Like many of Patterson's first few novels, Comes the Dark Stranger is a rich, carefully crafted crime-fiction novel void of any high-adventure tendencies the writer would eventually be synonymous with. The book utilizes several pulpy crime-noir elements that had already saturated the market by the 1960s. The most dominant is the “dying man” attempting to solve his own murder before he succumbs to some fatal element in his body. This trope was used successfully in the 1950 American film D.O.A., written by Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene. That movie was remade in 1969, 1988, 2017, and 2022. Additionally, the concept was used as a radio episode of The Adventures of Sam Spade in 1951.
Patterson uses this D.O.A. formula for his character Martin Shane, a Korean War veteran who has shrapnel lodged in his brain. He has a few hours to live before surgeons hope to remove it before it shifts and destroys him. However, the surgery has previously killed most patients, so Shane feels he has just a few hours left to live. He spends those hours hunting the man who sold out his men during the war.
The novel begins with a disoriented Shane stumbling around the village of Burnham. He's been beaten and is handcuffed. After freeing himself with the use of some tools in an old factory, Shane is found by a priest and relays how he arrived in this strange predicament.
In 1952, Shane and five other men are captured behind enemy lines in Korea during the country's ongoing Civil War. The men were preparing the way for an assault in the coming days from a large British infantry. The men are tortured by a Chinese officer and ordered to be executed individually until someone confesses the British plans for the infantry. Shane's good friend, Simon, is the first to be executed. However, after interrogation, the officer announces that one of the men provided the necessary intel. A few moments later, a bomb reduces most of the facility to rubble. But the Chinese were able to use the confessed info to ambush the infantry, killing over 200 soldiers.
Shane is admitted into a hospital, where he lies in a type of amnesiac state for nearly 10 years. Miraculously, something shifts, and he regains his memory. But, as I explained earlier, he may be dying. He wants to locate the man responsible for giving up the intel to the Chinese and costing the lives of not only Simon, but also the 200 infantrymen.
As Shane arrives in Burnham, Patterson shifts into an amateur sleuth presentation as the hero interrogates the four men he shared quarters with as a prisoner. These men now consist of a club owner, a bartender, a wealthy investor, and a college lecturer. All of them could have confessed, but the clues led to one man in particular. It is a standard mystery as the pages flip to the reveal.
Not only did Patterson use the dying man trope, he also incorporates other overused elements like amnesia and plastic surgery. There's also the man-on-the-run plot device that threads the investigation together, leading to one action scene after another as Shane beats up various characters searching for answers. Mixed into the story are two romantic leads, one of whom meets a horrible fate that took me aback.
Comes the Dark Stranger isn't perfect, but it is a fun novel that kept me on my toes for most of the novel. I had figured out the identity of the traitor at the very beginning of the book, but there was a twist thrown in that surprised me. I haven't read a Higgins/Patterson novel I didn't like, and Comes the Dark Stranger is just more evidence that the man just couldn't write a complete clunker.
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