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The backstory to THE ART OF DECEPTION, while not as interesting as the novel itself, is more interesting than any number of novels you might pick up at random. Longtime fans of Ridley Pearson will recall his 1988 novel UNDERCURRENTS. What isn't widely known is that Pearson was subsequently contacted by a law enforcement office and advised that the research he had done while writing UNDERCURRENTS was used to solve an actual homicide. Pearson, in turn, has taken that case and based on it THE ART OF DECEPTION. Life imitates art, which imitates life, if you will.
THE ART OF DECEPTION marks the return of Seattle Police forensic psychologist Daphne Mathews and Lieutenant Lou Boldt as well as that of the recently introduced John LaMaoi. THE ART OF DECEPTION begins with the final minutes in the life of Mary-Ann Ridley, a troubled young woman in an abusive relationship. The reader is introduced, by turns, to the primary people in her life at the time of her death: Lanny Neal, her abusive boyfriend, an obnoxious, immediately unlikable sort who is a walking waste of air; and Ferrell Walker, Mary-Ann's brother, who walks a fine line between sanity and obsessive madness, not always successfully. Mathews, still haunted by the suicide of a teenage runaway she had been counseling, throws herself into the investigation.
She is also thrown together with LaMaoi, to whom she feels a surprising but not unwelcome, developing attraction. Walker, however, interjects himself into the middle of the investigation, insisting that Neal is the murderer and sets about attempting to prove it. He also, to Mathews's gradual and uneasy dismay, interjects himself into her life. Seattle and the police department, meanwhile, are reeling over the separate disappearances of two women whose vanishing is so devoid of clues as to make it seem as if they have been plucked off of the face of the earth. When a hotel peeping tom seems to provide a link to the disappearances, Boldt, then LaMaoi and Mathews, are led into Seattle's Underground --- the preserved remnants of the old city buried by the building of the new. The two cases dovetail when Walker demonstrates knowledge of the disappearances. Mathews, accordingly, must attempt to elicit as much as she can from Walker without giving him encouragement, unaware that the closer she gets to solving Ridley's murder the more she places her own life in danger.
Pearson's writing has never been more compelling; his descriptions of Seattle's Underground --- not the limited section displayed during the tours, but the good stuff that the commoners never get to see --- are addictive. One can feel the walls closing in as we follow the protagonists while they pursue their quarry, racing against time. Pearson's villains of the piece are at once highly believable and unbelievably creepy. His descriptions are brief but specific, as if they are nightmares glimpsed through open doors while running down a hallway. Pearson also continues to develop the personalities of his characters, infusing in them a believability that compels the reader to care about them long after the final page is read. Pearson, already an excellent writer, continues to grow and to hone his sharp eye for description to an even finer edge. Those encountering him for the first time in THE ART OF DECEPTION will want to peruse his seductive backlist to see what has gone before while they wait impatiently for what is to come next.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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