James Comey's debut thriller, 'Central Park West,' is short on thrills

In the Good Old Days, when I was studying English in school, we were told not to let our attitude about a writer's life cloud our response to his work. That was a comforting pretense since we were reading books by some dishonest, abusive and racist men. [Insert Your Favorite Writer Here.]

Nowadays, of course, biography rules. On social media, mixed in with the ever-shifting calls to boycott that fried chicken or resist those hobby supplies, we find adamant reminders that we mustn't read that novel or watch that movie because so-and-so is a scoundrel. Our purchases have been elevated to votes; our aesthetic responses recast as ethical judgments — not least of all on ourselves.

The critic Claire Dederer considers this tension between the value of what's created and the behavior of the creator in a fascinating new book called "Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma." The most striking aspect of her analysis — in addition to her insightful comments on a number of "monstrous" writers, artists and filmmakers — is her emotional honesty. She's willing to articulate, even to demonstrate on the page, the ambivalence that any attentive moral reader must suffer.

Which is, I admit, a loaded introduction to "Central Park West," the debut novel by James Comey. After all, the former FBI director is no monster, nor is he a great writer. But clearly his new thriller and its attendant publicity exist because of the author's actions outside the realm of literature. And most readers — aside from the chronically unplugged or the divinely disinterested — will approach "Central Park West" with confirmed opinions about Comey's responsibility for the bungled FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton's private email server and Donald Trump's alleged collusion with Russia.

In short, Comey is monster-adjacent.

If those conditions freight his novel with certain burdens, they also bless it with certain promise. After all, before becoming director of the FBI, Comey served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He was U.S. deputy attorney general. He's dedicated his life to thwarting toxic currents of crime flowing through this country. He must know secret things, and now his lifelong crusade for justice will inform a nail-biting thriller. Right?

"Central Park West" starts promisingly enough: The philandering former governor of New York, Tony Burke, is confronted by his estranged wife, Kyra, in their luxury apartment. At gunpoint, she forces him to write a brief suicide note, apologizing to all the people he's hurt. Then she kills him with a syringe full of insulin.

The perfect crime? Hardly. The killer was greeted by the doorman and caught on videotape. The case sparks a media circus. At the time of his death, the former governor was denying multiple accusations of sexual abuse leveled by women willing to break his notorious nondisclosure agreements. Now "Killer Kyra" faces life in prison for putting down "the Harvey Weinstein of politics." The Daily News screams, "LUV GUV SLAY TRIAL."

James Comey is trying to master the twist ending. This time, on purpose.

Kyra, "a strikingly beautiful thirty-nine-year old woman," says killing her husband was a "public service," but she insists she didn't do it. In a weirdly cute, banter-filled meeting with her defense lawyer — whose 6-foot-2 frame is, of course, "toned by hours on a Peloton" — Kyra insists that the killer must have been someone disguised to look just like her.

Meanwhile, across town in the Thurgood Marshall Federal Courthouse, a notorious mobster named Dominic "The Nose" D’Amico is staring at a conviction that could put him away forever. In a surprise, risky move, the Nose offers the feds evidence about the real killer of the former governor.

That's a sharp plot: We’ve got two intertwined high-stakes cases, one in state court, one in federal, and Comey knows enough about those separate legal systems to whip up some turf war over jurisdiction.

But for an author who worked so long to imprison horrible criminals and to serve obnoxious politicians, his novel has no stomach for evil. Although the central villain is supposedly "the most notorious Mafia killer of the modern era," for all we see, this serial murderer could be a real estate agent. "Central Park West" is a thriller that doesn't want to get its hands dirty, doesn't even want to take off its tie.

Rather than explore the insidious damage of sexual abusers, the corrupting influence of dishonest politicians or the unspeakable violence of organized criminals, the novel emphasizes the need to treat mobsters with respect and politeness. For all I know, such decorum may be a pragmatic tactic for securing the cooperation of career criminals, but it feels like Comey is fetishizing the alleged honor of the mafia.

And worse, it's a deadly strategy for a legal thriller. In one of the book's few exciting scenes, a SWAT team is about to rain down hellfire on the home of a professional assassin. But at the last minute, a wise federal agent convinces his superiors that it would be safer to knock politely, let the accused get dressed and then stroll to the awaiting van.

Phew — drama averted!

That allergy to action is doubly burdensome when paired with Comey's determination to explain Very Common Things. In a typically numbing moment, early in the investigation, an FBI agent suggests placing photos of potential perpetrators on a wall so that they can be examined together. "Jump on the system," he instructs a colleague, "print DMV pictures of everybody I call out. We put ’em on the board, use different color Expo markers to connect them." But the arts-and-craft aspect of this case is not the part that needs elaboration.

Staff Picks: What Book World writers and editors are reading now

For generations of readers raised on the wizardry of James Bond and Jason Bourne, the crime-fighting gizmos that Comey reveals are as impressive as a ballpoint pen. Of course, a great legal thriller doesn't need any special technology at all, but presumably the former director of the FBI knows about the most advanced surveillance equipment in the world. Yet here he sounds particularly excited to reveal to us that our cellphones generate location data — which will be shocking news to anyone listening to the audiobook version of this novel on a Victrola.

I thought the FBI had equipment to see through walls, and computers to identify faces on surveillance video, but the most cutting-edge technique Comey is willing to demonstrate in these chapters is how a Starbucks card helps pin down a killer. Now, if they could just get my Frappuccino order right.

Honestly, I want to be fair. I want to judge this flaccid thriller only according to what's on the page, without considering how the author kneecapped the Clinton campaign 11 days before the election of a Very Stable Genius. But then a character in "Central Park West" asks, "How you like them apples?" and another one says, "She's a pistol," and a third one explains the phrase "Capisce?"

And as this stale dialogue grinds on, I realize that helping to deliver four years of Donald Trump is not the worst thing Comey has ever done.

Ron Charles reviews books and writes the Book Club newsletter for The Washington Post.

By James Comey

Mysterious Press. 329 pp. $30

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.