The Mephisto Diary {A Palmer Morel Mystery} : A Palmer Morel Mystery

Rating:
Summary: Not Deep:
Review: Latest in the series finds thirty-nine year old Palmer Morel, tennis pro, now teaching at Ashley Tennis Club located in Charleston, South Carolina. Teaching seniors as well as younger players and happily married to Missy, things are going very well. He especially enjoys certain aspects of his work, like teaching one of his younger students, Miriam "Mimi" Collins.

Thanks to his help, she has moved strongly up the tennis rankings and is now ranked number two locally and at Sate level. The eighteen-year-old star is the pride of the Club. Attractive and talented she should go far. But, unknown to him as he drinks his morning coffee while distant fire and police sirens wail on the morning air, Mimi is dead.

Mimi has been found dead in a second floor room of the neighboring Ashley Plantation thanks to an anonymous phone tip according to a television news report. The news is shocking and soon made worse by the fact that Palmer becomes the number one suspect. Soon, as the media watch intensifies, his wife Missy vanishes. Forced to run to clear his name, Palmer receives help from unlikely sources in his search for the real killer and the dark secrets of, "The Mephisto Diary."

Returning to his usual themes of illicit sex, conspiracy and the depraved rich and famous, the author once again creates a seedy underground world in a major city. This time around it is Charleston where the depraved elite are known by some as "sob's." They run everything, use others for whatever they want, and have set Palmer up to be the fall guy in an elaborate months long plan.

While not as sexually graphic as earlier novels in this series, as well as being better written, there is a crushing familiarity to the work. Once again, the names have been changed for the locations as well as Palmer's women but the core idea is still the same. The conspirator's names have changed but once again, they are rich, depraved and want sex, and don't care how they get about it as part of their thirst for money and power. One gets the sense that if one has read one Palmer Morel novel, one has pretty much read them all.

As such, as a piece of mindless entertainment, it works. The story is interesting and occasionally ventures off in an unexpected ways. With little substance to it, the book is a pleasant diversion and a nice break from other more involved and complicated works.


Book Facts:

The Mephisto Diary
By Larry Rochelle
Zumaya Publications
www.zumayapublications.com
2003
ISBN # 1-894869-75-3
Large Trade Paperback (Other formats available)
$15.00 US (Print Price)