Murder one David Hosp’s Dark Harbor is a good start BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

For all the jokes out there about lawyers, they do tend to make good novelists. They have the requisite skills: analytical ability, discipline and, heaven help us, a way with words. Scott Turow fired the starter’s pistol in 1987 with his gripping Presumed Innocent, and the rush to second careers was on. There was John Grisham with the first of many best sellers the next year, followed by David Baldacci, Steve Martini, and countless others eager to trade in litigation for literature, of a sort. There’s nothing like a murder mystery with a touch of insider authenticity to enhance our dream of an orderly world.

The latest to try his hand is Boston lawyer David Hosp, and his is a deft hand indeed. His debut mystery, Dark Harbor, does it right. Not only is this a page-turner but it’s a particularly well-written one. The trouble with the mystery genre is that a careless-plot hack like Grisham racks up more sales and as much positive notice as a character-shaper like Turow. Hosp clearly has taken his inspiration from the likes of the latter.

The story starts with a prologue bang — a terrorist attack on a Boston subway — that isn’t picked up again for many pages. We jump ahead to a year later, when Boston lawyer Scott Finn is more horrified than the rest of the city that a serial killer has taken his seventh victim. A law firm colleague and former lover of Finn’s appears to have been killed by Little Jack, a Jack the Ripper-style psychopath who specializes in slaughtering prostitutes.

As interested as Finn is in solving the crime, in a better position to do so is Boston Detective Lt. Linda Flaherty and her cynical partner Tom Kozlowski. Of course, a love interest develops between the lawyer and the attractive detective, but one of our first indications that this is no run-of-the-mill genre novel is how convincingly this sexual tension is developed. By the end of the novel, when Finn has emerged as a prime suspect, this relationship whipsaws back and forth dizzyingly.

Plausibility is one of the main payoffs in Dark Harbor. We believe that a lawyer from a fancy Boston firm would jump into an investigation into a friend’s death when we learn about his street-tough youth. Orphaned and abused in foster care, the young Finn found his first identity on the Charlestown streets, deciding to turn his life around only after watching a gang pal die. Encounter by encounter, layer by layer, Hosp constructs our understanding of characters. We see Flaherty’s partner, the thuggish Kozlowski, initially as a Neanderthal but eventually as a wily cop who uses being underestimated to his advantage.

Sometimes we get to know these people by examining a setting through their eyes. For example, the waiting room of the governor’s office: "The hardwood floors were covered with a thick Oriental rug, and the heavy drapes let in only a hint of natural light from the tall windows along the wall. In a room like this, it was difficult to keep uncivil thoughts in your head, Flaherty thought. Perhaps that was the point."

The novel unfolds fascinatingly, with surprising plot turns around unexpected corners and the terrorist connection growing naturally out of the story. With plot to spare, before we are halfway through, the serial killer mystery is solved and we are engrossed in the deeper mystery of Finn’s embroilment.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this novel is that, as a job of writing, it doesn’t cut corners with the craftsmanship. If Dark Harbor were a house, you’d know it was put together by a cabinet-maker, not just a carpenter. Genre novels, especially mysteries, can get away with murder (sorry). Since they are plot-propelled, readers can be expected to forgive the occasional (or frequent) implausible motivation, flimsy characterization, or contrived turn of plot. To see a crime writer like Hosp stick to the demands of literate fiction is a wonder to behold. Heavens to Elmore Leonard.

With his first novel, Hosp isn’t absolutely sinless when it comes to those writerly temptations. (His serial killer is conventionally drawn. The author has as much trouble convincing us that the bad guys would frame Finn in a flat-footed way as the lawyer does in convincing his detective love interest.) Fortunately, hopefully, practice makes perfect. We can rest assured that this kickoff novel is the beginning of a long and well-appreciated career in the writing game.

David Hosp will sign copies of Dark Harbor on Friday, June 17 at 7 p.m. at the Other Tiger Bookstore, 90 High Street, in Westerly.