Title: Shattered Triangle
Author: William P. Messenger
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
ISBN: 978-1612963709
Pages: 355
Genre: Crime / Thriller
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop
Hollywood Book Review
This novel starts and ends with a murder case. However, in between it examines the friendship and lives of three distinctly different individuals who make up the triangle referred to in the author’s title. Giovanni and Giuseppe are twins. Tom is their friend. They grow up together in Southern California, begin to grow apart as each finds his own way in the world, and yet remain connected in ways that will have devastating effects on each of them.
Giovanni is a good, honest, pious lad who becomes infatuated with the Catholic Church and its reverence for God. He eventually enters the priesthood. Giuseppe is a smart, clever, often manipulative young man who pursues a career in the world of business. Tom is a sharp, savvy, occasionally idealistic fellow who becomes a cop. Throughout the initial sections of the novel, author William P. Messenger is intent upon exploring the behavioral and philosophical differences between the three young men. He does so by recounting each one’s history as he shares their development from boys to adolescents to men. Giovanni never really strays from his path. While he practices a more modern form of Catholicism than his elders in the church, he is no less committed to Christianity. Giuseppe, on the other hand, is laser focused on personnel success, which he achieves through entrepreneurship and guile (both in equal measure). Tom begins as a uniformed policeman and later becomes a detective, admittedly at the cost of his marriage. In fact, it is through Tom’s eyes that the book’s narrative unwinds. He tells his story to the reader with a sense of world-weariness, loss, and regret – emotions which are not foreign to a Los Angeles police officer.
The murder that bookends the novel is the killing of Giuseppe’s family. His wife and children are all assassinated in their home while Giuseppe is away. Tom is tasked with not only finding out who would commit such a horrendous act, but also why – and the latter winds up proving not only more difficult, but more diabolical than the former.
Messenger is a good writer, skilled at dissecting thoughts, feelings, and motivations that lead to character traits which provide insights into each principal player’s actions. A tendency toward repetitiveness occasionally slows the pace of his tale but it doesn’t blunt the overall emotional impact of both his story and its surprises. This is a thinking man’s tale that employs nostalgia, ethics, and morality to take readers through an intellectual labyrinth—with the murderer and the motive only revealed at the very end of Shattered Triangle.