SEVEN WAYS TO DIE by William Diehl with Kenneth John Atchity – Review
William Diehl is a master storyteller who unfortunately died in 2006 before he could complete Seven Ways to Die,
his tenth novel. Before his death he was able to write 412 manuscript
pages of the novel, which was completed by Kenneth John Atchity, a
friend and fellow writer, with the help of extensive story notes and
outlines that were left behind. Diehl’s bestselling crime novels
included Sharky’s Machine (1978) and Thai Horse (1987), and I can see why he was, and continues to be, so popular. Seven Ways to Die
is a delicious mixture of police procedural, forensics and character
study, with an unexpected and healthy dose of sex thrown in.
Micah Cody is a Nez Perce Indian homicide
detective with a pony tail and an uncanny ability to communicate with
animals. As a main character he’s got it all: good looks, mystery, and
the ability to get into the mind of a serial killer. He’s formed a
subgroup of the NYPD called the Tactical Assistant Squad (TAZ) and
assembled the best of the best to help him solve homicides, including a
computer whiz, a forensic pathologist, and an assistant DA. He also has a
white German shepherd named Charley with “the best nose in the
business” that accompanies Cody on investigations, and indeed plays an
important part in solving this mystery.
TAZ is called in to investigate the
murder of a successful stock broker named Raymond Handley. They are
first to arrive on the scene and discover the victim dead, naked and
tied to a chair. His throat is slashed but there isn’t a drop of blood
to be found. Back at headquarters, the team gets to work trying to
determine cause of death, and they discover something chilling. Although
Handley appears to have died from having his neck slashed, they
discover the underlying and true cause of death: drug-induced heart
failure and de-sanguination. This mislead occurs in subsequent murders,
and the TAZ crew realizes that they have a serial killer on their hands.
In the midst of TAZ trying to get a lead
on the killer, we are introduced to Ward Hamilton, a pompous and
flamboyant true crime writer who convinces his editor to let him write a
series of articles about unsolved cases in the NYPD. Having failed at
writing novels, Hamilton feels the need to redeem himself and make a
comeback with the articles, which will culminate in a book. And he’s
found his first subject for the project: the case of a young dancer
named Melinda Cramer, whose apparent suicide was never solved by Cody
and his team. Hamilton is a truly unlikable character, and as he tries
to get the Cramer case file from Cody to start his research, we get
glimpses into his unsavory life as a playboy that he shares with his
equally unlikable lover Victoria.
When a second body turns up naked and
tied to a chair, the hunt intensifies to find the killer before he or
she can strike again. Along with the growing suspense and the terror of
trying to stop a serial killer, Diehl introduces a love interest for
Cody, a woman named Amelie who coincidentally lives in the apartment
across from Handley’s. The instant attraction between the two was a
nice break from the tension, and in a particularly sweet scene, Cody
takes Amelie with him to the zoo in Central Park where he demonstrates
his rapport with the zoo’s resident wolves.
Diehl is adept at pacing, and he manages
to keep the large cast of characters under control while the action
escalates toward the final showdown between Cody and the killer. There
are all sorts of wonderful elements in Seven Ways to Die
that give what could have been a conventional murder mystery extra
depth. One of my favorites was the role that dogs and wolves played in
the story. During a flashback we are introduced to Cody as a boy in the
Nez Perce tribe, who is bitten by a rattlesnake while walking through
the desert. Near death and hallucinating, he awakens to find a white
wolf next to him, licking the venom from the snakebite. In a brilliant
parallel, Charley the German shepherd saves Cody’s life by licking
poison out of his wound after he is struck by a poisoned arrow.
There really isn’t anything to not like about Seven Ways to Die.
I thought the dialog was first-rate, and with snappy lines like “Cody
knew his goose was cooked” I was charmed from page one. There has been a
bit of flap from other reviewers over the sex scene in chapter 38,
which does seem to come out of nowhere. But because of the way the
bodies are found, the team determines that the killer is almost
certainly a sex addict, so the graphic scene didn’t really feel
out-of-place to me. Diehl and Atchity also neatly tie in the title of
the book, with the forensic description of the seven ways homicide
victims are killed, which figures into the murders themselves. The only
story element that didn’t ring true for me was the believability that
the killer had the intelligence and resources to pull off the highly
complicated murders, after learning the killer’s identity. But that was
a small thing that really didn’t detract from the rest of the story.
It was a pleasure to read the book of a
seasoned and talented writer, and the work that Atchity did to finish it
off was brilliant.
You can purchase Seven Ways to Die from Barnes & Noble or Amazon.
Russell Andrews: First, my friend and mentor, the writer William Goldman, called me up to tell me about an obituary that appeared in the New York Times. It turned out that everything in the obit was untrue—and the Times later printed a retraction. Next, as a book editor, I had worked with President Jimmy Carter, who wrote a book for me about aging. He talked a lot about the huge problems that would arise because people kept living longer, like Social Security running out. Third, I became interested in the billions of dollars that were being made by drug companies with products geared for staying young, everything from Viagra to hair restoration. I began to concoct a conspiracy between huge drug companies and the U.S. government—and eventually tied that in to what I'd learned from President Carter and the strange Times obituary.