Pun Salad

Corollary to the famous Chekhov's Gun rule: If you put a Winnebago on the top floor of a Manhattan brownstone in Chapter Six, it won't just be sitting there in Chapter Sixty-Seven.

Slight spoiler there, sorry.

This book made the WSJ reviewer's list of Best Mysteries of 2021, and it's not bad, especially if you're looking for a mindless vacation read. I was unaware of the author, Linwood Barclay, until now; shows what I know. According to the book cover, he's a "New York Times Bestselling Author", and he has over two dozen books to his credit. I thought his prose went a little heavy on the clichés and unlikely plot twists and devices. (Like the Winnebago ex Machina.) But more power to him.

It opens with the cold-blooded murder of a phone scammer by an efficient pair of hired killers. Then jumps to a doctor's office where a tech billionaire, Miles Cookson, is getting some bad news about a debilitating genetic disease that will kill him in the not too distant future. As it turns out, he donated sperm decades ago, and is now worried that he's provided a death sentence for a bunch of unknown offspring!

But it turns out they're already being killed by those thugs. Hm. Who's behind that? And can Miles (along with a foul-mouthed waitress he picks up along the way) figure things out before it's too late? Or at least before the body count rises much higher?

Lots of fun, surprising twists.