"Twisted Perception" by Bob Avey

Lovers of a good mystery will find plenty in TWISTED PERCEPTION by Bob Avey to satisfy their appetites.  It starts off with the basic elements of what constitutes a description of the genre: an unnamed assailant, apparently devoid of reality, has murdered a young woman; Tulsa police detective Kenny Elliot, a five-year veteran of such investigations, is called upon to deduce the killer’s identity and bring him to justice.

Elliot surveys the crime scene.  He interviews the witnesses.  He tracks down every lead; he calls upon every person with even the most remote of connections.  It is true investigation earnestly seeking to unravel the mystery of Lagayle Zimmerman’s death, wife of Harrison Zimmerman of Zimmerman-Caldwell Petroleum.  Avey writes this aspect of the tale well enough, the reader is carried alongside Elliot as he investigates to unravel the complex circumstances revolving around the murder.

Avey also provides ample number of suspects to consider – most prominently, Elliot himself. 

That's the generalized mystery at play -- a genuine conundrum worthy the brilliant deductive mind of a Sherlock Holmes.  Yet what faces Kenny Elliot is something that stretches him beyond the single victim found in Tulsa.  There is fear this first murder is somehow connected to the grizzly deaths of two high school friends.  A fancy necklace dangles from the inside mirror of the car where Lagayle Zimmerman’s body is found – just like the class ring attached to the gold chain hanging from a mirror in the car of that fateful night.

It was nine years earlier, in Elliot's small hometown of Porter Oklahoma, his high school friends, Johnnie Alexander and Marcia Barnes are brutally murdered in Johnnie's Mustang.  Consensus in Porter was Eliot, a football hero, was the killer.  Kenny's girlfriend at the time, Carmen Garcia, gave him an alibi, testifying he was with her the entire night.  The Porter chief of police, Charlie Johnson, a man like an uncle to Kenny, never came up with any other suspects, leaving Kenny on Porter's scum-of-the-world list forever.  Despite his triumphs on the football field having made him a town legend, he was now the one everyone in Porter loathed, viewing him as the town killer who got away with murder.

Somehow, the murder in Tulsa is connected to the murders in Porter, and probably the murders in Stillwater, which seemed to follow Kenny in his playing football for Oklahoma State.

                                                        

What is possibly the most haunting in Kenny's mind, though Carmen tells the police he was with her the night Johnnie and Marcia were killed, is he personally cannot remember any details of what happened -- though the dreams continue to haunt him.

TWISTED PERCEPTION is a good read.  Kenny Elliot is a compelling character to follow, a tragic hero to watch fight himself through the ordeal collapsing in around him.  The investigation he pursues is solid – one more adept than myself at deducing mysteries  would undoubtedly be able to put all the pieces into place as Elliot does the ground work.  His digging into his past is what captivated me, making this novel more than just another mystery: his retreading the streets of Porter resonated with an authenticity to which I could easily relate – having grown up in a similar environment.  Personally, for me, it was like walking through my own hometown streets.

The only aspect of TWISTED PERCEPTION I thought fell short was the emotional characteristics Avey tried to infuse into the tale.  Facing his past, confronting the girlfriend he left behind (and who married another), the emotions of that experience were not conveyed as realistically as the investigation Elliot pursues.  Much of it can be the juxtaposition of Elliot’s strengths against his weaknesses.  He is displayed with such strength and vigor in fighting through the virulent animosity of his hometown, along with the battling a police department in Tulsa who half believes in his guilt, when there is a requirement for him exude the real emotion of all this weight bearing heavily upon his shoulders, it doesn’t come across as believable.

In other words, the character of Kenny Elliot is excellent on the action and the investigation of the mystery, but the drama of facing his continued love for his high school girlfriend, the angst of his hometown, and the distrust of the policemen he works with – that particular facet of TWISTED PERCEPTION comes up short.

But then, TWISTED PERCEPTION is a mystery – not a Shakespearean drama.  Its intent is to grab the intrigue of the mind with the mysterious wonder of this initial murder and pull a reader along to the conclusion, which is as twisted as the title suggests.  What Elliot finally discovers is bizarre, but sadly believable in our current day and age – which gives everyone something to think about.