for an entertaining piece of a escapist fiction.  This is dark stuff indeed and a major change of pace for the series.  Instead of enjoying the spectacle of Dr. Sloan and friends solving yet another mystery, the reader gets a long and lingering look at the utter destruction of these beloved characters and, because of issues in my personal life, I found it to be a painful and unpleasant reading experience.  I don't think that it's a bad novel, far from it, it's just so different from what has come before that it caught me off guard. 

This time around Lee Goldberg takes the gloves off and does more than put Mark Sloan in a coma, he beats him bloody and senseless.  Watching Sloan rebound and regroup in an atypical manner completes the deconstruction of both the character and the series.  The Last Word truly is.

Diagnosis Murder #7: The Double Life - by Lee Goldberg

Disclaimer:  I am acquainted with Lee Goldberg, and in this book he kills a character that has my name.  (With my permission, of course.)  I do not think that this will keep me from being objective about the book.  In fact, it sets my standards a tad higher.  Think about it, who would want their name appearing in a crappy book?

Before Dr. Mark Sloan has the chance to put all the pieces together and solve yet another mystery that has been vexing him, he is nearly killed in a hit and run incident just outside of Community General Hospital.  After spending three days in a coma, Dr. Sloan awakens to find himself facing another, more personal mystery.

Who is this woman that is claiming to be his wife?

For the seventh book in his series of Diagnosis Murder tie-ins, author Lee Goldberg has concocted a mystery concept so unnerving, it would even give veteran medical thriller writer Robin Cook the willies.  Somebody is murdering people that have survived recent brushes with death.  Sloan knows that the killer is out there, but the concrete evidence of wrong doing is concealed beneath a mountain of statistical data that just as easily disproves that a killer is at work.  What Doc Sloan needs to do is separate the facts from the theory, but he can't figure out where, or even how, to begin doing so.  Couple that with the troubles stemming from his loss of two years of memory and the sudden appearance at his bedside of Dr. Emily Noble, the woman that claims to be his wife, and Doc Sloan has a lot to handle.

But those events are only half of the mystery.  Mark's son Steve, a detective in the LAPD, takes center stage for a time, when he discovers a pattern to the killings that his brilliant father did not.  This causes some interesting dramatic conflict between the two, as Steve sees this investigation as a way to finally work his way out from underneath his father's sizable shadow.  That the trail of clues in Steve's investigation don't match up to the ones that Mark has found brings out some pretty, not to mention petty, negative feelings.

Lee Goldberg has done it again, mixing an emotionally nuanced character study (of Steve Sloan, this time around) with an intricate puzzle of a mystery, where finding out howdunit is just as essential, and entertaining, as finding out whodunit.  Like the best of series fiction, The Double Life both satisfies and leaves the reader hungry for more.

Diagnosis Murder #6: The Dead Letter - by Lee Goldberg

Disclosure: I have both corresponded with and personally met author Lee Goldberg.  I also regularly visit his blog.  Mr. Goldberg has also, with my permission, used my name for a victim in one of his forthcoming Diagnosis Murder novels.  (It's the seventh and yes, I will review it here.)  I don't think any of this clouds my objectivity about whether or not I enjoy one of his books, I just believe in being honest.  (I also like to brag.)

It begins with a murder, but one that Dr. Mark Sloan won't be investigating.  He is too busy trying to save the life of the victim, a man whose affair with his own stepdaughter had been revealed to his wife that very morning.  What intrigues Dr. Sloan most about the tragic event is that the affair had ended the year before.  Why reveal it to the wife now?

The reason for that delayed revelation sits inside a box that the good doctor receives in that day's mail.  Private Investigator Nick Stryker, a disreputable sleazeball that, through circumstance, had aided Sloan in capturing a killer, has gone missing.  Since Stryker had been supplementing his income by blackmailing those he had been hired to investigate, he had left instructions that any and all material regarding those that would most want him dead for doing so be given to Mark Sloan.  As the fallout of Stryker's payback revelations spread through Los Angeles, Dr. Sloan follows the detective's last visible trail.  But what exactly is Sloan searching for?  A missing person, or a murder victim?

The Dead Letter is another winning entry in Lee Goldberg's entertaining line of Diagnosis Murder spin-off novels.  In The Past Tense, the mystery that preceded this one, Goldberg put poor Dr. Sloan through the emotional wringer.  So it is no surprise that The Dead Letter avoids the personal trauma and, instead, places its emphasis on Sloan obsessively sifting through all the red herrings of Stryker's many blackmail schemes, retracing the detective's final investigation, and then trying to...

But why should I spoil the book for you?  The fun of any mystery novel (or romance, or adventure, or suspense for that matter) is in its journey, not its destination.

The Dead Letter makes every effort to make the journey one that is both fun and comfortable.  Goldberg tosses in numerous personal and pop culture in-jokes and/or homages.  He also brings back several key characters from The Shooting Script and The Death Merchant.  While reading those two books isn't essential to enjoying The Dead Letter on its own, it does help create a more textured literary world for Sloan to inhabit.  One that I hope to revisit again and again.

Diagnosis Murder #5: The Past Tense - by Lee Goldberg

While taking a morning stroll on the beach outside of his Malibu home Dr. Mark Sloan discovers the body of a murdered young woman.  Dr. Amanda Bentley's autopsy uncovers a personal message left by the killer that only Doc Sloan could understand.  The killer not only knows Sloan, but also knows about the very first homicide investigation that the amateur detective ever conducted, back in 1962.

The Past Tense spends most of its time in the past, with Sloan himself narrating how he got started on his obsessive hobby (I guess that is what you could call it) of solving murders.  The story also gives the reader a good understanding of the pyschological needs that drive Sloan to do so.  Its 1962 portion is a simply wonderful murder mystery, filled with the to be expected, and delighted in, twists and turns that keep the reader second guessing the author.  However, the contemporary half of the story is less so.  I guessed the identity of the killer the moment the character was introduced into the narrative, but that didn't make the final confrontation between the killer and Sloan any less harrowing.  It's the best in the series to date.  Goldberg also stages a final reveal that, because it is subtly hidden inside a taunting statement that the killer makes to Sloan, is utterly bloodcurdling in its emotional intensity when Sloan later realizes what the killer admitted to doing.  I really don't know how Goldberg could top the emotional power of this entry.

It is nice that Dr. Sloan finally gets his origin story, and I think that readers will no doubt set the book down feeling that they know more about Dr. Mark Sloan as an actual person than before.  I think murder mysteries come in two different styles.  One is puzzle focused, where the solving of an intricate and confusing crime takes center stage.  The other is more character focused, where the reader delights in watching a particular individual solve the crime.  I think that these Diagnosis Murder spin-offs clearly fall in the second category. 

TV-writer/producer-turned-novelist Lee Goldberg was an excellent choice for writing these books, probably due to his actually writing and producing several seasons of the popular television series.  He not only knows exactly how the characters should interact with each other as they piece together the clues to solve the crimes, but he also understands just what it is about them that makes them so appealing as three dimensional characters.  That understanding, coupled with the fun of reading about Doc Sloan doing what he does best, solving crimes and helping the sick and injured in Community General Hospital's ER, will keep me happily reading his Diagnosis Murder mysteries for as long as he is asked to write them.