Evan Hunter writes the kind of reliable engrossing novel that is a welcome sight in the paperback racks at airports and bus stations. The police procedurals he's written under the name of Ed McBain, and his popular novels, which include The Blackboard Jungle, Strangers When We Meet, and Love, Dad, are sometimes slick or overwritten, but always readable. In Far From the Sea, he's done it again, but he's chosen to work with a most dismal set of circumstances….

Hunter's interest is primarily in his characters—their reflexes, preoccupations, foibles. Instead of dumping stereotypes into a situation, he shows how the small details animate people: the relatives gathered every day outside the intensive care unit obsessively discussing soap operas; the dying man worrying about his tax return; and, most poignantly, David Weber, struggling to be frank with his wife despite the distance and her answering machine, reliving his...