The Suicide of Kate Evers

by Eugene Kaster

Betrayal Revenge and Love in "a Whopper of a Whodunit." (Kirkus)

Five years after she ran off to San Francisco with his cousin Brian, Harry’s wife Kate comes home in a coffin. Police call the death suicide. Kate’s sister Annie lives in San Francisco and wants only to settle the estate so Kate may rest in peace. But Harry is an investigator for the local D.A, and does not trust that the death was suicide. And, truth be known, he wants revenge on his cousin.
Over Annie’s protests Harry comes to San Francisco. Early on he has a run-in with that city’s police and he so angers Annie she will not speak to him. He pushes on and with insight only a husband could have he pieces together a compelling story of Kate’s last days and her last night.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Drama, Thriller

346 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2012

About the author

Eugene Kaster is an attorney who, for many years, was a roving prosecutor with the Office of the California Attorney General.

Reviews

[Rob Slaven · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, I received this novel for the ripe and familiar sum of nothing due to the kind consideration of a GoodReads giveaway. Despite that generosity my candid opinions follow.

Kate Evers is dead and given the title of the book this should come as no surprise whatsoever. The San Francisco police have ruled her death a suicide but her estranged husband isn't buying that for a minute and he'll do anything to prove she was murdered.

"The Suicide" is a novel that appeals most strongly to those who like to untangle large and complicated knots. The bulk of the book centers on the protagonist become widower as he picks apart a million tiny clues that lead him to the truth he seeks. Featuring everything from blood splatters to handwriting analysis to autopsy techniques this is a police technophile's dream. It can, at times, be somewhat laborious and at at others gratuitously graphic but it's a well composed journey through a dogged police investigation.

On the negative side, the author has a rather fearsome writing tic that can be very distracting. The majority of the novel is straightforward enough but periodically Kaster slips into what I can only describe as Yoda-speak and words in odd order they are suddenly. This rather disrupts the flow of the book but can be largely ignored if one is sufficiently persistent.

In summary, "The Suicide of Kate Evers" is a meticulous and detailed novel of a cuckolded husband's quest to figure out what really happened to the wife that ran away to sleep around. The main draw is all the technical and investigative detail. Our author really knows what he's talking about and weaves a great story for his readers. One does wish for just a bit of editing to counteract his tendency to channel the long-dead spirit of Yoda, however.

PS: It is my endeavor to provide reviews that are succinct, honest, balanced and above all help the potential reader to answer the simple question, "Do I want to read this or not?" Any feedback you can provide about how you feel I have accomplished those goals (or not) is immensely appreciated.

[Sandy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won this book from a Goodreads giveaway. The synopsis sounded interesting and I was looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the book in many ways. This book was difficult to get into. The author wrote in a cryptic style and took too long to get to the point. I kept on reading thinking it would get better and we would learn if Kate Evers really committed suicide or if she was murdered. The answer to that was presented more as speculation and not fact. This is found out after you are subjected to phone call to Uncle Pete and whole story about the calf. What does the backwards birth of a calf have to do with Kate being murdered or committing suicide? Please, just get to the point! I felt the author was flowery in descriptions that were not interesting or relevant. The book was unorganized and jumped around too much. It had a horrible ending.

[Peter Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judge for yourself

Pleasant, easy read. Kept puzzling over what the information was trying to point out to me. Want to know more about the earlier family life.

[Marcy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book through the GoodReads First Reads giveaway program.

This book was really frustrating to get through. If I had to summarize the story for a potential reader, I would struggle to remember much of what happened and would ultimately tell the person that it's about a guy whose estranged wife commits suicide, but he doesn't believe it's suicide and so he wanders around Somewhere, California examining tiny bits of minutiae that even pieced together don't justify a belief in foul play, though ultimately he and his former sister-in-law agree that they'll believe what they want to believe together. I expected throughout most of the novel that I would likely give the book a single star, as it was one of the most difficult things I've ever forced myself to finish reading thanks to the writing style, but the penultimate chapter was good enough to get that second star. Largely because the author, mostly, got out of his own way by letting it be driven by dialogue.

The premise, from the back of the book, actually could have been promising. I do believe if the narrative hadn't been written in such a stilted manner, it could have been done well. As it was, even if there was a murder mystery to piece together (and I only believe that was intent because of that near-end chapter that effectively said yes, indeed, there was a murder here and not just an unexpected suicide), the writing just bogged the reader down so much that by the time you got to the end of a paragraph, you forgot what the point was you even started with. When it got truly bad, I would think of a line from one of my favorite shows in which a narrator, in describing how his girlfriend would get flustered when lying and screw up what she was saying, said that "words mouth from her flow not good." Except in this case, the words, by way of being both more convoluted than they needed to be and also by coming in swarms that in how they were placed resembled a swarm of angry ants devouring sugary ice cream as it melts on a hot summer day, would be much more difficult of which to make sense, if one was in the business of making sense, which Harry sometimes seemed like he didn't care much for except when in the presence of certain company, whose attire, when he noticed it, would be described in detail usually reserved for great works of art and possibly crime scenes, which you'll remember is the whole reason he dragged us on this miserably slow trek to begin with.

If you read the previous sentence and enjoyed it, and you also enjoy mysteries, this may be a book you could get your teeth into.

In addition to taking too long to get to any point where it concerned the question of Kate's demise, the author liked to take detours on irrelevant tangents along the way, the worst of which came in that second-to-last chapter I actually liked and was probably not as irritating to me personally thanks only to the topic of the conversation -- calves (baby cows, not legs). Otherwise these tangents arose regularly, did not often contribute to the story, and just made reading feel even more like slow trudging.

Also, the person we ultimately decide was probably the killer is a character that, by the time she is revealed, is barely remembered as having been mentioned in the first place due to the slow, slow, s l o w nature of the narrative and the abundance of characters who contribute little of nothing to the actual plot, or at least appear to do as much .

I feel like this review is probably one of the harshest I've written. I think the author had a good idea here, but he probably could have benefited from a better editor.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this free book from Goodreads FirstReads, and I am telling you that it was very hard to get through, the writing was bad and sometimes the author would speak in Yoda talk, you know what I mean something like this. Hurt this did, and he also takes to long to get to the point. Too many words when only a few will do. I hope the finished copy is better than the one I got or not that many people will want to read it. The only reason I gave it two stars was because I liked the ending and also Harry and Annie, though Harry was a bit over the top with Kate. I also wished Harry and Annie would have gotten back together in the end that would have made me feel alot better. If the author writes another book like this make it short and to the point.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

As some of the reviews state , it is true that the writing is somewhat different . I did not find this distracting from the story though. The characters , the events , and twisty secrets more than made up for the writing style . Would recommend for mystery lovers.

[Stephanie Zhong · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was pretty good, the overall book was a bit slow but it picked up in the middle.