Higher Authority -- A Book Review

I don't usually read books that scare me -- not because I don't scare easily, because I do. But usually I know that a book is going to be scary and I don't start it. Like, I don't read Stephen King or Tom Clancy -- not because they are not good writers. They certainly are. Somehow King's horror, as far-fetched as it is, is still viscerally believable and his books are too long for me to complete before it gets dark. Tom Clancy, on the other hand, is not far fetched enough. The wars he starts in his books seem altogether too likely.

Higher Authority is the third in Stephen White's Alan Gregory murder mysteries. I started reading them because a friend recommended them and White is a Colorado author. Sort of a hometown boy, dontcha know.

Dr. Alan Gregory, the usual main character in White's mysteries, is a clinical psychologist in Boulder, Colorado. The main character in this book is Alan's fiancee, Lauren Crowder. Crowder is a particularly interesting character because of her power and because of her weakness.

She is a hard-driving lawyer and as Deputy District Attorney in Boulder, she is unafraid to go after the bad guys no matter how threatening they may be.

Her weakness? She has multiple sclerosis. To protect her tough-on-crime persona, she hides her frail health. She neither seeks nor graciously accepts sympathy even from the few who know her condition, including Alan Gregory whose proposal of marriage she accepted but about which she still harbors serious misgivings.

Lauren joins forces with an old law-school friend to litigate a sexual harassment suit in Utah against a highly respected member of the Mormon Church. Danger and death ensue.

White's website introduces the plot of Higher Authority this way.

"The sudden death of Utah's Senator Orrin Hatch propels his successor, Lester Horner, first into Hatch's Senate seat and then on to become the first Mormon associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  Carried along with Horner is Blythe Oaks, an ambitious and intelligent woman who is also Horner's favorite law clerk and fellow Mormon.  But Blythe's reputation—and, by extension, Lester Horner's—is threatened when a female former employee accuses her of sexual harassment and career sabotage."

Are you confused yet? I surely was, because, at least as of this moment while I am writing this blog post, Orrin Hatch is alive and well holding his seat as Senior Senator from the Great State of Utah. He is Senate Pro Tempore making him third in line to the United States Presidency.

Which brings us to the book's fear-factor for me.

I knew very little about the Mormon church. My only experiences with Latter-day Saints have been with parents of my daughter's friends, with writer friends, and with seat-mates on airlines. And, of course, Orson Scott Card one of my favorite writers. Then there are The Osmonds. All enjoyable and not the least bit frightening.

I knew a little about the founding of the Mormon religion and their self-exile to Utah to escape discrimination and mistreatment first in New York, then Ohio, and finally Missouri.

I did not know so, so much. Of course, this book is fiction, but White seems to have done his research well. His book plays to my one great faith -- that all religions develop fanatics and the element of secrecy in any religion or religious order is the cloak that hides those fanatics. That is frightening to me.

Not to mention that the real, still living, Orrin Hatch holds a potentially more powerful political position than does any single member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Let me just say this book is very well written and its plot believable enough that I must have gained five pounds in the three days it took me to read it.