(Yes, I'm afraid this means two more book reviews are coming.)
Title: Blood Contest
Author: P.K. Abbott
Date: 2021
Publisher: Pudgy Abbot
ISBN: 978-1737424529
Quote: "Had he not been lost in his conversation...he would have noticed when she lowered her package and pointed the pistol at his head."
This is not a cozy detective story. It's a hard-boiled story about the emotions men do manage to keep pretty much covered up, because the emotions are so terrible. Its main character still has nightmares about having cinnutted a murder for no reason except that he was still in the Army and the lieutenant ordered him to do it. Now he's a police detective assigned to cover the murder of a politician's son. Some evidence points to a man the protagonist encountered, in the war, and can't believe to have been either smart or tough enough to have done it. The boss orders him to get busy and find proof of the story the detective can't believe...
But there's a major flaw in the plot. Other murders take place in this book. They may or may not be connected. They include the murder of two young men, a homosexual couple though one is married to a woman, apparently for political reasons: if a character's going to run for office as a Republican, having tha-a-a-at known about his son would ruin his campaign, the murderer pleads in his own defense. It's trendy at the moment to pretend that Republican might do anything that is bad, but it's not true. The fact is that Rs accepted a vice-president who admitted being the father of a homosexual activist. They adored Ronald Reagan, whose son Ron was married but was far from being the example of a young person who settles down in a nice steady job that pays enough to support parents if the Social Security system collapses, a matter of concern for many Rs in 1980. They tolerated Gerald Ford's wife's and W Bush's daughters' drunkenness. They reelected W Bush in spite of his brother's divorce and business scandals. Some Rs turned against John McCain, but not because his daughter publicly discussed "crazy sex." Some distrusted Sarah Palin, but most didn't list Bristol's "having to get married" as a reason. The fact is that Republicans are about as likely as Democrats are to shrug and dismiss whatever's said about the close relatives of a person they believe to be qualified for a job. A R front-runner with a homosexual son would stand a chance in the Bible Belt, where the very nicest families have children who just won't come to church any more.
Some Rs do, of course, want Hunter Biden locked up, but that's a question of whether Rs believe Hunter has done things for which anyone should be locked up, or is just another dumb addict who's not hit the bottom yet and wouldn't be helped by drug rehab.
And what do politicians--of either party--do when a child seems to be a disgrace to per parents? Well, President Kennedy had a sister who wasn't very bright or discreet, and their parents put her in an institution for life. President Ford sent his wife for rehab, which had the effect of getting her to admit she was an alcoholic and dedicate her time and money to helping other alcoholics. President Carter actually trusted his brother with sensitive jobs before repeating the strategy that had worked so well for his predecessor; reprotedly it worked for him too. President Reagan initiated the tradition, now venerable, of just ignoring not only Ron's less than exemplary behavior but Patti Davis's deliberately oppositional behavior. That strategy served the Bushes, Vice-President Cheney, President Biden, and to a much lesser degree President Obama well too. We all have relatives who we wish were only distant cousins, and if anything the electorate respect politicians more for coping loyally with their relatives' awfulness, whatever form it takes. Exceptions might be made for child molesting, cannibalism, or high treason but Mary Cheney is the living prof that they're not made for homosexuality.
So the solution to this mystery rests not on the idea that a murderer might be a Republican--which is valid, some are--but on a whopping Big Lie, and that's hard to forgive. If an ambitious and cowardly man failed to prosecute the murderer of a son who was a violent criminal, that would be a believable story. If he fails to prosecute the murderer of a son who was merely having a homosexual fling, that's just plain old partisan political slander.
This web site did once display a story in which a child's alleged father--obviously not her real father--is barking mad and shows it by calling for a revival of a lot of bad ideas taken from the D party bosses' platform (though not necessarily supported by D voters). Yes. And I reserve the right to write fiction in which an individual character becomes violent due to an obsession with a belief that immigrants are committing crimes or that all homosexuals are child molesters, too. There are wingnut political positions in the real world, and there are wingnuts. There could even be characters who say, as it might be in moments of exasperation, that the only reason why people won't vote for Candidate Tackypants is racism; that happens in the real world. But whole political parties are not made up entirely of wingnuts, nor do serious politicians in any party believe that they are. That carries a novel into La-La Land where the author might as well have Superman fly in and save the damsel in distress.
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