The Naturalist

"I had some common sense knocked into me by my ROTC drill instructors, who rightly regarded my intellectual curiosity as a battlefield handicap in most situations."

(page 33)

Book review, Title The Naturalist, Author Andrew Mayne, Rating 2.0,

The Naturalist Andrew Mayne Book review

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The concept of this book was intriguing to me: a scientist, a practicing field biologist, applies his knowledge of biology and physics, and uses his analytical training to solve crimes. This worked quite well in the clever application of some of the science, and the author showed some wit in his observations. However, the overall plot went from unlikely, the usual for a suspense story, to ludicrous. What a real disappointment.

For example, he suspects that a body is buried in the local woods. He searches for small clusters of indigenous plants which include several species, He knows that after a few years, one species of plant will often out-compete other nearby species, and will become dominant. So finding a few flowers of multiple species in one spot suggests recently disturbed soil.

Unfortunately, there was not enough of this; the novel inexorably and unintentionally sailed over-the-top.

When our scientist-detective figures out something useful in the hunt for a murderer, the rural cops of the jurisdiction are portrayed uniformly as stupid, untrained, clueless, malignant, and so on. They routinely reject his information, even after he has actually solved a few crimes. Our scientist-detective gets the crap kicked out of him multiple times, like any noir detective. After he anonymously locates the bodies of several crime victims, our now scientist-detective-hero on his own brings down a serial killer, who is now also hunting him, with no help from – you guessed it – the moronic police.

If you wish to deconstruct a promising premise gone bad, you should read this book.