'Work' bleeds with mundane

Blood Work

Little, Brown and Company

The only mystery in Michael Connelly's "Blood Work" is how it managed to be published. The novel is a long, poorly written cliché.

"Blood Work" traces the investigations of Terrel McCaleb, a retired detective convalescing from a recent heart transplant.

McCaleb leaves retirement, against his better judgment and his doctor's advice, at the goading of a beautiful woman whose dead sister's donated heart saved his life. What ensues is a tedious, sometimes laughable investigation, the ending of which can be predicted after the first five chapters of the book.

What makes "Blood Work" most annoying is the way the investigation unfolds. Everything revolves around Terrel McCaleb alone. Every other detective is too inept to follow the simplest lead or do the average day-to-day investigation.

Connelly portrays the LAPD in a manner very similar to the Keystone Cops; at one point McCaleb even a hypnotizes someone.

Connelly's heavy reliance on McCaleb's skills further stretch the thin credibility of this weak mystery.

The mystery isn't all that is predictable; the characters are not surprising either. "Blood Work" is full of one dimensional stock characters.

Terrel McCaleb is the perfect detective with a heart of gold. Although he is still convalescing from a recent heart transplant, he is able to get into gun fights, take in large amounts of caffeine and lead a murder investigation without many problems.

His eventual love interest, Graciela Rivers, is the generic, breath-taking beauty. His first encounter with her seems to be borrowed directly from Dick Tracy or Sam Spade. McCaleb's driver, Lockridge, is the generic sidekick who obediently does whatever McCaleb commands him to do.

All of the detectives who help our hero are intelligent and thorough. All the detectives that don't are mean-spirited idiots. The good guys are angels and the bad guys do not possess a single redeeming quality.

Everything in the work is black and white, except for the imagery. The imagery is a forced shade of red-blood red.

Connelly's imagery is the only comic relief to be found in the work.

In one passage, Connelly writes: "The moon was like a balloon being kept aloft by children poking at it with sticks."

This isn't the only image that doesn't make sense, but one of the few which thankfully doesn't include red.

Connelly paints nearly everything he can blood red regardless of how appropriate it is. At times, this ridiculous imagery makes otherwise serious situations sound feel like scenes from "Silk Stalkings."

Yet the dialogue of "Blood Work" can't quite compare with the witty banter of the detectives of "Silk Stalkings."

Connelly doesn't always match character's emotions with their words.

At times ,the dialogue is further stinted by the omission of contractions and other elements of natural speech.

This is made worse by the constant use of the phrase "blood work."

It seems that Connelly tried to cram "blood work" into nearly every speech he could. One character uses the expression three times in a small speech, representing the weakness of the dialogue and making the novel even more ridiculous.

"Blood Work" contains no surprises. The characters all are generic and idiotic. The dialogue and other interactions are ridiculous at best.

The novel's only redeeming feature is that it is just a merciful 391 pages long.

At one point in the work, a minor character sums up the problems with detective works; the perceptive comment clearly sums up "Blood Work" as well.

"Everything is ordered, good and bad clearly defined, the bad guy always gets what he deserves, the hero shines, no loose ends."

- Mahesh Joshi

04-08-98