Newsroom Adversaries

Chain of Fools: A Donald Strachey Mystery by Richard Stevenson (Harrington Park Press, 184 pp., paperback)

In Richard Stevenson's Donald Strachey mystery, Chain of Fools, two newspaper chains, described as "the good chain and the bad chain," are bidding on the Edensburg Herald, an upstate New York daily. The family that owns the paper is divided on which chain should acquire it.

Janet Osborne, its editor and lesbian daughter of the Herald's late publisher, brings Strachey, an Albany, N.Y., private investigator and his partner, Timothy Callahan, a state legislative aide, into the situation. She favors the good chain that would uphold the paper's traditional standards and liberal philosophy.

Her gay brother Eric, also pro-good chain and a "famous eco-freak and prize-winning nature writer," is dead. She and his lover, Eldon "Skeeter" McCaslin (hospitalized with an AIDS-related illness), suspect that Eric was murdered. Relates one character: "Eric's death means one less vote for selling the Herald to a quality newspaper chain at a loss to the family of eight million dollars." And to make matters worse, an attempt has been made on Janet's life. Could one of the conservative, pro-bad chain family members be responsible? Strachey's job is to find out before another life is lost and before the paper falls into irresponsible hands.

As a longtime mystery fan, I prefer the hard-boiled, two-fisted, testosterone-drenched, noirish storytelling exemplified by John Morgan Wilson in his series of mysteries featuring Benjamin Justice, a gay former newspaperman ousted from journalism because of a Jayson Blair/Janet Cooke-like plagiarism scandal.

To be fair, I have not read the other Strachey books. But this one is as tame as a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew book.

Chain of Fools does have splashes of humor like this observation by Strachey: "In some of the venues my line of work had taken me into, 'Brandy' was more likely to be the name of a transvestite I was questioning than a beverage being served."
I have one major complaint--the reader never gets to see the day-to-day workings of the Herald. Janet Osborne is never shown at work. For someone who edits a highly regarded paper, she spends a lot of time out of the office. How does she manage to maintain the paper's integrity if she's hardly ever there?

All in all, Chain of Fools is a quick, pleasurable read. its main premise is what happens to family values and relationships when greed and materialism enter the picture. It is a book especially suited to readers who like the violence and mayhem kept to a minimum. There is nothing in its pages that will disturb one's sleep.