As you might expect from a forensics expert (scientific director of the Defense Department's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii (CILHI)) turned mystery author, the core of his story is a 40-year old case of identity. And, because he ties this very cold case concerning a matter of civil rights to the Mississippi killings of ACLU workers it becomes an issue for the FBI.

The agency might not have considered an open John Doe case in Locust County, dating back to 1966, as worth pursuing were it not for special agent Michael Levine falling into such disgrace in the eyes of his superiors. He recognizes the assignment as a way of keeping him away from the comforts of the Memphis home office and from cases more delicate and prominent. It's clearly a measure of exile-penance for a wayward son who doesn't quite qualify for Siberia.

But Levine is determined to re-gain the upper hand by solving the dormant case, and, despite the "jerkwater Crackerland" location and 110 degree daily baking outdoors, he pursues it as if it were downtown D.C. He also knows that he has to be demanding, persistent and in the face of everyone in the town of Split Tree (a town that "somehow... woke up one morning on the wrong side of the century.") who may have had a hand in a 40-year coverup. He starts with recalcitrant, good old boy sheriff Waymond Elmore who clearly wants nothing more than to leave sleeping dogs lie, and his buried brother at peace.

Levine's investigation and his bulldog tenacity isn't going to win him many friends but by one means or another he manages to learn enough from deputy Jimbo Bevins whose been assigned to "hep" him, the county coroner, the undertaker, the librarian, and anyone else who was around in the sixties and survived into the 21st century and can offer a lead to what happened to a body that went missing so long ago.

This relates to a soldier's body unearthed from a bomb crater in Vietnam that can't have been who it was supposed to be. If it's Jimmie Carl Trimble from Split Tree who died a hero's death, Trimble's body needs to be found for modern analysis. And, Levine knows that wherever his investigation and the evidence leads, he'll need the services of a forensic expert the likes of director Robert Dean "Kel" McKelvey who is known for solving complex cases of identification (and, clearly, Holland's alter ego), whom he calls in.

Much of the mystery unfolds within the tension between these two investigators, one of whom brings detailed and authoritative forensic science and methodology into the narrative. But scientific accuracy doesn't a perfect drama make and Holland's first novel isn't as accomplished as his extensive expertise in his field, though it's not a failure either.

It seems to this reader that anyone would be proud to turn in a first novel as good as this, which has all the earmarks of better to come if the author pursues his literary career. He needs some work in the area of character relationships and the critical factor of binding his reader, as in a chemical reaction, to at least one sympathetic figure. Special agent and FBI bad boy Levine comes closest to fullfilling that function here, but the result is diffused by a duel between two active ingredients that should have provided dramatic synergy rather than self-cancelling antagonism, which stuck me as somewhat artificial anyway. And, let's not forget the catalytic effect of emotional involvement. Anger at the agency and fear of death don't quite put you into it.

We're expecting Dr. Holland's next formula to work out all the proper proportions.