The Killing of Mindi Quintana presents a scenario we see in the newspapers every day: a murder has occurred, and the press is far more concerned with the murderer than the victim.  The accused gets to make his or her case to the press; he turns up on Larry King or Oprah, interviews present them in the best possible light and reporters are willing to kiss up to a killer for a chance at an exclusive or a book deal.  Defense attorneys use the media to try their case before the accused ever sets foot in a courtroom and district attorneys use high-profile cases to launch political careers.  Lost in all this is the victim; if they are mentioned at all, it is only when some lurid detail from their past is dredged.  But what if someone decided they weren’t going to play the game? That’s the case study Jeffrey A. Cohen presents in his first novel.We know from the title of the book that a murder will occur at some point in this story, but there is a long build-up.  We get to know the characters very well: Mindi is an aspiring writer and editor at a literary magazine.  Her best friend, Lisa, is an artist.  Freddy, our eventual murderer, is also an aspiring writer and a man being slowly crushed by a job that he hates.  We get acquainted with our attorneys, Philip and Michael, their love lives, their careers and their ambitions.  It’s a longer build up than in most crime novels, and really sucks you in — you keep hoping that something is going to delay the inevitable.  You know where the danger lies, but you have no way to warn Mindi.

Freddy’s job as the manager of the China department at a high-end department store is mind-numbingly dull.  He’s good at it, but he hates the fact that he’s good at it.  He really wants to think of himself as a writer, and he’s ashamed of being so good at something so mundane.  He has an extraordinary talent for building displays that dazzle his customers and are the envy of the other departments, but he takes no pleasure in it.  His job is handled with particular humor — there are no corporate sharks more vicious than these guys:

“Each new lower middle [manager],” he said, “gets a turn at firing the chocolate manager…The chocolate terminations are wonderful fun,” Jamison explained, “because they are videotaped and shown at the upper-middle-management Christmas party.  The idea is to come up with the most outlandish — hence amusing — pretense for termination!”

Just when Freddy is getting sucked further down this management drain, he runs into Mindi.  They knew each other briefly in college and she appears as his savior, a way for him to make a break from the job he despises and become a writer.  They have lunch, he shows her his stories, and he has the whole screenplay written in his head.  It doesn’t really matter to Freddy what Mindi wants — she’s not a real person to him.  And when she won’t play her assigned part in his story, he snaps.

…Freddy hadn’t loved Mindi.  She was a blue ribbon as surely as the one he despised, but she represented something he wanted.  She had never been real, except maybe for the few months in college.  Not during the six years when she was flesh and blood before him, then bloody flesh before him, did he possess her with a life, purpose, or meaning of her own.

Philip, Freddy’s attorney, has just emerged from a bitter divorce and he is not a happy man.  Freddy’s case should be a dream job.  His face should be all over the news, presenting the case for his client, building name recognition for future clients.  Instead, he’s disgusted by the whole proceedings.  He knows his client is guilty, he knows that his client is not really going to be punished for it, because even if he is found guilty, he has the fame and notoriety he was looking for.  But there may be a chance for him to make a real difference in this case.

I found The Killing of Mindi Quintana an entertaining read.  Cohen has a subtle sense of humor and his writing is sprinkled with quirky little details that I found amusing and intriguing.  I enjoyed it right up until the last 30 pages; then, for me, it fell apart.  The ending simply didn’t work for me.  It made no logical sense to me that anyone would find Philip’s solution a just resolution.  It wasn’t bizarre enough to be funny — it seemed perfectly serious but completely implausible.  If I could have chosen another ending, I’d have been perfectly happy with it.  As it stands, I was annoyed and unsatisfied.

My copy of The Killing of Mindi Quintana was an Advance Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

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