UNTOUCHABLE

5 stars out of 5

With a handful of exceptions – like Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” - I’ve just never been much enjoyed reading  anything shorter than a full-fledged book. But then along comes a long-time never-miss-a-book author with a series of novellas featuring Special Agent Constant Marlowe. I read the first but somehow missed the second; this time, a publisher’s rep emailed me the offer to read a re-release copy (thank you very much), so I couldn’t help but notice. Next up? Rushing to download it at NetGalley. And proceed polish it off in a couple of hours, give or take 20 minutes for lunch and running to the basement to grab another pack of TP when I discovered we were uncomfortably low in the upstairs bathroom.

Confession time: No, neither experience turned me into a short-story lover. But this one sure did turn me into a bone fide lover of this character – a special agent in the Illinois Department of Criminal Investigations who has the ability to “read” people and, if she doesn’t like the fine print, knock them silly with a perfectly aimed right to the solar plexus (oh, did I mention she’s a champion prizefighter)?

As this story begins, Constant is in Prescott, Illinois, to finish up a job when she spies a young woman who appears to be in distress. One jaw knocked out of alignment later, she learns the woman, Kathleen Delaine, has been harassed and bullied because she pushed for an investigation into an overload of traumatic brain injuries being experienced by the local university’s football team. A bad situation then took a turn for the worse when the host of a popular radio show put it on the air, ridiculing her for interfering in something women should not worry their pretty little heads about and not letting manly men be manly men (after all, football is a contact sport and getting banged up is a given, don’t you know}? From that point on, Kathleen’s life has been a living hell. That, in turn, angers Constant, who vows to help find the person who’s been sending her nasty messages. Meantime, she insists that Kathleen go stay with her father, an attorney who’s in the middle of a high-stakes medical malpractice trial.

Now for a “regular” length book, I’d keep going a bit. But in this case, there’s absolutely nothing more I can say that wouldn’t spoil the adventure for all the readers who come after me. Suffice it to say most things are more complicated than they seem on the surface, and this story’s no exception. Got a couple of hours to spare? Grab a copy. You won’t be disappointed.

Untouchable by Jeffery Deaver (Amazon Original Stories, February 2026); 137 pp.