Beyond Golden Gate Bridge

Much of this clunky thriller reads as though it had been written in another language and ineptly translated into English. Insp. Theodore Vidal, a San Francisco sleuth, has spent 32 years investigating suicides, including the 226 lost souls who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. Inappropriately lofty prose erratically traces the close-to-retirement inspector and his newly assigned ingenue junior associate, Adele Whitney, as they edge toward the final adventure of Vidal's career. The duo find mysterious clues linking the suicides to seemingly unrelated deaths across the country. Their endeavors uncover a comic-opera group of mustachioed villains--masquerading behind the facade of such enterprises as the Socrates-Hemlock Investment Society and Baal Lab--who are assisting the suicides. The Kevorkianesque kingpin of this evil syndicate is finally cornered on the Golden Gate Bridge, and the inspector philosophically accepts his entire investigation as an exercise in futility. Gangcuangco attempts to wrestle with his controversial topic, but what might have been a lively mystery or a meditative exploration is instead bogged down with fatuous arguments and virtually incomprehensible descriptions and dialogue. The book is glutted with awkward stabs at witty banter, and while the author may be striving for poetic flair or philosophical abstractions, readers will be hard put to find enjoyment here.(Nov.)