The
Escape Artist – Brad Meltzer – (Grand Central Publishing)
Bestselling author Brad Meltzer is one of those
interesting characters that bring a masterful set of skills to the table when
tackling writing entertaining reads. He mixes part high octane thriller, part
puzzling mystery and part historical detective; focused on getting even the
minor details correct.
For his latest outing, The Escape Artist, Meltzer utilizes all of his skills to brew up a
highly entertaining read. While some are great thriller writers, not all bring
a level of mystery to their stories like Meltzer can. He has almost
singlehandedly mastered the art of weaving historical artifacts, in this case
on multiple levels including things like magicians in government including
mysterious friends of Harry Houdini, the Army’s Artist-in-Residence (hard to
believe, but very real) and the folks at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware who
play the oh so important role of caring for or military dead and by extension
their families.
Who else but Brad Meltzer could turn an artist and a
mortician into the lead characters in a novel; not only does he make that
happen, but he does it to spectacular result. Nola Brown is a gifted, misfit; a
skilled artist on a mission to uncover the mystery behind plane crash that
supposedly left he for dead in the Alaska wilderness. She is one of those
tortured souls that you can’t help but be compelled to pull for and is drawn in
palpable detail by Meltzer’s skilled hand.
Equally tortured by his past and haunted by the memory
of his dead daughter, Jim Zigarowski, is driven by his ghost to serve the needs
of the military dead and is willing to go to the extreme to do right by them.
Zig and Nola share a past that propels them together in a search for the true
story behind the intrigue surrounding the plane crash. Perfection when it comes
to seating the small details, Meltzer nails it on this one.
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