Orion Rising, by Terence Faherty.
St. Martin’s Press, 1999. $18.95 - 256 pages.

To stumble across an author who not only brings great pleasure but has already published five, six, seven books is, for the veteran bibliophile, the big thrill, the shot out of the circus canon, the winning lottery ticket. For days and sometimes months at a time, devout readers ramble through the library or a bookshop, picking up a book at random, putting it down, picking up another, and putting it down, always with a soft sigh of frustration. Then bam! zap! One bright day we pick up a book, lightning strikes, we instantly connect, and then we realize that the author also has several other books behind him. This treasure trove fills us with such sheer bliss that an independent observer might wonder whether we had failed to comply with various ordinances regarding narcotics.

But this bibliomanic bliss has a dark, reckless side. Like a chocolate lover off on a toot in Wal-Mart on the day after Valentine’s, this joyful bibliophile may throw caution to the wind and stuff himself full of the printed word. He reads his newfound books after waking and before sleeping; he paws the books at the table, dripping mustard across the pages; he steals moments from work and family to read; he reads while brushing his teeth. I know of one man who even reads while driving when this frenzy is upon him; fortunately, he lives in rural Georgia and so remains a danger only to himself and the afforested roadside.

Such a mood - regard it as a peculiar madness, akin to that ecstatic trance reached by certain dancing, drunken Greeks in ancient religious ceremonies - lowered its boom on me two weeks ago. It was a Wednesday afternoon, cool and cloudy, and the last thing I remember is picking up The Lost Keats by Terence Faherty at the Asheville Public Library. Less than a week later, I woke with a headache brought on by eyestrain and five Terence Faherety novels stacked on the shelf by my bedside. The experience resembled one of those blackouts suffered by some alcoholics; I knew where I parked my car every night, sure, but I went to work one morning with my hair uncombed, and I have no recollection whatsoever of promising my oldest son back-to-back soccer camps of his choice this summer.

OK, OK, I exaggerate, but only a little. Terence Faherty is not a great writer, he may not even be a good writer, but I don’t particularly care a hoot one way or the other. He made me read, and read, and then read some more. That’s what men and women who write detective novels are paid to do, and Faherty does it better than most.

Faherty’s detective, Owen Keane, appeals to me on every level. Owen Keane looks for the Great Mystery in every little mystery, the final mystery that depends on faith. He often bumbles his way toward his solutions, he has a wry sense of humor, and like most of us, he solves mysteries by thinking and talking rather than by DNA samples and fingerprints. Keane works all sorts of different jobs, from liquor store clerk to legal researcher, lives a somewhat impoverished existence, and generally solves the mysteries brought to him by his friends.

Take Orion Rising, for example, Faherty’s latest Owen Keane story. Keane is drawn into investigating a murder that occurred in Boston when Keane and his friends were students at Boston College. Someone had murdered a young nurse that year, and now another murder, that of James Courtney Murray, causes the old case to be reopened. In a series of interviews and with the assistance of an old friend, Keane eventually cracks the case. Although justice is eventually done, Orion Rising does not end altogether happily; there is a suddent death that shocks the reader.

Orion Rising does end on a touching note. Owen Keane lies dreaming of his old love, Mary Fitzgerald, who had died years before in an automobile accident. She appears in his dream and begins speaking with Owen:

“You’ll be all right. You’ll wake up now and you’ll be able to go on.
“Go where?”
“You know, Owen. You don’t have to ask anyone else. Your life has always been your own choice.” She gently placed our joined hands on my heart.
I tried to tighten my grip on her hand and felt it slip away. “You’re a dream, aren’t you? I’m just dreaming you.”
“You always did,” she said. Then she kissed me good-bye.

Besides being a romantic and a dreamer, Owen Keane also possesses an understanding of the human heart that helps him to solve mysteries. In The Lost Keats, for example, he traces a crime of murder to the killer by looking again and again for the killer’s motive. In Die Dreaming, which presents a murder based on an event 20 years in the past - Keane clearly understands the push of the past into the present, the refusal of the past to keep silence - Keane tells us that “... for me, solving a mystery always meant telling stories, sharing all or part of what I’d learned with the people who had helped me learn it.” We see the Keane method here, telling stories, learning about people from people and then passing that knowledge to still other people, understanding that the most mysterious place in the universe is the human heart.

Besides his seven Owen Keane books, Faherty has also written at least two detective novels set in Hollywood in the 1940s. His books may be ordered through your local bookshop or found in the local library. If you live in Haywood or Buncombe counties, however, leave Deadstick alone; I’ve got first dibs on that one.
(Jeff Minick owns Saints and Scholars bookstore on Main Street in Waynesville.)

 

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