See the review on the Metapsychology Online Reviews website
Reviewer: Harriet Klausner, Top Book Reviewer for Amazon.com
Rating: **** (Four Stars out of Five)
In New York City, Carlos ekes out a below sustenance living as a psychic detective. Though he knows that present day clients pays the bills, Carlos prefers mysteries of the darkened past. So when he read a strange missive on a blackboard, Carlos decides to use his psychic friends starting with Joe Davidson to make contact with Judge Crater, who vanished in the 1930s.
Carlos and friends make contact, but the Judge is not a friendly ghost and is a bit upset by being disturbed. Crater informs Carlos that he will find out the truth of what happened to him, but will also be punished by what he learns. Though concerned because he understands the strength of the other side, Carols begins investigating the life of Judge Joseph Crater before he disappeared. The judge lived a life filled with violence, suffered dual personality disorder and appears to have been the victim of a psychic murder that might end in the present with a second homicide from the afterlife; the target being Carlos.
DUPLICITY is an entertaining tale starring several delightfully way out characters, especially the hero and his trio of psychic pals. Everyone wants a Joe passing a stock market tip to them (adds realistic sense to ESP). The story line is fun to follow as it blends an otherworldly scenario with an urban legend inside a noir. The use of Judge Crater who ranks with Jimmy Hoffa for vanishing acts adds a sense of reality to the plot. Though Carlos' motive to conduct the inquiries seems weird even for a weirdo like him, fans of paranormal mysteries will enjoy the DUPLICITY of life and afterlife that this tale so delightfully provides its audience.
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DUPLICITY, by Charlie H. Johnson, Jr. (Mysteries of the Murders at Mission San Miguel, 1898 and other books set mostly in the 19th century) is the kind of mystery novel that might have resulted from a collaboration between E. L. Doctorow, Stephen King, and Charles Bukowski. There's a bit too much King for my tastes, even if King has now been exalted with a literary award for lifetime achievement.
To enjoy it (as I did), it is necessary to suspend disbelief. After all, some psychic's revelations about ghostly possession may be valid. Carlos, the "psychic detective" narrating his investigation into a long-ago disappearance, does not claim to have psychic powers and acknowledges that most psychics are fakes, but he has consistently gained insights from a few.
The three he involves in his quest for New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater are the novel's most interesting characters: an ex-hippie who works Washington Square each day until ten customers have crossed her palm with five-dollar bills, a refugee from the Soviet Union who conducts seances, and Joe Davidson, who has been focusing his mind-reading ability on those making decisions that will affect stock prices (a pursuit which has atrophied his ability to reach into the past).
At the start of the book (some time during the 1990's), Carlos sees a chalkboard message that reads, “Judge Crater, Please call your office” and he tries to solve the mystery of what happened to the judge who disappeared one day in 1930.
Carlos spent many years avoiding Vietnam by remaining a student and is skilled at library research. This skill and advice from the psychics—who like him or at least care what happens to him—help him solve cases that the police and more conventional private detectives have given up as unsolvable. This allows him to eke out a living. He pays no rent in his office in a mostly abandoned far-downtown building and works only enough to pay the rent and to buy cigarettes and cheap gin (which he drinks straight-up, but at least pours into a glass).
Over the course of the investigation into Judge Crater's disappearance, Carlos sinks deeper into alcoholism, confirming the judgment of the convenience store clerk who sells him gin once or twice a day and whose stinging sarcasm perhaps slows his descent.
Carlos's interest drags the spirit of Judge Crater back to the world. The spirit is angry at being disturbed and tells Carlos he will learn what happened but will suffer for it. Carlos indeed gets his wish to find out what happened back in 1930. Knowledge does not come cheaply and the judge's quasi-schizophrenia infects Carlos.
The novel is a page-turner and fits handily into the detective genre, since it has a knight-errant drop-out from the conventional world glimpsing a lot of official corruption. The voice of the 1930's judge does not ring quite true to me, but my primary frustration is with Carlos's motivation to stir this particular congealed murk. The raison d'être of his investigation supposedly is money, yet he doesn't go collect the money he learns is buried.
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When does an investigator go from being merely dysfunctional to demonically possessed? Charles Johnson’s Duplicity answers: “depends on the demon”.
Carlos is a down and out private investigator specializing in employing psychic and paranormal techniques to find his quarry. He is waylaid by a chalkboard message “Judge Crater. Please call your office.” and undertakes to solve a mystery dating from 1930. Crater was a suspected corrupt judge on New York’s Supreme Court who disappeared without a trace around that time. He was heavily connected with the Tamminy Hall machine politics of that era, and was whispered to have had connections with gangland kingpin Arnold Rothstein. His disappearance has remained unsolved to the present day.
While Carlos does not profess to have any psychic abilities himself, he knows of at least three genuine psychics: Joe, a clairvoyant who makes most of his money by playing the stock market; Borys, a Russian séance channeller with serious health problems; and Maria, an ex-hippie turned gypsy who rations her insights. All three warn him about the dangers of visiting this mystery. But a fortuitous stumbling into a used book clearance bin unearths a journal purportedly written by Crater from the grave to curse Carlos.
By reading the cursed journal, the story of the Judge’s life and eventual death reveal themselves in a haze of gin fuelled hallucinations. Along the way, each of his three friendly psychics tell him that he has been possessed---although it is unclear whether they were referring to the demon of alcoholism or of Judge Crater’s spirit. So that Crater’s downfall is mirrored in Carlo’s six or seven day alcoholic crash that lands him back in a psychiatric hospital.
DUPLICITY is one of those books that takes a while to get started. But about 50 or so pages into the book, once Carlos gets into the curse journal, the book starts to really motor. Truly a mystery I could not put down. When the book gets into the zone, Charles Johnson can really write.
But while the mystery itself is absorbing, there are two things about the book that keep it from being truly outstanding: the reasons why the story dragged at the start, and this whole psychic thing.
The book is really about two characters: Carlos and the schizophrenic Judge Crater. The book is written as a first person narrative from Carlo’s perspective, but he is not a very sympathetic main character. His self-description of his descent into alcoholism is the scariest part of the book because he was such a willing victim. But that doesn’t make him interesting enough. And since the first part of the book is all about him, it drags. A lot. I was also not convinced as to why Carlos took on this investigation in the first place.
In fact, all of the other characters (including the convenience store clerk and the client) are more captivating than Carlos. But they are two dimensional. Joe is omniscient, so why does he want to help Carlos? What was in Maria’s past that she chose to become a gypsy? And what happened to Borys---after channelling Crater, he sort of disappears from p. 100 onwards?
Crater, on the other hand, is fascinating. A Horatio Alger, rising from a poor background, the brilliant, handsome, and socially connected law student rises to a judgeship only to collude with the wrong crowd and end up on the wrong side of an investigation. The author has obviously spent a long time researching this man and the era. A lot of the period comes through the writing, from the style of speech, to the celluloid collars. While the outcome is surely fictional, Johnson’s imagination is firing on all cylinders. Johnson even borrows Stephen King inspired visitations to make the curse more real. The book really gets going when Crater tells his story---so much so that I wonder if the book could have done without Carlos and the whole psychic babble.
Which leads me to the second point: I wanted to know more about the psychics. Johnson only sketches them out. Maria doesn’t really want to see Carlos but is willing to help him. Joe seems to be too perfect. And Borys, with whom Carlos spends the most time, is suddenly pulled out of the story while coughing to death.
On the whole, these were opportunities that could have added a lot more texture to the story.
One small detail about the plot: the NY Supreme Court is a first level court, on par in California with the Superior Court. It is the court of first instance for many criminal trials and civil cases. Cases heard in the NY Supreme Court are appealed to the intermediate level Appellate Division and then ultimately to the highest court called the State Court of Appeals.. So in spite of the title of Supreme Court Judge, Crater would have been considered a lower level judge.
Readers who like anti-heroes, psychologically driven plots, paranormally based investigations, and with an interest in the whole NYC in the 1920’s era will find this book appealing. Other readers may not make it past the first 10 pages. This is not a mystery where clues are found before mysteries are solved. It is essentially two intertwining narratives. In the final analysis, this is not the sort of book that I usually read, but thanks to the review copy that I received from the author, I am glad that I read this book.
It is available through iUniverse, a Print on Demand service that proves that there is a lot of high quality self published fiction that deserves more attention.
See the review on the epinions.com website