Random Access Memory

Although a many-years veteran of the police department in Serbia, Detective Drazny Rivac is working like a rookie in Santa Cruz County when he moves to America. His new partner, Natasha Carleson, has solved 19 of the 26 cases in the last five years, isn’t liked by their boss, Azevedo, and is assigned as the foreigner’s partner for “administrative reasons.”

Rivac’s first day on the job with Natasha lands them with a homicide. The body of an unknown victim sports three bullet holes and not much else as evidence except for the strange mixture of food in his stomach. Although an experienced law officer, Rivac seems to miss the obvious when questioning suspects. Luckily, Natasha is quick to point out his omissions of observation in perfect American female style.

It seems that Detective Rivac spends more time dissecting America and its culture and less time on solving the crime, but his methods are merely different from the fictional detectives we are used to reading. In the end, his tactics prove themselves.

Helen Teraslav’s problems didn’t arrive when her lover leaves her, but his death forces her to step outside her comfort zone of the art studio she considers her refuge. An artist who doesn’t seem to appreciate her own creativity, Helen drowns her troubles with vodka and shields herself from the outside world as much as possible. Her alcoholism surely is a result of a past she’d rather forget, but in no way is the reader initially drawn to sympathize with this character. It’s easy to understand why her teenage daughter, Dari, has become a runaway. Her disappearance seems less a rebellious act and more of a way to survive from the unstable relationship with her alcoholic mother.

Helen finds an antique computer she can’t even open, much less access the information inside. She hopes the computer may lead her to find her missing daughter.  Her latest sculpture has been for PersoniCorp where she meets Ben Hsiang, a man she’s spoken to only by telephone concerning the artwork. Ben is able to help Helen not only open the laptop, but get into the files.

The most interesting part of Random Access Memory are the diary-like entries Helen and Ben discover on the computer. Like curious voyeurs, we are drawn into reading the secret files and look forward to the next entry.

She grew up in Albania. The first thing I noticed that was different about her was her accent – strange and not familiar. She resents her mother for some reason, and I think she resents her father for not taking control of his wife.                              

Helen’s reactions to the candid observations reveal her true self, which is not as callous as she originally appears. The plot explores how we interpret our own memories and see ourselves in difference to how others view us.

Helen had to force herself to read the entire passage. She knew what to expect, but she wasn’t prepared for the viciousness of the cold, clinical detail. If he had assumed the identity of her perfect lover – successfully – then what did that say about her? That she could have been taken in so easily did not make her feel like the strong woman she thought she was.

The secondary characters of Ben and Natasha are likable and well drawn and interact well with Helen and Drazny.

Explanations enclosed in parenthesis within sentences were overused and became intrusive as did the extensive amounts of computer gibberish code, which could have taken up less room on the pages and still be understood.

When reading a novel utilizing foreign characters, I find it charming to “learn’ new words without having to take a foreign language class. But, it is frustrating for certain foreign words to be used throughout the novel and never be explained to the reader. While the author did explain some of the words, many were not. I imagine most American readers do not have a basic knowledge of Albanian expressions. Graham lost a valuable opportunity to educate in an entertaining way.