'Damage Control'
by Robert Dugoni
Warner, 406 pp., $24.99
Bad news, they say, comes in threes. That's certainly true for Dana Hill, a talented young lawyer at a prestigious Seattle law firm, who juggles a young daughter who needs her attention, a demanding and arrogant boss and a self-absorbed husband. But for Hill, the star of "Damage Control," the new murder mystery from Seattle author Robert Dugoni, those challenges are the least of it. She is diagnosed with breast cancer just as she discovers her husband is having an affair. Worse, her brother is found brutally murdered, the apparent victim of a burglary gone wrong.
Rather than wallow in self-pity, Hill instead throws herself into investigating the murder. Hill's investigation parallels the announcement of the presidential ambitions of Washington Sen. Robert Meyers. A Democratic candidate with chiseled good looks and a stunningly beautiful wife at his side, seeking a "Return to Camelot," Meyers has a hidden dark side.
It's not hard to foresee the inevitable collision of these two storylines. Before long, Hill comes face to snout with Meyers and justice is served on several levels.
Dugoni's first novel, "The Jury Master," was a terrific debut. "Damage Control," unfortunately, offers little of the same. The book is set in Seattle with a vengeance. Seattle is not just background scenery but almost a subplot of the novel, with detailed descriptions of every bridge, island and overpass. This is boosterism run amok; it's hard to imagine a book set elsewhere would bother with all the local geography.
More fundamentally, the novel is predictable and filled with cartoonish characters. Meyers' good looks/beautiful wife/Kennedyesque style is achingly stereotypical, and he is so plainly the villain that he all but sports a waxed mustache from the moment he struts on stage. The novel similarly suffers from over-the-top mysticism in the form of an implausible shamanlike jewelry designer who helps Hill solve the murder. For a writer of Dugoni's talent, the novel is a disappointing encore.
