The Fallen by T. Jefferson Parker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Although we call ourselves America's Finest City, there is a long tradition of collusion and corruption here in San Diego. Some of it once reached high enough to taint American presidency - Richard Nixon's. Some of it is low and squalid and oddly funny - a mayor in bed with a swindler, councilmen taking bribes from strip-club owners [...]"

I have been a San Diegan since January 1983 so I love reading books that convey the locales, moods, and feel of this beautiful city. T. Jefferson Parker's The Fallen (2006) does that very well. This is a re-read: I am coming back to the novel after about 11 years and liking it a little less than I had then, but I still think it is an outstanding police procedural with a touch of psychological crime drama.

The set-up is outstanding. During a hotel fire Detective Brownlaw attempts to save people trapped in their rooms but a man whom he tries to help throws him out of the hotel window. Thanks to falling on an awning over the hotel entrance Brownlaw survives, just barely, and after a long rehabilitation returns to work. The accident causes him to acquire synesthesia, a neurological condition that produces responses in a different sensory path than the one from which the stimuli come. He sees people voices as colored shapes.

The body of an Internal Affairs cop, who has recently been working for the Ethics Authority Enforcement unit, is found in his car near Cabrillo Bridge in Balboa Park. The cop has been shot at close range. Det. Brownlaw and his partner, McKenzie Cortez, are assigned the case. Virtually each step forward they make in their inquiry widens the scope of the investigation. For instance, the detectives discover a high-class prostitution ring whose clients include top officials from the city government and police force.

The author convincingly shows the deadly embrace between money and government. Elected politicians, city bureaucrats, commissioners, police captains and other notables are involved in elaborate and interlocking schemes of corruption that bring them money, power, and sex with beautiful young women. The corruption schemes increase their chances to win congressional or state assembly or senate seats that will allow them to get even more money, power and sex. Obviously, corruption is the engine that makes world go 'round and occurs whereever people lust for money, power, and sex - meaning everywhere. In this novel the corruption schemes involve underfunding city employees pension fund and tinkering with municipal bond ratings - this is clearly based on factual material; I remember reading about such schemes in the local paper.

The procedural thread in the novel is first-rate but the characterizations of the protagonists - the "good guys," meaning the detectives - lack strength, though. Particularly the portrayal of Det. Cortez is paper-thin and does not read as a real person; the entire thread of her affair with a hi-tech entrepreneur lacks plausibility.

When I read the novel 11 years ago I liked the synesthesia thread. Not any more. I mean synesthesia is obviously a real and fascinating phenomenon (for instance, Nabokov writes about it in Speak, Memory, see the review ), but here the author uses it as a cheap literary device - a lie detector. Uh-oh. Not good.

"The red squares of deception rushed out of him. They were bigger than most I'd seen, and their sides were slightly dipped, concave, [...]"

In 2006 I would have rated the novel with over four stars. Now it is just

Three-and-three-quarter stars.


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