Full Circle

Rating:
Summary: Full Circle
Review: This is the fifth novel that Wilcox wrote featuring Alan Bernhardt, struggling playwright and theatre director, moonlighting as a private-eye and usually getting himself into all sorts of danger. The books, billed as mysteries, are really more suspenseful than mysterious. In this one, Alan Bernhardt is contacted by wealthy, wheelchair-bound billionaire Raymond DuBois, who wants Alan to dispose of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of stolen art, before the FBI closes in. The trick is, several people, working in several competitive little groups, have all been busy tracking the artwork--we're talking a Renoir, a van Gogh, and more--and they would have no scruples about lifting the paintings from Alan's dead body. Alan goes from worrying about DuBois setting him up for some kind of sting, where he takes the fall for handling a lot of hot artwork, to worrying about whether he can keep himself, his lover Paula, and his assistant on the case, Tate, alive while trading the paintings for cash. Naturally, there comes a point where everyone converges on the fourteen invaluable paintings, with intent to walk away with them...and, if possible, walk away with the sackful of money being offered for them too! It would be quite a payday, if not for Alan, then maybe for a shady insurance agent who is out of contact with his employers so he can clean up all by himself, a mystery-woman and her smart-aleck right-hand man (who did not have a problem shooting their way closer and closer to the paintings, before they learned of Alan Bernhardt's involvement), or even Mr. DuBois's loyal chauffeur, James, whom Alan starts to suspect is running his own sting, but hiding it well behind cap and poker-face.

I wish it had been a better book, but author Wilcox never seemed to break through a certain threshold when it came to these Alan Bernhardt crime novels. It's fun rooting for Bernhardt because, as soon as he takes a case, it turns out he's outnumbered, and outgunned, and biting off way more than he can chew. If it's not the Mob--like in the previous, and best, Bernhardt book, Find Her A Grave--it's several cadres of murderous art-thieves who specialize in the double-cross. But the story stays too simple in Full Circle, containing a few too many scenes of strategizing and other conversation. Wilcox presents his always readable style, and is successful at making you wonder just how it's all going to turn out, but when all is said and done, we needed more complications and danger throughout to make this memorable. Just once I would have liked to see Alan Bernhardt really put through the wringer. Full Circle should have gone into overdrive at some point, and it didn't. However, the moral dilemmas Bernhardt must work through, as he deals with stolen paintings that he participates in hiding from the FBI, do make him seem like a real guy in a crazy situation. I just wish it had gotten crazier.