Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 20, 1990 TAG: 9005200254
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO BOOK PAGE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Passion Play" is a surprisingly good first novel. In fact, Edward Blain manages to do something in it I wouldn't have thought possible. While obeying all of the rules of the genre, he manages to create a genuinely involving and suspenseful "classic" mystery of the Agatha Christie school.
The novel opens in New York City at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. In the dark balcony of a theater, a man snaps the neck of a young male prostitute. The only clue he leaves is a receipt from the bookstore at the Montpelier School for Boys, an exclusive prep school in rural Virginia.
We soon learn that virtually everyone at the school was in New York over the weekend or could have been there, including one of the novel's protagonists, English teacher Benjamin Warden. He's a poet who becomes so distracted when he's inspired that he virtually goes into a fugue state. His short-tempered colleague, Daniel Farnham, is also a possible candidate. So are other members of the faculty when someone starts murdering students.
The novel is most successful when it sticks closest to the daily life and rhythms of a private school. Blain is the chairman of the English department at Woodberry Forest School. He knows that world and he recreates it convincingly. When his point of view shifts to one of the students, Thomas Boatwright, he hits all the right emotional notes.
Blain also captures the jealousies and intrigues that flourish in a closed academic community. His characters have more depth than the stereotypes that readers expect to find in this kind of "guilty vicarage." The most interesting facet of the story is the relationship between Warden and his young wife, who is suffering from an undiagnosed illness. Their struggle has a strong emotional resonance that echoes through the rest of the novel. Blain's use of a production of Shakespeare's "Othello" as a mirror to his own plot is inspired.
One criticism:
A little dramatic foreshadowing goes a long way and "Passion Play" overindulges. Toward the end, it seems that almost every scene ends with an ominous sentence. It's an obvious device. Blain may be a bit too clever in his footwork, casting suspicion on so many characters and sustaining it for so long, but that side of the story is effective. He keeps the reader guessing and doesn't need that extra rhetorical boost.
All in all, this one is a believable, engrossing mystery. Blain has done a fine, even brilliant job of making the madness, anger and pain these characters suffer seem real. He knows the form well enough to play fair - he's even worked in a secret tunnel - but he's not afraid to take chances. Even the most devoted fan of this kind of fiction will be surprised by some of the things that happen in the novel.
"Passion Play" is an impressive debut. Highly recommended.
by CNB