Title: Assisted Suicide or Murder?
Subtitle: Preston Bourne Saga Begins
Author: Laurn Smith
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Pages: 255
Genre: Fiction / Crime
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop
Hollywood Book Reviews
In Laurn Smith’s novel, Assisted Suicide or Murder?, a lone stranger shows up in a small town in South Carolina. He’s trying to do everything he can to leave his past behind and start a new life. His commitment is total. He foregoes the earning capability he achieved in his previous profession as an engineer for work as a simple handyman and carpenter. He’s more than content to live a simpler life. But life has other plans for Preston Bourne.
Over drinks in a bar with a stranger, who turns out to be a local policeman, Bourne shares the fact that his background includes a stint in the Marines, where he was a sniper and dispatched the enemy without prejudice; realizing that his deadly skills would keep many other Marines from dying. This impromptu meeting with the man called Sergeant Carson foreshadows trouble on the horizon that is as yet unseen. And it remains that way initially as Bourne finds work with a local woman needing various repairs to her home. As he goes about replacing planks in her porch and more, the two begin to find common ground. She’s a counselor with a knack for seeing the inside as well as the outside of people. They both seem to sense a feeling of kindred spirits in their relationship. So much so that before long Bourne is actually unburdening himself about the tragedy that actually brought him to this quiet community. The honesty which they share begins to form a bond in them destined to take their connection to a higher level.
Before long, however, Sergeant Carson, who befriended Bourne initially, takes advantage of that friendship to pull the new man in town into a plot involving the potential killing of the hamlet’s Catholic priest. Bourne’s previous life as a sniper actually makes him the perfect target for Carson’s plot to do away with the priest who could wind up sending the corrupt policeman and his friends to prison. As Bourne learns more about what Carson has in mind, he’s torn between using his skills to participate in what the policeman calls a merciful “assisted suicide,” but what Borne himself sees for what it really is – murder.
Smith weaves his tale initially in first-person narrative from his protagonist, Bourne. But he often segues into third person omnipotence and back again. This mingling of points of view, along with occasional editing shortfalls in tense continuity and repetition, sometimes causes unnecessary speedbumps as his chronicle unfolds. But his enthusiastic pace and his concern for detail keep the reader intimately involved in Bourne’s moral conundrums, his intricate tightrope walk between conspirators and cops, plus his evolving relationship with the woman who starts out as his boss and landlady but soon becomes his soulmate and more. While this is author Smith’s first Bourne adventure, he indicates there are indeed more to come.