Book Review: The Fly on the Wall by Tony Hillerman

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: John Cotton; thrilling plot

Cons: Dated; other characters weak; uneven pacing, especially at beginning

The Bottom Line:

A reporter’s death

Some weak points but book still good

Standalone thriller

When a Reporter Becomes the Story

As much as I can, I try to read an author’s books in order.  For a series, it’s nice to see characters grow and change.  But for standalones like Tony Hillerman’s The Fly on the Wall?  I think it’s just me giving into my OCD.

This book originally came out in 1971, and was the second of Hillerman’s mystery novels to be published.  Since he is best known for his books set in the Navaho reservation, this is quite the departure.  None of his series characters are here, and the majority of this political thriller takes place in an unnamed midwestern capital city (although I have my suspicions that it might be supposed to be Illinois).

Our main character is John Cotton, a political reporter covering the state capital and all the going ons there for an afternoon newspaper.  He’s a columnist, and since his paper is an afternoon edition, he rarely gets to cover any breaking news.  So he’s intrigued when a fellow reporter comes into the press room one night claiming he’s landed The Story of his career and promising to share bits with John.

A few minutes later, that fellow reporter is dead, having fallen down the capital’s rotunda.  True, the man was drunk, but John isn’t quite sure it was an accident.  As he starts to figure out what the story the man was working on was, another reporter dies.  Is there a connection?

After an initial strong opening, the pacing becomes a bit uneven.  It doesn’t help that the book is really about government corruption, and some of those details get a bit too minutia for us to truly care about.  On the other hand, things really do pick up in the second half, with two fantastically suspenseful cat and mouse chase sequences that had me on the edge of my seat.

The characters could also have been a little sharper.  We do get to know John Cotton fairly well, and I liked the evolution we saw in his character.  However, many of the rest aren’t given enough page time to become true characters, even those who play a big part of the story.

There’s a reason I mentioned this book originally came out in 1971 when I started the review.  It is incredibly dated at this point.  I was almost laughing at the amounts of money that were being discussed.  Plus, there’s how John does his job (typewriter, anyone?).  That’s not a reason to skip the book, but be prepared for that when you sit down to read it.

I listened to the audio version, as read by Erik Bergmann.  He did a great job bringing the story to life without getting in the way of the words.

I realize as I’m writing this that it sounds like I didn’t enjoy the book.  That’s completely untrue.  I did enjoy it despite the weaknesses.  When the political thriller really kicks in, it is hard to put it down.  There are some interesting questions about ethics in reporting that I wish reporters would wrestle over again.

So if you’ve skipping this standalone, I highly recommend you pick up The Fly on the Wall.  Overall, you’ll be glad you gave it a chance.