The Big Seven: A Faux Mystery

Now retired, detective Sunderson (introduced in The Great Leader) upgrades a cabin in Michigan's Upper Peninsula to enjoy the trout fishing, only to find that his lunatic neighbors, the gun-and-vodka-fueled Ames family, will shoot at anything, themselves included. Harrison, one of the best, appropriately calls this a "faux" mystery; Ames men are being poisoned and there is a culprit, but the mystery is subordinate to observation and speculation. If Lee Child is a Wellcraft speedboat, Harrison is an excursion boat. Much of Sunderson's musing centers on the seven deadly sins, especially lechery; after only a few chapters the 66-year-old protagonist has "been with" two teenagers, one his adopted daughter. Flawed, he meditates on his imperfections (as he works on an essay about the eighth deadly sin—violence—with help from his ex-wife)—as well as politics, trout, wrongs done Native Americans, history, sex, more sex, and writers on a long spectrum, from Raymond Chandler to Sir Thomas Browne.