Fascinating Authors

Book Review
by
John H. Manhold

Web of Secrets ISBN 9781603181242, L&L Dreamspell, Paperback, 195 pages, $15.95, by Ernesto Patino.

Web of Secrets is an interesting tale involving the racial problem still existent at the turn of the century. The story begins with a short flashback, and then proceeds to a happily married woman receiving a telephone call that provides a changing situation. The caller intimates he has pertinent facts about the woman’s birth parents – she had been adopted at a very early age – and gives her instructions on how to obtain the material. Her attempt leads to other instructions that eventually lead to a revelation that her father may have been black and her mother white and that the person will divulge these facts unless she delivers $4000. She discusses the matter with a close friend who recommends she see a Private Investigator – a former FBI agent who has a fine reputation in dealing with missing person cases.

Sarah, the blackmailed woman hires Joe Coopersmith, the P.I., to attempt to solve the case. Joe, is a competent, nice guy who lost a wife, to whom he was utterly devoted, several years before. As an aside to the story, Joe finds one of the contacts in the story to be of enough interest to approach a relationship that no doubt will develop in future  stories.

With Joe’s involvement, the plot thickens and the search takes a number of turns that involve leakage of the unfortunate parental material to a more malicious source. The persons involved are numerous and include newly discovered sisters and brothers, a Brother James who runs a mission in a distressed area, a will-o-the-wisp wino, a person of importance who also is a homeless person and just as illusive, a Cuban Mafia type, an internecine ‘fixer’, and members of the Miccosukee Indian Tribe indigenous to the Florida Everglades, and other interesting characters.

The telling of the story presents a realistic look at the manner in which an investigator not only uses his networking acquaintances to obtain material, but provides reciprocal, and tangential services as well; e.g., aid in discovering the probable reason for the suicide of a young woman; aiding the personal relationship between a father and son in a dissolving family. The author’s knowledge of the FBI also is demonstrated by addition of a note of clarification by Coopersmith that he was not an Agent per se, but rather an investigative assistant, because, although eminently qualified, he could not pass the physical required to be designated an actual Agent.

Ernesto Patino has written a missing persons story that moves along very well and in a most enjoyable manner, also providing a most interesting ending.