I wrote about the Gray Gaynes series in the past, which stars a New York cop who hides his day, face, and color blindness from the force to investigate his wife’s murder. The first book was a modest masterpiece with a clever solution, while the second was more disappointing. However, that wasn’t enough to make me give up on the series, so I’m returning with reviews of the next two books.
Starting off, we’ve got Old Gray: The Case of the Cold-Blooded Cremation. Taking place around Christmas, Gray is called to an assisted living center where an old man spontaneously combusts. With nothing combustible or incendiary in the room, it’s unclear how he could have been killed. Complicating matters is Gray’s father, called Old Gray, a former con artist recently released from prison who comes to visit his son.
What makes this book stand out most to me is the central cast. The holiday season isn’t nearly as central to the plot as in The Christmas Miracle Crimes, but it is used to develop Gray and his partner Mack, emphasizing their loneliness. There’s some dark comedy in how both have so little going on that a violent death becomes a blessing to them.
Old Gray is a particularly inspired addition to the book. Along with being a very distinct, well-designed character, Old Gray has a brilliant relationship with his son. It’s not a black and white criminal and cop dynamic (one could say it’s GRAY). Both are trying to find a way to maintain their relationship, so watching them disagree is genuinely affecting.
Gray’s father is utilized for some clever twists, which aren’t precisely what you’d expect. Additionally, Old Gray brings his son’s lies to the forefront in an interesting and unexpected way, making one ask who the more dangerous individual is. This is the first time the series really discusses Gray’s deception critically, and it leads to an emotional conclusion.
Unfortunately, the mystery plot didn’t do as much for me. This is Akers’s last attempt at a real impossibility, and it’s just fine. Better than book two, but worse than book one. The missing spark for the inferno is the most underwhelming part. It undermines the impossibility by being a rather obvious overlooked solution rather than anything genuinely clever. The missing fuel is a little strange, as Akers essentially provides two solutions: one is ridiculous but revealed early, and another involves a scientific concept that’s not widely known and that I haven’t verified. It feels like Akers couldn’t decide on which solution to use, so he just went with them both, which feels a bit haphazard.
The other elements of the crime are more clever, such as the culprit’s identity, and there’s a lot of misdirection throughout the story to keep you guessing. Gray comes to the solution through an interesting chain of deductions based on potential motives and how the crime was committed, which is interesting to follow. Overall, the book is competently constructed, but several elements are disappointing and none really stand out. Old Gray definitely carries this story, and I hope he returns even though I expect he won’t.
I’ll admit after two somewhat lackluster showings, I was worried the first book was a fluke, but Gray Matter: The Case of the Autonomous Assassination blew those doubts to smithereens. This book is a blast, and I’m glad I discovered it.
Gray Matter starts with Gray at a fancy restaurant, on a date with a lovely lady—which is going about as well as you’d expect. Then his evening is shattered by a driver ramming his car headlong into a building, declaring someone was trying to kill him, and then telling Gray to get away as the car explodes. Gray takes the case, leading him to a tech company developing the AI for a self-driving car, where he makes a shocking discovery.
Even before the first word, this book has an awesome touch. I mentioned in the last post how Akers creates unique chapter number designs for each book, and this continues into Gray Matter. The chapter numbers are digital displays, like on a bomb, but they count down, with the book ending at chapter zero. How cool is that? I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen that gimmick before, though surely its shown up in some some thriller. Minor nitpick that chapter 0 should have been the killer getting caught, not the brief epilogue, but it’s a cool effect either way.
Anyway, the self-driving car is an awesome gimmick. Gray Matter honestly rivals some Golden Age novels in how it forces you to accept an unbelievable narrative—just trade the local ghost for a homicidal AI. I wouldn’t call it impossible, as every suspect had access to the AI’s code, but Akers ups the insanity to the point that you don’t know what to believe anymore. And besides, how could you program an AI to kill someone without someone noticing the suspicious code?
The solution is incredibly clever. It’s also possible to figure out without any technical knowledge. I didn’t come close, not because of any misdirection. Solving this book requires you to extrapolate from information you aren’t provided but that you know should be there—if you aren’t too caught up in the action to remember. As a result, I felt like an idiot. Akers does a good job at not tipping his hand too much while maintaining adequate clueing.
However, Gray doesn’t actually solve the case through deduction. His team simply uses solid investigative work, but it’s perfectly justified here. He identifies the killer through plain deduction, using a particularly unique clue. One that unfortunately isn’t provided to the reader, but it would have been hard to do so naturally—and would have required specialty knowledge anyway.
Even setting aside the rogue A.I., there’s a lot of twists and turns in this plot, and Akers writes with clear confidence. This is proof that you can write a competent mystery plot without throwing your story back in time a hundred years. Gray Matter is technically sci-fi (while self-driving cars exist, the suspects were actually making an AI you could install into compatible vehicles, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist). However, it’s close enough to reality that it feels distinctly modern, incorporating technology into the puzzle rather than trying to avoid it.
I only have minor criticisms. Most of the suspects are office workers with zero defining characteristics who are interviewed en masse, so it’s hard to identify a killer or even keep them straight. I also wish Gray’s aborted love interest had more of a role, instead of only showing up at the beginning and very end. But these are minor issues.
Gray Matter is stand-alone enough that you could easily start here, or just jump to this book after Gray Tones. It’s got appeal for puzzle mystery fans and casual readers who enjoy thriller elements. On the sentence level, it’s also the most polished book in the Gray Gaynes series, at least compared to the first four.
It sounds like the last two books in the series are more standard crime thriller fair, which is a shame since the fifth book’s synopsis seems ripe for an inverted howdunnit or alibi plot. I’ll still definitely read them, as I’m interested in seeing how the stories conclude, especially since mystery books with whole-series arcs seem hard to come by.
Stephen M. Pierce 