Were there such a category as Charming Murder Mystery, Westport by James Comey would be a good example. Yes, THAT James Comey, former director of the FBI and U.S. attorney who worked for both the government and private clients, including, one time, as general counsel for the country’s largest hedge fund corporation based in Connecticut. In Westport, he delivers a suspenseful and heartwarming tale whose two-page prologue, nonetheless, opens with the discovery of a woman’s body in a canoe in Long Island Sound.
Drawing on his extensive legal experience, particularly in big-time finance, Comey combines an Agatha Christie type of Who Dunnit with a domestic portrait of his protagonist, Nora Carleton, formerly of the U.S. Attorney’s office, now recruited from New York City to be lead counsel at Saugatuck Associates in Westport, a prestigious and extremely successful investment firm. Nora’s been hired primarily, however, to work for Helen, who runs the company, and who suspects that someone in the organization is a white-collar criminal. It’s Helen’s body that ends up in the canoe. Nora, amicably divorced with a beloved eight-year-old daughter and a caring mom, becomes the chief suspect. The canoe was hers; Helen’s blood is found on Nora’s car; the murder weapon in Nora’s kitchen; and a video turns up that shows her kissing Helen.
Nora’s colleagues, admiring and fond of her, are disbelieving. For sure, she is being set up. Meanwhile, the unique culture at Saugatuck Associates is being tested. the owner of the company instituted a policy of telling the truth. Team members comply, but everyone has a secret, and no one knew that Helen was keeping a dirt file on each of them. No one at the top seemed to know that Nora had been hired on Helen’s recommendation to look into a specific and hard-to-see type of insider trading called “front running.” Difficult to detect and a “way for a crook to make a lot of money," if done right. Then again, top management at Saugatuck makes millions. Who would need the money? So – no one or everyone could be the skimmer and the skimmer could be the killer.
What sets Westport apart from many murder mysteries is its lively cast of secondary characters –particularly the ex-cop Benny and the company lawyer Laslo, whom Saugatuck’s CEO calls on to head up the investigation into who killed Helen. Benny is a hoot – a rough and-tumble big guy who develops a crush on Nora’s mother and whose comedic reliance on f- and s-words lends a vaudeville aspect to the action.
Along the way, Comey educates the general reader about little-known legal facts applicable in a few states, Connecticut among them, such as the role a judge may play as a one-person “investigative grand jury.” Chapters are short, pacing brisk, dialogue suited to character and settings are real, including one in the heart of New York’s Upper West Side --Pomander Walk, a “tiny make-believe-looking development of attached two-story Tudor-style homes built over 100 years earlier to replicate a London theater set.” Who knew!
Westport has fun sending up the world of the wealthy that Comey knows well.
No one at the company killed Helen, but one of them must have. Who? Why? How. At the end, NPR plays a role in finding out, for run a feature on a location device good for finding stuff like kids’ backpacks. The device is crucial. The novel is a lot of fun.
