Book Review: The Last Case by Sean DeLauder

Reviewed by Nikolas Mavreas

An out-of-the-box murder mystery with some seriously intriguing twists

The Last Case is an unconventional but wholly satisfying specimen of the murder mystery form. Set in a coastal town in New England during the early 1980s, this novel opens with a body: a man in a Dungeons and Dragons costume found beheaded on the beach. This brings the lighthouse-dwelling detective Joseph Tey out of his isolation and back into the game. As he works at solving the case, Tey also works on himself, battling identity issues and a sense of mental deterioration.

Our protagonist’s inner conflict, his doubts about his past and his capabilities, are a constant presence in the book. This is accomplished with an ingeniously selected alternative to inner monologue: interjections of passages from Joseph Tey’s journal. In addition to fresh approaches to the genre, the plot is sprinkled with familiar mystery tropes as well, like annoying police colleagues, Cold War rhetoric, and a large corporation of unclear morality.

Every single character in this book, however minor, feels alive and breathing. Manners of speech, contents of speech, and little actions meticulously described all work toward the painting of people who feel vibrantly real, accentuated with sparse brushstrokes of the caricatural.

The attention to detail and resulting characterization is in every nook and cranny of this book, and it defines every aspect of the writing. Through particular, descriptive, and expressive detail, this novel is both fully excavated and polished like a jewel.

“The journal may tell him, if he dared read it. Something made him reluctant. Something made those memories unpleasant. He’d written them down as though putting them on paper removed them from his mind, making room for other things. His curiosity pulled and his apprehension pushed, so the diary remained on the coffee table.”

The novel rises to real thrills but also plunges to profound psychological depths. At its center, it is concerned with why people do what they do, the senselessness of bad actions, and redemption. It’s a thought-provoking thriller—and a strong one at that.

Some readers will notice that the protagonist’s name is taken from the pen name of an older mystery author. The reference doesn’t seem to carry more meaning than just being a simple homage to Josephine Tey, and it has no connection to another popular book series which has a fictional Josephine Tey. Delauder may have gone tongue-in-cheek with titling this novel, The Last Case: A Joseph Tey Mystery, but he also could be leveraging for a sequel or prequel to follow. DeLauder admits in the back matter of the book that this is his first foray into the murder mystery genre, but he writes with enough skill and expertise to make it feel like he couldn’t have done a better job. Until next time, I hope.

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