Enough years have passed since William found out about his wife's affair with Santini, the third partner in their firm, that he is able to get on with his life, but he is still in love with his ex-wife and wants her back. Goldblum, who was responsible for informing William of his wife's activities, bore the brunt of William's anger and despair, but, when he realizes that his partner's death was murder, he resolves to honor a pact the two men had made to finish each other's cases.

Not having been in touch with Jean for many years, William finds it is a challenge to locate people who knew his partner in recent times. Luck is with him, however, when he meets Mr. Weeks who has in his possession notes on Jean's most recent case. Weeks claims that Jean asked him to deliver them to William, and William soon finds himself traveling from his Queens, New York home to Florida with a list of names of elderly New Yorkers that had recently moved to the warmer climate.

Information he unearths in the Sunshine State leads him to atrocities committed in Europe during World War II. William quickly realizes that by trying to honor this pact with his partner, he may be putting his own life in danger.

Epitaph is a mixed bag of pluses and minuses. On the plus side, the book has an interesting complex plot that is carefully developed from the start. The characters are primarily elderly, decidedly less agile than the thirty-year-old heroes that engage in hand to hand combat with evil types, but have retained their intelligence and perceptiveness, which draws the reader's interest to them. It is gratifying to be presented with a puzzle that challenges the mind rather than a series of car or helicopter chases where the noble hero pursues the evildoer, or a confrontation between two males who are producing way too much testosterone.

That having been said, on the minus side, the story unfolds with so much attention to detail and education of the reader that the action is painfully slow. Epitaph would be a much better book if the reader is left to figure out some of the details himself, and the book were thirty or forty pages shorter. Often the narrative shifts from a description of William's endeavors to scenes involving some tangential characters, so the reader who is blessed with enough time to read a substantial portion of the book at one sitting, will undoubtedly enjoy it more than a reader who can only manage fifty pages a day. The latter will find himself spending some time trying to remember who these people are. The details, while making the story more exact get in the way of the story line.

Epitaph is James Siegel's first novel; so perhaps, he should be allowed some latitude as he develops his craft. He has avoided choosing a trite plot or stereotypical characters, and his plot is not so contrived that his characters have to be placed in some bizarre situations to make it all work. His characters are lifelike, and act appropriately for their ages- no gymnastic feats for Mr. Siegel's seventy-year-olds. He has made a promising beginning with Epitaph. I look forward to watching him develop in his future efforts.

--Andy Plonka