Critic Oline Cogdill recently reviewed John McMahon’s new Head Cases novel, Inside Man, in the South Florida Sun Sentinel and shared that review with us. You can order a signed copy through The Poisoned Pen’s Webstore, https://tinyurl.com/uathfve8. You can also check out Barbara Peters’ interview with McMahon in the video at the end.
Thank you, Oline, for sharing your review.
Book review: Suspenseful ‘Inside Man’ looks at the world in a different way, through patterns and puzzles
‘Inside Man: A Head Cases Novel’ by John McMahon; Minotaur; 400 pages; $29
In John McMahon’s suspenseful “Inside Man” — the second book in his intriguing “Head Cases” series — FBI agent Gardner Camden sees patterns and puzzles to be solved where others just see the ordinary. The way a person’s teeth align, for example, or the angle of cars.
Making sense of shapes and motifs and pulling them into cohesive ideas are part of Gardner’s job as leader of the FBI’s Patterns and Recognition team (PAR), which draws on the analytical strengths of its five investigators. McMahon confidently combines the cerebral with solid action, skimping on neither aspect.
The team’s nickname is “Head Cases,” because they admit they “mostly live in their heads.” Each team member is brilliant yet each knows that they ended up on this team after “dead-end assignments” to which they’d been “exiled after making a mistake elsewhere in the FBI.”
The fictional PAR, based in Miami and Jacksonville, suits Gardner and his team well — though “Inside Man” has them in a bit of a slump. Gardner and Joanne “Shooter” Harris find the body of their confidential informant, Freddie Pecos, in his remote Florida trailer surrounded by weapons and a million in cash. Freddie was the link to a militia group that had been skimming money from the state to buy weapons. “Legal gun purchases, but from an illegal source of income,” says Gardner.
As the team looks for a new informant, “an inside man,” they uncover a link to a string of unsolved missing persons cases in northern Florida.
McMahon shapes a compelling look at law enforcement, assuredly showing that no matter how intelligent people are, mistakes can be made. The PAR team members are not superhuman. They are people with super intellects, but also given to foibles, frailties and fumbles.
“Inside Man” allows glimpses into Gardner’s private life as he balances the personal with the professional. Poignant scenes with Gardner and his 8-year-old daughter, Camila, show a bright child who has the potential to follow in her father’s footsteps. The scenes in which the two work on puzzles, often devising their own, show how they are bonding. Camila might even be smarter than her dad.
McMahon delves into the Florida landscape, mixing the rural with the urban, and real places such as Pembroke Pines and Gainesville with fictional, all of which capture the spirit of the Sunshine State.
Enjoy Barbara Peters’ interview with John McMahon.
