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PrintA Tulsa mystery
Author Bob Avey makes our city the backdrop of a mystery detailing the hardships of urban life.
What could be more entertaining on a drab winter’s afternoon than to curl up with a mystery novel? Well, reading a mystery that takes place in your hometown, which I did this past weekend. I read Bob Avey’s “Twisted Perception.” Like Robert Parker does with Boston or Tony Hillerman with the Four Corners, Avey makes the most of our city as a backdrop for his hard-boiled Detective Kenny Elliot of the Tulsa Police.
The opening pages follow the ins and outs of the murder of a stripper who worked at a bar on 31st Street. That’s the fun part. Avey uncovers the sleazy underbelly of urban life, but harmlessly. It’s fiction, after all. I find the experience similar to watching the play “August: Osage County.” Indeed the neurotic dysfunctions dramatized are relentless, but those actors are my dysfunctional family and I learn lessons while I laugh.
Avey, who is an accountant and lives in Broken Arrow, expands the plot way beyond the stripper. We, the readers, begin to grasp the character of Detective Elliot when he reflects on a similar crime in Porter, Okla., where he grew up. This book is a psychological thriller and will keep you guessing.
Avey is one of the throng of writers who have taken the printing and marketing of their creations into their own hands: the independents.
“Twisted Perception” was printed in 2005. Avey’s second book is titled “Beneath the Buried House” (2008) and opens with a transient John Doe overdose case. You already know the plot won’t stop there. He’s halfway through writing his third novel, “Footprints of a Dancer.”
Avey is a good writer and deserves your attention. Buy his books on Amazon or at www.BobAvey.com.
