Bearing Secrets [Paperback]

Richard Barre (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Walker; Advance copy edition (1996)
• ASIN: B000VARC0A
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like Reading One Of The Best Ross MacDonalds, February 21, 2000

By 

C. G. Howie (Redwood City, California United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bearing Secrets (Paperback)

Although this one starts off a little slowly, I'd recommend it as one of the best mysteries I've read recently. The plot does a wonderful job of intertwining the past with present, with a surprising and satisfying finish. Wil Hardesty does well again in the lead role, and the 60's backdrop for the historical part of the mystery is well done. Don't miss this one!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fine PI novel, June 15, 2003

By 

carl brookins "Carl Brookins" (St. Paul, Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Bearing Secrets: A Wil Hardesty Mystery (Wil Hardesty Novels) (Hardcover)

Bearing Secrets is a superb novel. One has a tendency to ladle on accolades and fulsome adjectives until the feeling that no book can be THAT good becomes a barrier to readers. Expectations can be raised too high. But this is a superb novel. This complex, rhythmic, multi-textured novel reaches out to the reader and inexorably binds one tighter and tighter.

It starts with hard-nosed PI Wil Hardesty and an anguished cry for help from a prickly, vulnerable, twenty-year-old hardcase named Holly Pfeiffer. Hardesty's marriage is coming apart and he doesn't know how to stop it. Mostly to distract himself from his personal trouble, he agrees to see Holly. But when he gets to her cabin near Lake Tahoe, he is repeatedly, rebuffed. This woman is a product of her radical father's teachings. He was a veteran of Viet Nam, who then returned to Berkley and used his considerable intelligence and skill to harass the authorities and teach military tactics to a violent splinter group of dissidents. Naturally, his activities drew the attention of the establishment.

When Holly's father Max, dies in a fall from a high ledge in the mountains, Holly accuses the FBI of killing him. After all, the gospel according to Max had taught her that years earlier the FBI engineered her mother's death via a car bomb. In spite of her attempts to rid herself of Hardesty, in Holly's view just another establishment lackey, Hardesty begins a patient, earnest attempt to learn some truths. For a time, the only secrets he bares make Max look guilty. But of what? And then....

Read Bearing Secrets and you will be appalled, exhilarated, horrified and energized. This way lies death, explicit and terrible; here lies corruption and there is exploitation. You are quickly caught up in wheels within wheels. Barre builds tension and suspense cleanly and handles both with dexterity and believability. Fully-formed characters strive against insidious power, fail under the weight of crushing secrets, and strive again.

Yet author Barre does not dwell lovingly on the horror. This book is cleanly written, carefully plotted and very, very intense. It will require attention and careful reading, but Bearing Secrets will reward you in full measure.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Barre can do better than this, February 18, 2002

By 

T. Judd "booknut" (ALEXANDRIA, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bearing Secrets (Paperback)

After reading The Innocents, the first Wil Hardesty book, I looked forward to Bearing Secrets. Big disappointment! The story begins with the apparent suicide of Max Pfeiffer, a '60s radical, and a call to Hardesty from Pfeiffer's daughter, Holly. At that point the thing goes downhill rapidly. The plot is not a bad idea. Where Barre disappoints is, first, in the seemingly unending problems between Wil and his wife, Lisa. One feels it is time for them to get on with their lives. It is distracting after a time, and the reader must find it hard to identify with either of them, much less sympathize.

Second, the plot is risky. I know I couldn't write it convincingly. But Barre, making a half-hearted effort at some level of believability, fails miserably. The characters are cartoonish, the story told in jerky movements so that we don't know where we are (geographically and chronologically)most of the time. Keep an eye out for Monika and Behr. How did Barre dream them up?

As for the next one in the series I just can't say. I think I may have suffered enough with this overaged surfer dude and all his angst. I realize that a fictional detective needs his/her conflicts and tensions but as much as I liked Wil (and Lisa) at the end of The Innocents, I couln't help thinking "here we go again" at the beginning of Bearing Secrets.

Avoid this one.