A dead body? Sorry, I've gotta get to my other job BY AL DIAMON
	Out of the Deep I Cry By Julia Spencer-Fleming. St. Martin’s Minotaur; $23.95, 325 pages. Published April 26, 2004. Snap Hook By John R. Corrigan. University Press of New England; $24.95; 251 pages. Published April 30, 2004.

I’ve got this great idea for a mystery series: Two guys run a septic-tank cleaning service. As they drive their honey wagon ("You Dump It, We Pump It") around rural Maine, they keep finding corpses stuffed down their customers’ drains. Using their intimate knowledge of sewage disposal, they always spot the clue overlooked by the police ("The aerobic bacteria in this tank are all dead, Stinky. They couldn’t have been responsible for dissolving the mayor’s body"), thereby solving the crime and clearing the line.

I was inspired to create these unlikely heroes by the overflowing (ha!) pile of mysteries published in recent years featuring unconventional sleuths. In book after book, the murderer is caught not by the cops, but by a chef, a sports agent, a bookstore owner, an antiques dealer, an actor, an archeologist, a highway engineer, a college professor, a cat, a dog, or all sorts of annoying writers. By comparison, my septic guys seem almost realistic.

Which brings us to the problem with most of these amateur detectives: They’re not believable. I could buy the conceit that Charles Paris, the alcoholic actor in Simon Brett’s novels, might solve a theatrically related crime once. But a dozen or more times? Even Brett seems to be having trouble convincing himself the later stories in this series ring true.

John Dunning overcomes some of that problem by having Cliff Janeway, his used bookstore dealer, rely on his previous occupation as a homicide dick. Jonathan Gash slides around the credibility question by keeping his tales of Lovejoy, the antiques dealer, strictly tongue-in-cheek. Dorothy Sayers’ aristocratic sleuth was, after all, named Wimsey. And Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple gets a pass because she’s the archetype for all the unlikely crime fighters who followed.

Marple has a spiritual descendent in Clare Fergusson, the central character in York County resident Julia Spencer-Fleming’s series about an ex-Army helicopter pilot turned Episcopal priest. In the third installment, Out of the Deep I Cry, Fergusson does the Marple bit by sipping a lot of tea and overhearing a lot of gossip. But she’s nowhere near as passive as Dame Agatha’s creation. Or as asexual.

Clare is strongly attracted to Russ Van Alstyne, the chief of police in Millers Kill, a fictional town in upstate New York. He’s equally drawn to her, which presents all sorts of emotional and ecclesiastical problems, because he’s married.

This situation could grow stale over time, but Spencer-Fleming has skillfully edged the so-far-platonic relationship along, although she’s yet to indicate whether its headed for détente, divorce, or disaster. She does reveal she won’t be making the mistake of many authors with oddball sleuths by carrying on the charade indefinitely.

"I have the story mapped out for a six-book series," she said. "I don’t see it going on after that. Once I’ve answered that question [about Clare’s and Russ’s relationship], that story line is over."

(Don’t you wish Sue Grafton had made a similar decision back around the time she wrote H Is for Hanging on Too Long?)

Out of the Deep I Cry is really two marginally related stories, one set in the past, the other in the present. In the former, a farmer disappears during the Great Depression, leaving his family with a mysterious source of wealth. In the latter, the doctor who runs the local free clinic — established using the farmer’s secret riches — also vanishes, possibly murdered by a woman who blames the physician for her son’s autism.

Both plots are complicated without being particularly compelling, and the too-pat solutions to the mysteries are unsatisfying. But the richly developed characters propel the book. Nobody is all good or all bad in Spencer-Fleming’s world, including Clare and Russ. And nobody is all that predictable.

Clare isn’t intrinsically religious. She has to think hard about what might be the right thing to do. But she’s also impulsive, so the hard thinking often doesn’t occur until it’s too late. These qualities allow her to intrude into police business in a believable way. Here she is dealing with the nurse at the clinic as she follows the cops, who’ve been summoned to deal with a confrontation between the doctor and the mother of the autistic child:

" ‘It’s okay,’ Clare said. ‘I’m a priest.’ Without waiting to see what effect that complete irrelevance had on the woman, Clare charged up the stairs."

While Clare uncovers some valuable information, most of the real detective work in this story falls to Russ, thereby boosting the book’s credibility by having a police officer doing a police officer’s job. "You’ve read too damn many Nancy Drew mysteries," he tells Clare on one impulsive occasion. On another, he reminds her, "Me cop, you priest."

As Spencer-Fleming put it, "The only way you can hope to carry off realistically the conceit that someone not paid by the state to investigate crime can solve crimes is to have a professional investigator in the story."

John Corrigan, who teaches high school in Limestone, makes a half-hearted effort to follow this advice in Snap Hook, his second mystery featuring PGA golf pro and Maine native Jack Austin. Austin’s best friend is a private detective, plugged into the story to keep the golfer apprised of what the police and FBI are doing to solve the various crimes that meander through the plot.

In itself, that’s unrealistic. Cops and federal agents aren’t likely to invite a private investigator, particularly one with little respect for the rules, inside their investigation. But that’s hardly the most unrealistic thing about this book.

Here’s the plot: A Russian mobster sends his brother, a college professor, to tell the head of the PGA’s charitable trust he has to help launder $18 million in drug money. If he doesn’t cooperate, the golf official is warned, his baby daughter will be kidnapped.

So does he do as he’s told? Nope. Does he hide his daughter away? Nope. Is she kidnapped? Yep. Does he start cooperating then? Nope. Why? Never did figure it out. Is this as silly as the story gets? Nope. The mobster starts threatening the golf official in increasingly bizarre ways, all of which attract the attention of the police, and none of which get the money laundered.

Austin, meanwhile, gets involved because, well, he just happens to be hanging around. It’s not like he doesn’t have other stuff on his mind. His putting game stinks. He’s trying to break in a new caddy, a dyslexic, inner-city kid who’s never played golf. His girlfriend is going through some kind of personal crisis. So, he insinuates himself into the investigation to fill his spare time.

According to Corrigan, Austin is a man of integrity, who calls penalties on himself during matches and can’t stand injustice of any sort. Naturally, he’d want to right whatever wrongs he encounters.

A more clueless champion of the oppressed would be hard to find. Austin can’t figure out why the aforementioned girlfriend is overly emotional and throwing up in the morning. He also doesn’t understand why he, a wealthy white guy, can’t connect with black caddy Nash Henley. Here, from the story, is a clue:

"As we drove, Nash controlled the radio. I consider myself pretty hip; however, the speakers were screaming something I couldn’t and didn’t wish to decipher.

" ‘Who is this?’

" ‘Snoop Dog.’

" ‘That’s a band?’

" ‘No man. You’ve got to get with it.’

" ‘What happened to Bruce Springsteen?’

" ‘People found out he couldn’t sing.’

" ‘This guy isn’t even trying — he’s just talking.’

" ‘He’s rapping, Jack.’"

There’s more, but I’ll spare you.

Unfortunately, Corrigan’s prose is often even clunkier than that, the exception being when he’s describing golf matches. Many of the characters are either thinly drawn or incomprehensible, except for the pro golfers, all of whom seem real enough and clearly motivated. Combined with the unwieldy plot, these faults make for a book best enjoyed by the golf-obsessed.

"I don’t want to write golfy mysteries," Corrigan insisted. "You know, a body buried in a sand trap. I want to write serious mysteries, where the guy just happens to be a PGA Tour member."

Or a guy who cleans septic tanks.

Al Diamon, who writes the column "Politics & Other Mistakes," is neither an Episcopalian nor a golfer. He can be emailed at ishmaelia@gwi.net