Review: Panic Walks Alone

Panic Walks Alone by William L. Rivera
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When an insurance executive, Paul Langley, at West Coast Life Insurance Company is murdered in his office, the police are baffled. As far as they're concerned, it was "wrong place, wrong time," but the head of the Board of Directors isn't so sure. Convinced that someone on the Board hated Langley enough to want him dead, Jan Oosting calls in Turo Bironico, an investigative consultant, to look over the dead man's work and find out who on the board may have done in Langley.

While Turo digs around, trying to figure out who might have had it in for Langley, he finds his personal life thrown out of balance by his deepening relationship with Sue Driscoll, personal assistant to an up and coming politician. Both of them are strong and independent, and neither of them are sure how to handle the complexities of their relationship and the demands that relationship is starting to make on their professional lives.

Panic Walks Alone, by William L. Rivera, is a little bit of a mixed bag. The A plot, involving the murdered executive, is a neatly crafted who-dunnit. There are ample suspects, each with their own suspicious quirks and potential motives. Despite being published in '76, there's a strong pulp sensibility to the whole case; there are multiple murders, threats, daring escapes, gun fights, and some two-fisted action to keep the pace clipping along. For a guy who is more at home in a board room than a barroom, Turo handles himself with the kind of right hook and daring-do that would make the hardest of hard-boiled detectives nod in appreciation.

The B plot, however, is a little bit undercooked. A lot of Turo's relationship woes come across as an anti-feminist polemic; the frequency and heavy-handedness of the diatribes feels very out of place in an otherwise light work. The portrayal of "enlightened" women is grossly unfair; the relationship between Sue and Turo has been developing slowly over the course of months, and the major tension in the relationship comes from Sue's desire to keep working on the political campaign; she worries that she won't be able to work and have a serious relationship at the same time (this, despite the fact that neither she nor turo have any desire for kids). Turo spends large chunks of the book considering ending things with Sue because he worries they've become too close to each other, but he becomes enraged to the point of violence by the idea that she might end their relationship. This, after he sleeps with at least two other women in the span of a week. Luckily, the B plot only comprises a small portion of the book.

Overall, a fun mid-range pulp that ends up being weighed down needlessly by petty jabs at ideaology.



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