By Jon L. Breen
Some of the finest crime novels of recent years have shared several characteristics: no series character; an investigation focusing on the past, including internal shifts in time period and/or a story-within-a-story; mystery and even detection (albeit unconventional and often with the reader as detective); and greater emphasis on character interplay than thriller set-pieces. See, for example, Joyce Carol Oates's My Sister, My Love, reviewed here in March 2009, and several novels by British writers Laura Wilson and Peter Dickinson, the all-time master of the type. Three recent examples follow.
**** Andrew Taylor: Bleeding Heart Square, Hyperion, $25.99. In 1934 London, high-born Lydia Langstone walks out on her abusive husband and moves in with her dissolute father in the downscale cul-de-sac of the title. Chapters begin with segments from the diary of Miss Penhow, the owner of the house, who disappeared mysteriously four years earlier. Apart from involving characters, smooth prose, and clever structure, the novel brilliantly captures the time's political and social context with its insights into the British Fascist movement led by Oswald Mosley.
*** Laura Lippman: Life Sentences, Morrow, $24.99. Best-selling memoirist Cassandra Fallows, her first novel having been a disappointment, returns to nonfiction and her Baltimore roots to investigate the mystery of former schoolmate Calliope Jenkins, who spent years in prison after taking the Fifth Amendment when asked what happened to her vanished infant son. Cassandra re-establishes contact with childhood friends who figured in her first book and remember events differently. Illustrating the style and character insights that are the novel's greatest strengths, Cassandra describes her married lover's fidelity to both wife and girlfriend: "Sort of like a subway line with an express track and a local track." (Lippman, an even better short-story writer, contributes a masterful tale to the anthology Two of the Deadliest [Harper, $25.99], edited by Elizabeth George.)
*** Thomas H. Cook: The Fate of Katherine Carr, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25. Reporter George Gates, still haunted by the unsolved murder of his eight-year-old son, investigates the disappearance of Katherine Carr, an aspiring writer who became reclusive after surviving a deadly attack. Gates gradually doles out segments of the mysterious short story Carr left behind to his unexpected partner in detection, a brilliant twelve-year-old girl near death from progeria, the premature aging disease. Cook has varied this pattern more frequently, arguably more successfully, than any other writer. His latest is enthralling, well constructed, deftly written, and unquestionably ambitious, but the mystical element won't convince every reader.
*** Michael Connelly: The Scarecrow, Little, Brown, $27.99. Journalist Jack McEvoy, who followed the elaborate clues in The Poet (1996), investigates another serial killer (this one known to the reader) while dealing with his impending layoff from the Los Angeles Times. Connelly excels at police, legal, and journalistic procedurals; this one entails all three with the emphasis on the latter. The standard thriller jumps are efficiently taken; the romantic subplot is the weakest element; the details of Web site use and abuse are fascinating; and the sad picture of a big-city newspaper in decline may stick in the memory longest.
*** C.J. Box: Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, Minotaur, $24.95. Denver tourism promoter Jack McGuane and wife Melissa have had their adopted baby daughter Angelina for nine months when they learn that the infant's teenage birth father, son of a powerful federal judge, never signed away parental rights. The judge is intent on taking the child, and the devastated couple make desperate and dangerous efforts to keep her. Some plot turns (including the arbitrary deadline of the title) and scenes of over-the-top violence strain credulity, but complex characters and expertly wrought suspense firmly grip the reader. (An un-abridged CD version, well read by John Bedford Lloyd, is available from Macmillan Audio for $39.95.)
*** Bill Crider: Murder in Four Parts, Minotaur, $24.95. Elements in the latest case for Sheriff Dan Rhodes include a rogue alligator, a murdered florist, a barbershop harmony chorus, geocaching, neighbors feuding over chickens, and Texas's bizarre gaming laws. EQMM's prolific "Blog Bytes" columnist is a master of the neatly plotted, humorously told small-town mystery. The exciting action climax is replete with movie references.
*** Gar Anthony Haywood: Lyrics for the Blues, A.S.A.P., $28. Five short stories, three new to print, about South Central Los Angeles P.I. Aaron Gunner are expertly crafted and agreeably told. Best of the group is the last and longest, "In Name Only," an inventive riff on the theme of identity theft. Included are an introduction by Lawrence Block, an afterword by Jeffery Deaver, and illustrations by Phil Parks.
*** Percy Spurlark Parker: The Good-Looking Dead Guy, PublishAmerica, $27.95. Las Vegas game room proprietor Trevor Oaks, a tough private eye in the grand tradition, bodyguards a porn star while investigating the murder of her bisexual husband and manager, who is not excessively mourned. Old pro Parker, author of many short stories in EQMM, AHMM, and elsewhere, delivers a tricky whodunit, a vividly realized setting, and an intriguing cast of characters. But if the finished book is as poorly proofread as the advance galley, the volume of errors will prove distracting.
*** George Zebrowski: Empties, Golden Gryphon, $24.95. Manhattan detective Benek, investigating the death of an old derelict whose skull is missing a brain, encounters a literal femme fatale. This engrossing genre bender combines police procedural, male romantic suspense, science fiction and/ or fantasy, noirish pursuit thriller, and gross-out horror story. An afterword pays tribute to the author's mentor, Fritz Leiber, whose Conjure Wife was a partial inspiration.
** Erica Spindler: Breakneck, St. Martin's, $24.95. The Rockford, Illinois, police team of Mary Catherine (M.J.) Riggio and Kitt Lundgren explore the world of cybercrime in their search for a killer of apparently inoffensive young people. Non-lovers of the procedural soap opera subgenre will find the cops' personal traumas an unwelcome distraction, but a fairly interesting mystery with a generously clued solution partially compensates for bland style and crawling pace. (Lorelei King's unabridged reading is offered by Macmillan Audio for $39.95.)
** Ken Bruen: Sanctuary, Minotaur, $24.95. Even the Irish writer's most devoted fans may suspect he's coasting in this latest about Galway private eye Jack Taylor, but style and investment in the characters will keep them reading. Newcomers should try some earlier books.
Rex Stout's third and fourth Nero Wolfe novels, The Rubber Band (1936) and The Red Box (1937), are paired in a single trade paperback (Bantam, $15). The latter title has Carolyn G. Hart's introduction from the 1992 reprint, but the former title lacks Nelson DeMille's introduction from the same series. . . . The late Donald E. Westlake's outstanding Edgar-nominated 1960 debut The Mercenaries has been reprinted with a sexier title and cover as The Cutie (Hard Case, $6.99).
The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime (Penguin Classics, $15), edited by Michael Sims, gathers such classic crooks as E.W. Hornung's Raffles, George Randolph Chester's Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, and Edgar Wallace's Four Square Jane, with substantial introduction and story notes. Mr. Sims is mistaken in claiming there is no such earlier collection. Ellery Queen's 1945 anthology Rogues' Gallery, though wider in scope, covers much of the same ground.
* * *
© 2009 Jon L. Breen
|