Sullivan's Justice

Sullivan’s Justice by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

Nancy Taylor Rosenberg is not an author that is necessarily familiar to the masses.  I came across a novel by her about 15 years ago called “Trial By Fire” and really enjoyed it.  A decade and a half later, I picked up my second book by her, this one, and was a bit underwhelmed.

This is one of those “crime” novels.  Our hero is Carolyn Sullivan who is a probation officer somewhere in California.  All of these crime novels tend to be quite similar.  They seem to always revolve around those in the law enforcement community trying to make the world a safer place.  They’re all overworked, underpaid, drink a lot of bad coffee, and don’t seem to have any time for a home life - so everyone is divorced or single.  Sullivan isn’t any different, but she’s committed, she’s driven, she’s very good at what she does, and she’s trying her best to be a good single mother of two teenagers.

The actual plot, or storyline here is pretty satisfactory, and I must say that Rosenberg did keep me turning pages to find out what happened next.  My problem with this book was the overall sleaze factor.  I’ve never read a book that contained so much sex, drugs, warped people, sex, adults abused as children, suicides, and more sex.  It became pretty nauseating after awhile.  This book reminded me of a trashy pay-cable show that only comes on late at night that is 60 minutes long that contained 20 minutes of plot and 40 minutes of sex.

Let’s just take one (of many) of our characters in this story as a case study.  Melody Asher is a voluptuous blonde who’s romantically (well, “sexually” would be a better word) involved with Carolyn Sullivan’s brother.  I wouldn’t exactly call them a “couple”, but they do have a lot of.....well....sex.  Melody has problems.  Big problems.  It turns out that she’s very smart, yet plays the “dumb blonde” so that men will do anything for her.  How smart?  Apparently she has an advance degree in mathematics or something.  Yet based on her actions and dialogue, she doesn’t even seem capable to serve an order of wings at Hooters.  You see, not only does she videotape all of her sexual encounters at her house and then “get off” on watching them later, but she somehow manages to break into the house of every lover she’s ever had (and there are many), and install an intricate video system so she can watch her lovers have sex with “others”.  How anyone can actually pull something off like this is beyond me.  Of course, she can then use these tapes as blackmail etc. etc.  Like every (and I do mean “every”) other character in the book, Melody has personal issues, so we’re supposed to somehow feel sorry for this monster, and the book moves too quickly between having us despise her and then supposed to “root” for her.  I still couldn’t figure out at the end of this story what I was supposed to feel.

Did I mention there was a lot of sex in this book?  Well, it seems the author has to somehow insert irrelevant details about the character’s perversions and fetishes every chance she can, even though they don’t have the slightest relevance to the story.  Do we really need to know that one of Sullivan’s partners, an older divorced man, needs to watch pornography every now and then to “make sure everything is still working”?  Or, is it really necessary to tell the story about when Sullivan was an adolescent, she “blossomed over night” but her mother was too busy to notice and buy her a bra so the young girl had to manufacture one herself out of a garter belt??  So, yes, this book is chocked full of sleazy instances such as these.

I must also say that I was dissatisfied with the conclusion of the book.  The ending seemed to be a bit far fetched, and Rosenberg tries to tie up too many loose ends too quickly without giving the conclusions much thought.  It’s almost as if she was under a tight deadline to finish the book, so she haphazardly throws in a few sentences that are supposed to “wrap up” major details of the story.  In addition, there are too many unanswered questions at the end as well in terms of character motivation and separating truth from innuendo.  Sometimes, a good story will do this to you to get you to think or to motivate discussion.  In this case, the story was so lame that it just left you frustrated.

I believe Rosenberg has written a few other “Sullivan” books, yet I doubt I’ll be reading them anytime soon.  I would recommend “Trial By Fire” by this author, however.  I would hope the majority of her work is more reminiscent of that one as opposed to this one.