Dun, David: The Black Silent

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David Dun's The Black Silent starts well: a diver, his air hose slashed, struggles with an attacker in the murky waters off the San Juan Islands. The diver is a scientist, Ben Anderson, who's discovered something people will kill for. When he disappears his adopted daughter Haley and her would-be love interest Sam, a former covert operative, follow the cryptic clues Ben's left behind to discover what he was working on--a complex mix of anti-aging formula and an alternative energy source. Together they riffle through filing cabinets and break into houses and drive boats dangerously fast, all while being pursued and occasionally shot at by the book's chief bad guy, Garth Frick, and his band of hired thugs.

Dun's book could have been a nail-biter, but it falls short, principally because the characters are not sufficiently developed. Frick, for example, is painted as a malevolent entity who pursues his quarry single-mindedly, but we don't know precisely what motivates him--other than his banal interest in money, a kind of all-purpose motivator. Haley and Sam are given more personality, but they are not as fully developed as they might be. We are not always told what the characters' immediate goals are, so that the plot can be confusing. The too-long chase scenes wind up lacking suspense both because we don't know what the protagonists are attempting to achieve and because we don't quite like them enough to care whether they achieve it.

With better character development, further editing of some rough spots in the narrative, and the excision of perhaps a hundred pages, The Black Silent could have been a taut thriller. Dun is a bestselling author, and it's possible that these flaws are the result of the book being rushed to market. Readers may be interested in checking out his earlier books.