Mourners by Bill Pronzini
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"[...] his strange pattern of conduct had escalated at about the same time as the murder. It could be a coincidence, of course. It could also be that the crime has somehow triggered his mourner obsession, dormant or subdued in him since his childhood trauma."

Mourners (2006) is the 33rd book (by my own, obviously incorrect count) in the famous series featuring the unnamed detective. I definitely prefer much earlier novels in the series: they do not have the feel of a literary soap opera where in each installment we meet the same characters and participate in their everyday lives and emotional relationships. To paraphrase the famous proverb, I believe that "familiarity breeds boredom." I would much prefer the consecutive novels to be stripped of the characters of Kerry, Tamara, and Jake Runyon, or at least - if the author wants to mention them - have their appearances reduced to incidental. Obviously, my preferences are not in the mainstream.

The detective watches Mr. Troxell, a well-off financial consultant, attend a funeral in the Bay Area. Just the day before Troxell watched two other funerals. The detective has been hired by the fervent mourner's wife, alarmed by significant changes in her husband's behavior. We learn that Troxell underwent a deeply traumatic experience in his childhood. The setup of the novel is promising and I hoped that Pronzini would display his usual solid handling of the story.

The plot indeed becomes quite interesting when Troxell is seen in a cemetery placing a wreath on the grave of a woman who had recently been a victim of rape and murder. Naturally, the investigation focuses on exploring possible connections. Alas, Mr. Pronzini decides to switch to the soap opera mode and the reader is treated to several side threads. Two of them feature Kerry (the detective's wife) and Jack Runyon (an operative in the detective's firm) both of whom face really serious life problems. In another thread, written in a slightly comedic mood, we follow the tribulations of Tamara (the de facto boss in the detective's firm), who seems to have been dumped by her boyfriend. There are references to Kerry's distant past and the detective has a failed "birds-and-bees" conversation with his daughter. Readers who thrive on conceptual continuity of novels in a series will love this stuff.

Luckily for me, the denouement avoids sharp twists and turns, yet it might be the reason that it feels too anticlimactic. I intensely dislike two items in the novel. While the whole Russ Dancer's thread is annoyingly cliché the gratuitous inclusion of Tamara's incident with Mr. Clement is even worse - it would take a much better writer to successfully pull it off.

I have one more of the new installments of the series on my shelf, but then I will return to the older ones. Reading about the same characters over and over again, may be a harmless way of spending time but I prefer to spend it with a new set of characters in each book.

Two stars.

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