THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 14, 1996 TAG: 9601120707
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
THE FINAL JUDGMENT
RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON
Alfred A. Knopf. 437 pp. $25.
Night dissolved in a swirl of red wine, marijuana and lovemaking by the lake. Then, out of darkness, came a knife and the ragged breaths of death.
For Brett Allen, who went there with her boyfriend, time blurred.
``All at once, the night burst into shards - images without connection, freeze-frames of color amidst a black jumble she could not remember,'' writes Richard North Patterson in The Final Judgment, his latest novel.
Allen's boyfriend lay dead, and at 22, she was his accused murderess. Desperately, she struggled to recapture details always just beyond her consciousness.
Such is the scene that greets readers of this powerful murder mystery, which proves to be so much more. Patterson, who has written seven novels, is also author of the international bestsellers, Degree of Guilt and Eyes of A Child.
Allen claims that she and her boyfriend went to the lake on her grandfather's property to relax. There, her boyfriend begged her to go to California with him to escape his drug supplier who was demanding payment for past debts. They made love, and she left him asleep while she went for a swim. When she returned, she found him choking in his own blood with a knife in his ribs.
Patterson weaves an intriguing psychological drama in which we see Allen's aunt Caroline Masters return home to New Hampshire from the West Coast to act as defense lawyer. Coming home means reopening her past - to her first lover, her half-sister and her father - people she walked away from 20 years earlier after a devastating betrayal of trust.
Taking on the murder case also means jeopardizing a recent nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals. But Masters does it anyway.
Patterson has crafted a page turner in which the clues to the killer are carefully laid out. Yet he masterfully whisks them away almost as soon as they appear - as if they were a mirage all along. He is convincing, compelling and full of surprises. Only at story's end does the reader know the power of his spell.
His characters are rich. Their reflections ring true and the flashbacks that Patterson mingles with the main plot are smooth.
The author loves playing with images and word sounds. In places, his writing is reminiscent of the sensuality, breathlessness and passion of Anais Nin. He also has done his homework, whether on the mechanics of sailing, the psychology of a defense lawyer, or the intricacies of blood evidence.
Masters, whom Patterson fans will recognize as a municipal court judge in Degree of Guilt, is a complex character. In The Final Judgment, she emerges as a woman with skeletons in her closet.
Always, she has tried to put thought above feeling. In these pages, she faces her greatest test. She tells her domineering father, retired judge Channing Masters, that through the years she has learned to keep her own counsel. Clearly she has reason.
``All these years, and you've learned nothing,'' she tells him. ``You think that feelings are an elective - that I elect to feel this way to hurt you. But all that I elected was to survive.''
Despite her 20 years of estrangement, Caroline Masters knows she is and always will be her father's daughter. He defines her, as much as she resents that truth. When he dies, there is little she can say to console her niece.
Patterson has written a brilliant tale. The Final Judgment leaves us satiated but wishing it would never end. MEMO: June Arney is a staff writer. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Patterson
by CNB