Book Review: Buried Truth
Buried Truth. Gunter Kaesdorf. Cambridge Books, Cambridge, MD, October 2013, Trade Paperback, Kindle, 301 pages.
Review by Sharon Lynn.
Gunter Kaesdorf’s Buried Truth is a generally well-plotted first novel filled with red herrings and copious suspects. Set in a fictional posh North Shore Chicago suburb, it takes the reader on a first-person journey with young attorney Brooke Wheeler.
As Brooke wrestles with memories bubbling to the surface after the death of a former close friend, she finds herself reluctantly digging into a prom night death from her sophomore year in high school. The key link to both deaths is her former lover, Jeremy, but there are also ties to her brother, Tim and a small circle of his high school friends.
When Brooke finds herself and then her brother as murder suspects, she turns to her boss and mentor, Drake, for assistance.
Drake, however, exhibits an on-and-off attitude about helping her. For example, after agreeing to take her on as his own client, she is unable to reach him at a crucial moment in her investigation. Later, she learns he’s been “out of the office” at the golf course. On another occasion, he accompanies her to Jeremy’s house, but instead of going inside with her, as he promised, Drake mysteriously disappears into the bushes, leaving Brooke to confront Jeremy alone.
Kaesdorf’s own background as a lawyer ensures legal elements of the story ring true, and he clearly knows the neighborhoods in which he sets the tale. It’s easy to visualize the mansions only a short distance from Lake Michigan and the upscale shopping districts in which some scenes take place.
The story he writes is closer to soft-boiled than to cozy and could be considered a chick-lit mystery. The first-person perspective and lighter tone contribute to its chummy “between friends” feel. Consider this scene: fairly early in the story, after Brooke has missed a few days of work looking into her friend’s death, she tells us, “Drake didn’t mind my taking a day or two off as long as the work got done, but my absence certainly didn’t dissuade him from adding to my pile. Who else was going to do the work, the janitor? … I dove into my work pile, pouring out every ounce of energy I still had. I used my sharp analytical skills to buzz-saw my way through so much of it, that by noon I felt I’d earned a reward: an all expenses paid trip to the nearby Starbucks.”
Brooke’s slightly flippant attitude seems at odds with her role as sometimes-suspect, sometimes-investigator, but doesn’t quite place her in the same category as Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum. Kaesdorf’s generally well-off cast of characters doesn’t provide the kind of comic relief that Evanovich’s New Jersey working class population does.
Despite inconsistent support from her mentor, harassment from a local homicide detective, eerie warnings from Jeremy’s housekeeper, and secrets neither her brother nor his friends reveal willingly, Brooke finally discovers the “buried truth.” Readers may be surprised by what she finds because, by the end of the novel, Kaesdorf will have led them down more than a few false trails.