Customer Reviews

Dead Letters

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Interesting premise, well written. Personal conflicts of the characters resemble real-life problems. You could see this situation almost happening to real people. There is a sequel.

I enjoyed the plot in this novel. It's the first in a series of four (I've read three so far). However, the biggest flaw is McGrady's obvious lack of research. He hasn't a clue as to what a real U.S. Postal Inspector does. This is obvious throughout the book. The problem is that so few people know about the Postal Inspection Service so most readers will take this stuff as factual. Let me make a short list of the inacuracies: Postal Inspectors (PI's) don't use military ranks. There are no Lieutenants or Sergeants, etc...; They aren't trained by the FBI; they have their own facility in Potomac. They aren't FBI rejects. Their pay, qualifications, training and entry level requirements are all comparable. A PI would not hand off a case when it got too difficult because the case was out of his/her league, as McGrady suggests. According to McGrady's characters, when a case gets interesting it must be given to FBI because those cases are over the heads of the postal guys. McGrady's bumbling PI's are depicted as a couple of alcoholics who womanize and invariably screw up their cases, but "Lieutenant" Wearie always seems to solve each case, despite his incompetence. PI's no longer carry six shot revolvers (except for a handful of old timers) and they don't hang out at the dead letter office reading other peoples mail. They're busy working complex cases that include mail Fraud (such as the Leona Helmsley and Jim Baker cases) and mail theft (which include check washing and identity take over schemes), but they also work homicide investigations (of postal employees), drugs in the mail, mail bombs (including the Unabomber case), child porn sent through the mails, robberies of Post Offices or postal carriers, and over 100 other violations of federal law. They frequently work with other federal agencies, like the FBI, Secret Service, Customs, DEA, etc... but don't think for a moment that they play second fiddle to these other agencies.