A writer has every right to get "literary." And readers (like me) have every right, in a murder mystery yarn, to skip over long, elaborate, descriptive passages that slow the action down in the pursuit of high-minded fiction. My defense against what I consider self-indulgence is to skip or spot read. I most admire those mystery writers who run a tight and well paced drama. I look for suspense and a string of events that serve the central story with a disciplined approach.

With that off my chest, I have to give Mark Mills', a screenwriter ("The Reckoning") considerable praise for sticking closely to his essential story and the two characters who drive it.

Conrad Labarde, a local Basque whaler with a rich tradition of living off the sea is a man with an unbreakable will and need for justice. When the dead body of rich Lillian Wallace turns up in one of his fishing nets, his pain multiplies his horror. It's a personal loss, Wallace having been his secret lover across the bounds of class and society. We can be sure this laconic individualist will see to it that the killer pays his full debt of responsibility for what he knows was a hideous crime.

His methodical tracking is apart from the local police investigation -- one that all too readily accepts the theory that the death, gruesome though it might have been, was the result of an accident. But not all cops agree. Deputy Chief Tom Hollis thinks otherwise and won't let it go despite the politics involved.

The two parallel lines of determined investigation cross without each tracker complementing the other in any intended way. But one thing becomes clear: the comfortable rich of 1947 Amagansett in Long island will learn that privileges of wealth and influence don't include murder.

A haunting first novel, weaving together brutal death amidst love and tragic miscalculation. There may be more description here than I felt needed, but I wouldn't have stopped reading it for a year's supply of whale meat.