She Treads Softly: Primary Storm

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Primary Storm

Primary Storm by Brendan DuBois
11/28/23; 256 pages
Severn River Publishing
Lewis Cole #6
(re-release, originally published on 1/1/2006)

Primary Storm by Brendan DuBois is a very highly recommended mystery and the sixth book in the Lewis Cole series.

During the frantic primary season in New Hampshire, apolitical retired Department of Defense analyst and columnist for Shoreline magazine Lewis Cole becomes a suspect in an assassination attempt on Georgian Senator Jackson Hale. The only reason he attended the rally was because his girlfriend Annie Flynn works for Hale's campaign asked him to. Apparently his gun was found at the rally. After video evidence proves his innocence, two things become very clear. The secret service agent who visited him earlier was bogus and someone is trying to use him as a pawn in a ruthless game.

The writing is excellent. The novel is well-paced and the tension rises to a heart-stopping ending. Cole is a great character who is intelligent, perceptive, and resourceful. His friend Felix Tinios makes an appearance as a very good friend. Annie is his love interest but is more a supporting character and a diversion.

DuBois captures the whole frantic atmosphere surrounding the primary season and the pummeling of the residents with political polls and ads in this outing. With each new re-release of the novels in the series, I am enjoying Lewis Cole more and more.

Now that I know that the novels are being re-release, I really appreciated some of Cole's comments from that time. One that especially had me laughing involved his love of reading physical newspapers because you can't take a big computer with you if you want to read in the bathroom. Times have certainly changed since 2006. Cole is introduced to a cell phone for the first time.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Severn River Publishing.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.