Into the Fire

We’ve all heard the cliché regarding painting oneself into a corner. Well, Tim Downs has managed to do this with writing sort of on purpose in his latest Bug Man novel Ends of the Earth. Nick Polchak, forensic entomologist who perceives himself as an insect, reigns as crime-solver-extraordinaire where bugs are involved. However, if you want to present the Bug Man with an insurmountable challenge, place him in the company of a woman, and in this case two beautiful women from his past. Female-speak is as foreign to this man as an isolated tribal language. He doesn’t understand it, and he can’t speak it. Not even a little. He uses his boss/mentor Noah Ellison, chairman of the Department of Entomology, and friend FBI Special Agent Nathan Donovan to translate for him. And still fails . . .

The Bug Man is one of the most amazing, quirky, always irreverent, sometimes innocuous, often cynical, and apparently, in spite of his coke bottle glasses, very attractive characters in literature. He rarely fails to entertain, and it’s interesting to view this character experience the various changes in his life through the process of investigating different crimes, sometimes with and sometimes without FBI Special Agent Donovan.

This particular story places Nick back at NC State in his random professorial mode when he is summoned by Sampson County police, specially requested by an attractive old flame, Kathryn Guilford—now Severenson—from Tim’s first Bug Man novel, Shoofly Pie, because her estranged, drug abusing husband Michael has been murdered in their organic tomato fields on their five acre farm. After learning of the circumstances, Nick calls another attractive woman in Virginia from Tim’s last novel, Less Than Dead, Alena Savard, to assist him with her dogs to find a possible drug cache.

When marijuana is found by Alena’s drug-sniffing dog in the tomato field, insect eggs inhabit the spilled weed. Nick takes them back to the lab at NC State to pinpoint when Michael was murdered. The oddity surrounding the dope and the insects continues to mystify Nick especially when a particular fungus is discovered protruding from the bugs. Finally when the error-proof time of death turns up wrong and a foreign student is murdered in the lab, slowly but surely and with Agent Donovan’s wife’s assistance, he begins to put together a plot intended for agro-terrorism.

In the meantime, sparks fly between his two ladies and himself, there is a near catastrophic event with the neighbor’s corn combines, and an escape by the man responsible for murder, chaos, and the agro-terrorism attempt.

Now back to the writing himself into a corner . . . Tim Downs gives readers like me a “Don’t you dare!” moment at the end, and I’m fairly sure I wasn’t alone in this. I’m going to speak in vagaries here because I don’t want to ruin the story for anyone. Tim takes his character to a new level in this book, and I felt the insecurity of this journey right up to the end. There was a discomfort in the dialogue never before experienced in the Bug Man novels due to the UST taking place, and just as Nick became infuriated by his occasional lack of focus, I do think the story was slightly disjointed, running parallel instead of intersecting most of the way, especially since Nick figured he must detach from one conflict to deal with or address the other. I felt a certain favoritism in Tim’s writing toward one of the characters in the conflict, and it disappointed me. Funny how we get so attached to these “people”. The eventual outcome of this story could radically change future Bug Man novels, so I’ll be standing by to see which direction Tim takes Dr. Nick Polchak in his current conundrum.

Father, you know Tim’s heart and soul. You’ve blessed him with talent and a great imagination. Please continue to lead him in all that he does to honor you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.