Last year, I stumbled into Iris Johansen’s Eve Duncan series. Little did I know, I had plopped myself right into not only a new book series, but a trilogy within that series. Nevertheless, I was enthralled by Duncan, a forensic sculptor, someone who helps law enforcement with a 3D rendering of someone’s face using their skull to identify the person, and the people she surrounded herself with, including Joe Quinn, a former Navy SEAL, FBI agent, and present Atlanta Police Department officer, and Bonnie’s spirit, her murdered 7-year-old (Bonnie sort of helps Duncan in Duncan’s dreams). After reading the the last two books of the trilogy (ugh, I know), I was at a used book sale and grabbed a few more Johansen books, not realizing I picked up 1998’s The Face of Deception, the first in the Duncan series. Such a great happenstance! And aside from it being an opportunity to read Duncan’s “origin story,” as it were, it was also amusing to see the tight bond between Duncan and Quinn, knowing that by the trilogy I read, they were married. You could obviously see the seeds of that here.
In The Face of Deception, a tech mogul and billionaire, John Logan, asks for Duncan’s help on a project he’s being purposefully evasive about. He throws a red herring at her that is actually foreshadowing: He wants her to sculpt the presumed skull of JFK, who wasn’t murdered in an assassination plot — that was just his body double, all presidents have them, right? (No, that doesn’t actually happen in real life.) As I said, misdirection, but foreshadowing because the fictional president in Johansen’s story, Ben Chadbourne, was murdered by the First Lady, Lisa, and Ben’s body double is pretending to be the president and in practice, this makes Lisa the shadow president. A member of the Secret Service, and a nasty, ambitious assassin are doing her bidding to close up loose ends, like Logan nosing around, and acquiring Duncan’s services.
I thought Logan wasn’t tapped as well as he could have been in terms of a.) his actual tech skills, presumably, and b.) his motivation for uncovering the conspiracy, although Johansen alludes to that with Duncan thinking it’s at first politically motivated since Logan’s a Republican and this would smear a Democratic president, and later, it’s thought maybe he is just a patriotic guy. I think honing in on that would have been nice to round out Logan’s character and the plotting. Still, the interplay between the billionaire and the steadfast, principled Duncan was interesting, as she can’t help her curiosity when it comes to sculpting skulls.
A little death and mayhem follows, as the Secret Service agent and the assassin try to thwart Duncan, Logan, Logan’s bodyguard, Duncan’s DNA friend, and of course, Quinn. The latter was much more interesting in this book than even the two books of the trilogy I read, primarily because he was able to do more, albeit, he gets shot in the process. This pushes Duncan to the edge of her sanity because of people being killed or nearly killed due to something she’s involved in. Remember, she’s still recovering from the murder of her daughter, whose body was never recovered, mind you. That line gets close to making Duncan seem like the classic damsel in distress that Logan and Quinn need to help, but in the end, Duncan finds her resolve and tricks the First Lady into confessing everything on tape. Yes, the plot is ridiculous that it would even happen, or that the First Lady herself would agree to a meeting with Duncan and then keep incriminating herself on tape once she becomes aware of said tape, or that Logan and Duncan are surprised by the media fallout and/or thinking it’ll blow over in a manner of a few weeks, but hey, that’s why it’s fiction! I enjoyed it. It was solid Sunday reading fun.
If you like solid Sunday reading fun, then I’d recommend this. Having seen Bones, but not read Kathy Reichs’ books, Duncan reminds me of Bones, which actually started a year prior in 1997. So, if you like Bones and/or Reichs’ books, that also gives you some guide as to whether you’d enjoy Johansen’s series with Duncan. I also thought it was cute that Johansen teased more Duncan books because she couldn’t put that story to rest yet, and she’s gone on to write 30 more over the course of 25 years. Incredible.
Milam's Musings 