(HARPER COLLINS £9.99)
This is a second adventure for sparky barrister Frankie Richmond. Elizabeth Woodcraft is herself a lawyer specialising in the same areas as Frankie, and the quality of the writing is high throughout. Frankie is so convincing a character that you feel you know her personally, all the more so because in many ways she is a complete mess.
Frankie is delighted to be given a brief to represent the victims at a child abuse inquiry in Birmingham. Her senior colleague, Simon, has a twisted ankle, and asks her as a favour to stand in for him at the opening of a murder trial in Birmingham immediately preceding her inquiry. Reluctantly, she agrees, and after being taken to meet the defendant, Danny Richards,whom she can’t help liking, her curiosity about the murder case is aroused. The body of the victim has never been found, and on the face of it the case against Danny isn’t strong, yet he seems to want to plead guilty. Her interest deepens after making the acquaintance of Danny’s sexy girlfriend, Yolande, to whom she is strongly attracted, particularly when the attraction appears to be mutual.
But she must give her main attention to the inquiry, which is the most important case she has ever been given. Her clients are now adults, and the abuses took place when they were all in a children’s home, Haslam Hall. In court, Frankie is surprised by the confrontational stance of Frodsham, the solicitor representing David Wyatt, the former principal of the home, and her confidence is not helped by the discovery that her clients really meant to appoint her namesake Francis Richmond to represent them.
Yolande persuades Frankie, much against her better judgment, to help search for evidence which will clear Danny, and she is introduced to some dubious characters, including Jimmy Clark, a rather strange but likeable young man. She is made to attend a legal ball, much against her will, and, for want of any other partner, takes along her cousin Julie’s teenage daughter, Marnie. All the great and good of Birmingham are there, plus a few other people she knows, and to Frankie’s astonishment it transpires that Yolande is the wife of the solicitor, Frodsham. Then Clark appears and Marnie takes a great shine to him.
As the two cases proceed, Frankie discovers that her clients are acquaintances of the people involved in the murder trial. Then one of her clients is killed in a suspicious road accident. From here on, Frankie is drawn into ever murkier waters.
What could be a depressing story is lightened by a deft touch of humour and the zany character of Frankie herself. Unusual, and highly readable.
Reviewed by Maureen Carlyle
THE BIRD TABLE, JONATHAN DAVIES
(LITTLE, BROWN £ 16.99)
Jonathan Davies is himself a criminal barrister with chambers in the Middle Temple, and uses his intimate knowledge of the profession to dazzling effect in this utterly absorbing courtroom drama.
An ambitious, single-minded barrister, Sally Doone, is prosecuting in a rape case at the Old Bailey. Her opponent for the defence, Jeremy Scott, listens in horror as she ruthlessly destroys his client's case. He is convinced his client is innocent. Before the court reassembles on the following day he obtains the evidence that will prove that his client, Roger Nichols, was set up. But it is too late for Roger Nichols. The previous evening he walked down a motorway embankment and shot himself.
When she learns that her cross-examination has probably provoked Nichols' suicide, Sally suffers a severe emotional trauma. Her marriage is unstable, and she is already worried that her young children's nanny has supplanted her in their affection. In a dazed state, she takes a taxi to Albemarle Street, where she wanders into an art gallery and is invited to a wine tasting by a charming dealer. After consuming several glasses of wine, she decides to buy an expensive painting. Afterwards, caught in a downpour outside the Ritz and unable to get a taxi, on impulse she decides to stay there for the night. Dining alone at a table which is obviously kept for single women guests, she is surprised, and pleased, to find the charming art dealer dining nearby. He asks if he may join her, and a great deal more wine is consumed, followed by a visit to the downstairs casino. Her new friend stakes her to a substantial gamble and she wins thirty thousand pounds. He takes her back to her room, and she becomes a victim. It is not until the evening of the following day that she decides to report the crime to the police. The rest of the story is what happens in court, when by a particularly ironic twist of fate, Jeremy Scott is appearing for the defence, and her own barrister is prosecuting in a somewhat ineffectual manner.
This is a novel principally about the psychology of the main characters. The effect of all the events on Sally herself, and how she comes to realise that she has been wrong about Jeremy Scott, whom hitherto she has despised, make compulsive reading. You have to make up your own mind about the perpetrator of the crime and the extent of his guilt. Are these experiences going to make or break Sally? The tension is maintained right until the very end.
I shall certainly be looking out for Jonathan Davies in the future.
Reviewed by Maureen Carlyle
THE BRUSH-OFF BY SHANE MALONEY
(CANONGATE CRIME £9.99)
On a hot day I am enjoying the aircon in my big truck, driving down town. I cross the brown, sluggish river, looking at the banks where the old quays and warehouses are being cleared and the new commercial centre is rising. Behind me the art galleries, museums and cultural centres have their stainless steel gleaming in the sun. If I drove through the city I would eventually find that the old farm has been cleared and is now a housing development. This state capital is big and it goes a long way in more ways than one.
Last week I was sweating in Florida with the latest Carl Hiaason, BASKET CASE, this week I have been dripping with the man who could be his Australian cousin. THE BRUSH-OFF is one of Shane Maloney’s four Murray Whelan novels, but only the first to be published here. It’s worth spending a little time getting to know him.
When you read Carl Hiaason you have to make an initial leap of faith that Floridian society is as corrupt as he describes (then you read his journalism and discover he’s not making it up); with Shane Maloney there is something similar – in Australia it is the incestuous interplay of the trades unions, pension funds, political parties and businessmen. Businessmen in themselves are dubious, and so are property developers wherever they are in the world. Murray and his Melbourne chums have a past more closely linked with the Christian Brothers than in many parts of the world; though, again, psychopathic teachers who’ve screwed you up for life are there in most people’s experience. You may not recognise things like Mu Mus and Gelatis, but you’ll get the idea pretty quickly.
Murray Whelan is hanging on as a political advisor to Angelo Agnelli, hoping he’ll move with Angelo when the big man moves ministries in the Victoria state government. Murray’s personal life is up the creek, his wife has left him and he only sees his son on rare occasions. If he can’t help Angelo cut it in his new ministry then there will be no job.
Okay, so there are the really big boys everyone has heard of – Kerry Packer, Robert Holmes a Court, Rupert Murdoch. Then you have the big boys – the ones who are reconstructing cities such as Melbourne – men such as Max Karlin and Lloyd Eastlake. Not only are they keen to get planning permissions on a big scale, they might be willing to fill the coffers of the state Labour Party, and they are also keen to emphasize their full Australian credentials. Everyone, from Murray and his mates to the millionaires, has shaken off the cultural cringe, so how better should everyone get together than a preview of the state’s latest acquisition – the late Victor Szabo’s painting Man With Lawn-Mower?
Changing ministries, from Ethnic Affairs to Arts and Water (Angelo is been given both), Murray has suddenly to learn about art – which, quite reasonably, is why the book starts with him rolling about the sward of the Botanic Gardens with Salina Fleet who knows about such things. Murray, though, did not expect to leave the Gardens and walk back to his wine glass to find said young lady’s boyfriend being retrieved from the Art Centre moat, not when the young man has been making statements about art in the city, and not now when the young man is dead. Next day Murray, as little as he knows about art, knows enough to be surprised to find another copy of the painting in the dead man’s studio. Things go downhill from there on.
Death, as Jimi Hendrix once said, can be a great career move for an artist. At least it increased the value of Victor Szabo’s estate – providing more copies don’t keep appearing. It also means that the recognised experts on the artist’s work can find themselves a nice little earner – writing the standard catalogue, locating and selling, authenticating work, or in the case of svelte Fiona Lambert, marking up the prices to a surprising degree.
For a man with Murray’s level of self-deprecation, he does quite well, even if he fails to work out everything at once, and even if he goes through most of the book with one or two unattractive and smelly handicaps. Naturally there are very few arrests and fewer convictions – Murray is not dealing with the sort of people who want even their lawful dealings out in the open, but most people come close to getting their just deserts. You’d be surprised who they are, though – that’s one of the things I liked about THE BRUSH-OFF, not to mention why and where. There must be a lot more of Melbourne to explore – I hope Canongate give us all the chance to do it with Murray Whelan.
Reviewed by Les Hurst
CAPTAINS OUTRAGEOUS, JOE R. LANSDALE
(WEIDENFELD £16.99 )
This is slick, lightweight fun that's punctuated with bits of really good writing, but no great plot. Serious crime it ain't...more like the kind of novel you pick up in the airport bookshop and leave on the plane. It really shouldn't take you much longer to read it.
Hap Collins and his gay black buddy, Leonard Pine, are working as nightguards at a chicken plant. Hap saves the boss's daughter from attack by a stoned rapist, so daddy pays a grateful bonus that allows Hap to take a cruise with Leonard (No, not that kind, but that's the kind of jokery the novel delivers) to the Caribbean. Luxury living all the way, until Leonard upsets a spiteful steward and they get stranded in a pretty godforsaken Mexican city, where they (penniless and clothesless - 'cos all their gear is still on the boat) get set upon by moonlighting Mexican police from whom they are rescued by a machete-weilding Mexican fisherman who's beautiful daughter nurses the wounded Leonard back to health and begins an affair with Hap.
That's something like the first half of the book, and then we learn that daughter has a past as a prostitute and, with her father, is involved in an antiquities scam which has set them on the hit-list of a Mexican gangster who uses a grotesque enforcer - think big Arnie and then some, but less brains. So the ex-prostitute ends up dead with serious mutilations. So Hap and Leonard return to East Texas where the guy who's been using Hap's apartment is murdered by the enforcer in mistake for Hap. So they decide to extract revenge, and go back to Mexico with the aid of Hap's private eye hog farming friend Jim Bob Luke, who just happens to have connections down there. Like a Mexican detective with a dissatisfied wife who alerts the gangster, who sends the enforcer to kill her and her husband, so Hap takes the law into his own hands and shoots them both and then goes back to East Texas to live happily with his reconciled girlfriend. Sorry if I forgot to mention her earlier, but characters come and go fleetingly in this.
Like the plot: Hap and Leonard whiz back and forth from Texas to Mexico and then back again, with characters picked up along the way and then discarded, or brought in at need. It's Deus ex Machina taken over the top.
But it is slick, and if you want a jokey, tough-talking read, this is the one for you. No more serious than the title suggests, but along the way lightweight fun.
Reviewed by Angus Wells
THE
CAT WHO WENT UP THE CREEK,
LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN
(HEADLINE £ 17.99)
This is a book with which to while away a pleasant couple of hours if you want nothing at all taxing or disturbing. In fact I think you could describe it as cosy taken to the ultimate. It is the latest in a long series in which all the titles begin with "The Cat Who". Judging by the quotes on the jacket, they have enjoyed considerable success in the USA.
The main character is Jim Qwilleran, a popular local journalist who dabbles in private investigation as a hobby. However, the real detective, if you can bring yourself to believe it, is his cat Koko, the male half of his cherished matched pair of Siamese. Now I am a great cat lover myself, but find this very hard to swallow. Qwilleran also has a large private fortune, and has been a considerable benefactor to Moose County, Alaska. He is therefore very popular with the local community, particularly with the women. He is a confirmed bachelor but has a regular girlfriend, who is conveniently away on holiday in New England for the entire length of the book.
The proprietor of the Nutcracker Inn at Black Creek, a small holiday resort, asks Qwilleran to come and stay for a few days at the inn, because recently she has felt a strange atmosphere there. She has blue eyes and blonde braids wound round her head, so of course he says yes, on condition he can bring the Siamese with him. The poor creatures have to stay shut up in the room, although Koko is occasionally allowed out on a lead. Soon after Qwilleran's arrival, a fellow guest is found floating dead in the creek. This is good for Qwilleran, as it means he can move into the dead man's cabin (much better for the cats).
It's all very jolly and folksy. The flimsy plot is really a sideline to the innumerable social events, with the meals described in great detail. I am sure Lilian Jackson Braun has a large band of devoted readers, but I fear I am unlikely to become one of them.
Reviewed by Maureen Carlyle
NANCY TAYLOR ROSENBERG
(ORION £10.99)
Nancy Taylor Rosenberg has produced a study of tragedy on an epic scale. Her heroine, District Attorney Joanne Kuhlman, is struggling to put her life back together as she gets to know her children again after a two-year separation. Kuhlman’s children are trying to cope with the betrayal dealt them by their father after he kidnapped them and told them their mother never wanted to see them again. The father is suffering from the tragic flaw of arrogance that won’t let criminal charges and a divorce get in his way, and the potential love interest is dealing with a tragic past of his own. Add to this the tragically misunderstood defendant and his mother, busy trying to rise above the tragedy facing her family, not to mention the ubiquitous private detective with a tragic secret and one begins to feel that the author is testing the bounds of credibility in a way that can only lead to tragedy.
In the time it takes for Conflict of Interest to unfold, the reader is taken on a whirlwind journey that makes the same emotional pit stops one might expect to find on the Jerry Springer show. The plot takes a back seat as the main characters seek “closure” and personal growth. This is a shame as Rosenberg has a fairly developed sense of pace and the writing is quite crisp. However, the reader is left with an excellent idea of what the characters are wearing, if not what they are actually doing.
Conflict of Interest isn’t a bad book but it isn’t great. It is perfect for airport lounges and leaving on the train. Just another case of disposable reading material – tragic really.
Reviewed by Kate Long
DEAD MAN RIDING,GILLIAN LINSCOTT
(VIRAGO, £12.99)
Normally when one is asked to cast their minds back to the very first things they have done, with women they are more than likely to be asked about their first kiss. However, this is certainly not the case with Gillian Linscott’s protagonist Nell Bray. In her case not only does she receive her first kiss but she also investigates her first murder. In Dead Man Riding it is 1900 and we are taken back to the first summer of the 20th century and the last year of the reign of Queen Victoria. It is also the year that Nell loses her innocence as she discovers the depths that humanity can sink to.
A young Nell Bray is in Oxford trying as hard as possible to live up to the standards that are expected of a female Oxford student. While a summer reading party in the company of fellow male undergraduates is something that the College would not approve, Nell is not about to turn down the opportunity of a few weeks of fresh air and Greek philosophy amongst her friends in the Lake District. However, intellectual pursuits soon take second place when they find a house under siege and are welcomed by a shotgun blast by their host. While they had been warned about his eccentricity they were not aware of the fact that he was at war with his fellow neighbours but also the main suspect in the killing of the local magistrate’s son. Nell, however doubting her host’s guilt starts her first murder enquiry. Things take a turn for the worse when out of the mist on the back of a silver stallion comes the dead body of a man.
Gillian Linscott quite rightly won the 2000 CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger for Absent Friends. Her series featuring Suffragette sleuth Nell Bray has been garnering rave reviews for a long time now. It is most gratifying to be able to find out a bit more about Nell’s earlier life and how she became involved in investigating. Gillian has managed to make Nell a most interesting protagonist, an early feminist with a lot of integrity. Her descriptions of the era are apt and certainly true to form. Dead Man Riding has the type of plot that is not easy to do credit in a brief review. The twists in the story are just enough to keep one entertained and I for one was interested enough to want to know the outcome. This is a wonderfully written book and a welcome to the series. I look forward to reading more exploits of Nell Bray.
Reviewed by Ayo Onatade
DEATH IN THE DORDOGNE,LOUIS SANDERS
(SERPENT'S TAIL £7.99)
It is seldom that I have difficulty in getting through a book, particularly one running to a mere 152 pages. I actually had to force myself to finish this one by reading a few pages at a time. It was originally written in French, and has apparently been funded by the Arts Council of England, with the "participation" of the French Ministry of Culture and the "support" of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Frankly, I'm gob-smacked. It clearly demonstrates that getting published has more to do with luck than skill. The translation is appalling, with interminably long sentences. The central character is an Englishman living - if it could be called living - in a semidetached cottage in the Dordogne. He spends most of his time lying around his squalid property in a drunken stupor.
This sorry tale opens with the death of a neighbouring farmer's son, crushed to death by a falling tree. Previously this family has lost another son in mysterious circumstances. As he has nothing else to do, our hero ponders vaguely about this mystery. There is no plot as such. We are treated to thumbnail sketches of various people in the surrounding community. They are almost all boring expatriate Brits or French "peasants" -he's a disgusting snob as well. He meets an attractive French girl, with whom he has a brief affair, during which she spends most of her time cooking. Not surprisingly, she soon dumps him. There are more deaths. There is a Dutchwoman who isn't Dutch, and an Englishman who isn't English. The facts behind the deaths are eventually revealed in the space of a page or two by the supposed Dutchwoman. The events go back to the war, and this brief passage has in it material which might make a good story.
Death in the Dordogne is intended to be the first of a series. Not recommended.
Reveiewed by Maureen Carlyle
DEEP WATERS, BARBARA NADEL
(HEADLINE £17.99)
This novel has so much going for it that it is hard to know where to begin. The setting is modem day Istanbul with its myriad races with their individual cultures and traditions. The protagonist is half Turkish, half Albanian and because of this his family becomes embroiled in the feuds (fis) which exist between Albanian families in the city. Barbara Nadel has made the city come alive, it is clearly visible to the reader, as are the characters, some good, some bad, some indifferent but all with backgrounds which have made them what they are and what they become as they are influenced by events.
Cetin lkman is the police officer who is called to the scene of a murder where the victim has had his throat cut. He is assisted in his investigations by Mehmet Suleyman, an officer whose girlfriend, Dr Zelfa Halman, is twelve years his senior and a psychiatrist who sometimes also assists the police. In this case she is treating a man who possibly knew the victim. The plot is totally believable and follows a natural progression, although that is only revealed at the end. The dialogue is realistic, as are the relationships between the various parties. Amazingly, Barbara Nadel has broken the 'rules' by having two characters with the same first name and still manages not to confuse the reader.
What is made very clear is the class distinctions which exist, the differences between the various cultures and the fear of the citizens after the devastation of the last earthquake to hit the city.
To read this novel is to receive a history lesson, but one related as a story. There are no chunks of information to digest and no bias on the part of the author who obviously knows her subject well.
Mental illness and its treatment are dealt with knowledgeably and realistically. And when the denouement comes all the strands and sub-plots are neatly woven together. Crimes which seem connected turn out not to be and the same is true in reverse.
Barbara Nadel has written about various cultures, madness, love, fear, police investigations, what amounts to almost tribal wars, death, grief and sacrifice with great understanding of each element.
This is the best book I have read for a very long time.
Reviewed by Janie Bolitho
DIAMOND DUST, PETER LOVESEY
(LITTLE, BROWN £ 16.99)
It is always a pleasure to read a new book by one of the masters of police procedurals. DCI Peter Diamond is a completely convincing murder detective, down to the smallest details of his lifestyle in Bath. This lifestyle is shattered for ever when one morning he is called out to a woman's body which has been discovered in Victoria Park. The body is that of his own wife, Stephanie.
Struggling to overcome his grief, he is determined to find her killer. Stephanie was a woman of transparent honesty and kindness, liked by everyone. His first thoughts are that the killer was taking revenge for one of his successful prosecutions. The day before the murder he was attacked by the girlfriend of a local mafia boss, sentenced to life that morning. He is overcome by rage and frustration when Georgina, the ACC, takes him off the case and appoints DCI McGarvie, whom he dislikes, to conduct the investigation. His fury is exacerbated when he is treated as a suspect himself and taken in for questioning. He decides to continue working on the case in private, using his many contacts with local villains and his previous colleagues in the Met.
The labyrinthine plot is immaculately constructed, leading down a series of blind alleys, with occasional apparently unconnected forays into the planning of a major diamond heist at the Dorchester Hotel.
Diamond is also trying to trace Stephanie's ex-husband Edward Dixon-Bligh. He knows little about him other than that he caused Stephanie a lot of grief Stephanie's diary has revealed that she had an appointment in Victoria Park on the day of her death with a mysterious 'T'. Did she use to call Edward Ted? Then he learns that the wife of a former Met colleague, DCI 'Stormy' Weather, is missing. When her dismembered body is discovered on a railway line, Diamond contacts Weather and they agree to combine forces, convinced that the two killings are linked.
The final solution is unexpected, shocking and one with which Diamond will have to come to terms for the rest of his life. Gripping stuff.
Reviewed by Maureen Carlyle
GRANDMOTHER’S FOOTSTEPS,CAROL SMITH
(LITTLE BROWN, £15.99)
This is the 6th novel by Carol Smith and she continues in the vein of writing an interesting if somewhat tame psychological thriller. Carol Smith takes the “what would happen theme” and play’s with it quite nicely. While it is not the first time there has been a book that uses the first person narrative from the murderer’s point of view it certainly works. Books like Agatha Christie’s Who Killed Roger Ackcroyd and Bonita Faye by Margaret Mosley come to mind.
In Grandmother’s Footsteps a series of rather shocking murders take place. Meanwhile, William Huxley an out of work cartographer is stuck at home looking after his two-year-old daughter. He soon becomes extremely interested in the murders and his persistence soon pays off when he senses a link that the police have appeared to overlook. As he patiently but slowly unravels the tangles a junior reporter and his cleaning lady aid him. The focal point in Grandmother’s Footsteps is not only the murders but also the crumbling relationship between his wife, dotcom entrepreneur Edwina and Huxley her husband. The resolution of which is as satisfying as the outcome of the novel.
As psychological novels go this may not be in the same league as some others I could think of but the author is certainly heading in the right direction. It was not as scary or as thought provoking as it could have been, which is a shame. The writing did appear to drag a bit at times which spoilt my reading of the novel. Grandmother’s Footsteps in any event is an interesting psychological thriller, which sadly lacks that vital spark. Despite this, as hard as I tried I could not work out who the murderer was. I am sure that other readers will also have the same problem. Like me you are bound to be surprised.
Reviewed by Ayo Onatade
THE KILLING JAR
DAVID DOCHERTY
(£6.99, Pocket Books)
The Killing Jar, a second novel, is an ecological thriller at heart, but tries awfully hard to cover a lot of other ground too, taking in boardroom power-struggle, paternity whodunit and search-for-missing-daughter along the way. Briefly, Harry Yeats, wildlife photographer and coordinator of DREAD (Doon Residents against The Dam), with a past that grows more chequered by the chapter (“scars still marked the whole of his left side where a brown bear had attacked him and a colleague eight years before”) rescues the granddaughter of the dam company’s Chief Executive from a kidnap attempt, and a little later, when the dam bursts perhaps a trifle sooner in the narrative than might have been expected, manages to rescue most of the children from The Ark, the home for kids with behavioural problems that the granddaughter runs. Meanwhile Harry’s own missing daughter shows up, now also a kidnap victim (same kidnappers), and if that’s not enough, Harry has to help with the wheeler-dealing aimed at bringing the dam company into Greener hands, as well as sorting out one or two of the more problematic Ark survivors. The pace is frantic at times; at others, it all gets a little bogged down in financial detail. Harry’s too good to be true (he’s a dab hand with a blowdart, which comes in handy), if not quite as marvelous as Douglas the dog, but to balance that, there’s a character who, gradually revealed as being the true villain of the piece, just gets worse and worse until finally identified as (shudder) a bisexual. That apart, it passes the time cheerfully enough. I’m still not a hundred per cent clear on why the dam fell down, though.
Reviewed by Mick Herron
LESSONS IN LOGIC, JANE BOLITHO
(CONSTABLE, £16.99)
In Lessons in Logic, DCI Roper finds that his case of a nuisance caller becomes one of murder when recently divorced Julie Watson is found knifed to death after receiving a spate of anonymous phone calls. The extremely brutal killing changes the whole course of the investigation at Rickenham Green, especially since Julie had actually made a complaint. At first they thought that they were dealing with a simple matter of a harmless nuisance caller, but soon it becomes a murder enquiry. Not only that, the team soon finds themselves receiving further complaints about nuisance calls from women similar to Julie. When a second murder takes place DCI Roper is left wondering what type of person they are dealing with.
Bolitho’s method of telling the story downplays the tension in the early chapters but also enables her to explore in detail the various characters. The small town setting is reminiscent of the traditional whodunit. Lessons in Logic is also a wary tale and makes you think twice about giving out information. Bolitho is a good storyteller and Lessons in Logic is a testament to this. The plotting is neat and the psyhological analysis of the various characters comes across quite vividly. However, despite all this I found this book hard to finish. It wasn’t because it was not a good read, I just felt that it was lacking a certain touch that would normally hold my attention. This should not stop those who enjoy traditional whodunits from reading this novel. Sadly, it was just not for me.
Reviewed by Ayo Onatade
LOOKING FOR CHET BAKER,BILL MOODY
(WALKER & COMPANY, $24.95)
I am a big fan of John Harvey’s Resnick novels and was gratified to see at the start of this latest Evan Horne mystery a poem about Chet Baker. Readers of the Resnick novels will understand the significance.
Looking for Chet Baker is the 5th in the series featuring jazz loving and reluctant sleuth Evan Horne. Those of us who have read the earlier novels will know that what Evan Horne likes to do more than anything else is to wallow in jazz and who can blame him.
Having survived a serial killer in Bird Lives and subsequent counselling in New York, Jazz pianist Evan Horne is back. Horne finds himself in London to undertake a week long performance at the legendary Ronnie Scotts. On sabbatical from UNLV his long time friend Professor Ace Buffington tries his up most to persuade Horne to join him in Amsterdam to research a biography on music legend Chet Baker. Baker died in Amsterdam under very suspicious circumstances. Some say it was suicide, others believe he was murdered. Much to Buffington’s surprise and dismay Horne turns him down. He is wary of becoming involved because of the problems that result from his involvement.
Evan subsequently travels to Amsterdam to undertake a dream performance with ex-Basie player Fletcher Paige. He finds he staying at the same hotel that Chet Baker stayed in when he died. Unable to resist and conscious of the fact that Ace has already left, Evan looks inside the room at the window where Baker is said to have fallen. Horne becomes concerned when he sees his friend’s satchel containing his papers in the room. Knowing that Ace would not leave his precious papers behind, Horne begins to make inquiries that soon force him to investigate the last days of jazz musician Chet Baker.
Evan Horne is certainly not the run of the mill private eye; he is a jazz pianist who always seems to find himself involved in his friend’s escapades.
Followers of the jazz scene will know that Chet Baker died after a rather long and successful but somewhat stormy career. He died after falling from his hotel room in Amsterdam in 1988. That much we do know is true. In Looking for Chet Baker, which is played out against the background of 20th century jazz greats, Bill Moody has given us readers as excellent jazz mystery. He has managed to weave the unsolved mystery of Baker’s death into a brilliant novel that effortlessly combines crime and jazz in a suitably smooth tale without giving too much away. If anything one is left wondering what exactly did happened to Baker.
This novel however, is not solely about the death of Chet Baker. Intertwined with the main story line are also a number of other issues that are dealt with admirably by the other characters in the book who come and go with easy in the novel. The pace is certainly not rushed and there is enough action within the book to keep the reader interested.
One does wonder however, if Horne’s friendship with Ace will survive the deception that was played on him. We shall have to wait and see what happens in the next book in the series.
It comes to mind that Looking for Chet Baker would best be read with some lovely smooth jazz playing away in the background. An excellent return to the series, if you haven’t read any of the earlier books then I urge you to do so.
Reviewed by Ayo Onatade
A PAINTED DOOM,KATE ELLIS
(PIATKUS, £16.99)
Kate Ellis’s Wesley Peterson series is in my opinion rather underrated. Even though A Painted Doom is the 6th in the series, only those in the know having been reading this author’s stories for sometime now and quite rightly so.
When teenager Lewis Hoxworthy finds an upsetting painting in a medieval barn, archaeologist Neil Watson who is digging up the remains of an ancient manor house nearby is excited by the find. However, things take a spectacular turn for the worse when the body of former rock star Jonny Shellmer is found in a field belonging to Lewis’s father with a bullet in his head. When Lewis also goes missing after being in contact with someone on the internet, DI Peterson and his team realise that they have a difficult case to solve. What is it about this Devon village that is full of celebrities hoping to find rural peace and quiet? It appears that all is not what it seems in Derenham, there are dark secrets abound both ancient and modern. Even Lewis’s upset parent’s appear to have something to hide. Does the death of the mysterious new owner of the New Age shop have anything to do with the Shellmer’s past? Is his death also linked with Lewis’s disappearance and are there any clues to be found in Shellmer’s best known song “Angel”. As archaeologist Neil Watson begins to uncovers the story of Derenham’s medieval past it is clear that a 500 year old painting holds the answer to the mystery. It is obvious that DI Peterson has to deal with the matter as soon as possible if he is to save Lewis.
Kate Ellis has quite a reputation as an author of crime novels. Her careful plotting and realistic characterisation are a hallmark of her books. A Painted Doom like its predecessors has the quality that one has come to expect from Kate Ellis. She gets your attention and holds on to it with ease. For me the enduring appeal of this series by Kate Ellis is the fact that she manages to weave a story that is not only believable but griping. A Painted Doom is a thoroughly entertaining read. If you have not read any in the series then please do.
Reviewed by Ayo Onatade
SOUTHAMPTON ROW, ANNE PERRY
(HEADLINE £ 17.99)
This is the fourth in the Inspector Pitt series, which is set in Victorian England. Not having read the previous three books it is difficult to know whether they all follow on one from one another, although it is certain that Southampton Row is the sequel to The Whitechapel Conspiracy as events and characters from it are mentioned throughout this novel, although without ever saying exactly what it was that took place in Whitechapel. The villain of the piece, Voisey, is still around at the end of this book, so, presumably, he will continue to be the enemy of Pitt and his family upon whom he relies to help him solve his crimes.
The sense of period is good with plenty of colourful descriptions of the food, fashions and etiquette of the era. So, too, are the historical and political aspects. They have been well researched and the realities of both have been used as part of the plot.
Voisey is now standing as a parliamentary candidate. Pitt, despite being thanked by Queen Victoria for his bravery, has been demoted from his position of Superintendent of Bow Street and working for Special Branch, is asked to investigate Voisey who, being a member of the Inner Circle, wishes to corrupt the judiciary. Pitt has to forego his holiday but sends his wife and children to Devon for their own safety.
Before Pitt gets very far with his inquiries a famous medium, Maude Lamont, is found murdered. Pitt is sent to the scene and discovers a link between the political figures and the spiritualist, but not quite the one he envisaged.
The style of writing is easy to follow but is occasionally repetitive because of the use of over-explanation. And there is one scene that is meant to explain how the murderer initially had an alibi that is not quite believable nor fully explained.
However, this is still an enjoyable read and the intricacies of the plot - which turns out to be several plots that interweave - make up for these minor criticisms.
Reviewed by Janie Bolitho
THE
WHITE ROAD, JOHN CONNOLLY
(HODDER & STOUGHTON £14.99)
The White Road marks private detective Charlie Parker’s fourth outing and takes place in the weeks following the arrest of Rev. Aaron Faulkner – chief bad guy and perpetrator of evil in Connolly’s previous book, The Killing Kind.
Parker is trying to make a fresh start with pregnant girlfriend Rachel when a phone call from an old friend takes him to South Carolina and into danger.
The road mentioned in the title is the place where the living and the dead walk together. Parker, as his fans know, is a frequent traveller on this troubling path but this is what makes him such a righteous man. As the living and the dead collide, so do the past and the present: dark secrets emerge, blood feuds are uncovered and the line between justice and revenge is irreparably blurred.
The evocative writing and dark themes that have won the author so many fans are present here. Connolly revisits scenes familiar to his readers, not for lack of imagination but because until Parker can truly come to terms with his life since the Travelling Man (Every Dead Thing) he cannot move forward. His nemesis, Faulkner, sits in prison and tweaks the putrid ley lines covering the world, causing weak men to cave and good men to relive nightmares.
Angel and Louis play greater roles in this book – helping Parker and yet helping themselves as each of them comes to terms with past events. The reader gains an insight into these men, making the twosome more vulnerable and more human, lessening them somehow. That this comes after their entanglement with Faulkner and his cohorts is merely Connolly’s subtle comment on the effect that dark angels have on this world.
The White Road leads its main characters to bloody resolution and, ultimately, redemption. It reaches deep into the three previous books, tying together seemingly random threads, reweaving some and cutting others. The heartbreak of The White Road is that at the end, Parker is no longer indentured to his past but free from its shackles. This is good for Parker but the reader cannot help but be disappointed as it indicates that Connolly is finished with his hero, or, one hopes, ready to take him on a new journey.
Reviewed by Kate Long
WORLD WITHOUT END, CHRIS MOONEY
(SIMON & SHUSTER £10.00)
There appears to be a new craze for books which are filled with chapters of one page or fewer. A depressing move, which pointlessly harms forests because of the wasted space on every other page. One feels the weight of the tome and is struck by the massy feel of the book, unaware that much of it is blank. This is one such book. I really don’t think there’s a need for 90 chapters.
I think it must be a first attempt. As such, you have to make allowances, so let’s make them. There are a lot of repetitive sections where we’re told again things which have happened; the characterisation, let us say, is not strong; too much use is made of flashbacks; there is an over-dependency on bodies being thrown about when the action slows; the start point of the book, the technology, is just a little bit too overboard compared with what is at present possible.
More seriously, the motivation of the leading bad guy, I felt, just didn’t hack it. A man who is terrified of bacteria and bugs whose ambition is to release a virus that will kill off almost all mankind, leaving him safe . . . Excuse me, but if a man suffers from arachnophobia, he’s hardly likely to want to populate the planet with spiders, is he?
Technology is crucial to the story but I couldn’t trust Mooney’s grasp of it. For example he routinely armed every person in the book with Glock pistols (apart from one Russian to whom he generously gave a Beretta) and regularly had them ‘click back the hammer’. Telling the poor reader about such behaviour with a class of gun which is characterised by having NO hammer, rather reduced my faith in other technological aspects of the story.
However, for all that, and having got my rant out of the way, this was not in the league of books which I have had to throw away. It was compelling, it was thought through, and the writing is not poor. If anything, I would say it suffers from far too gentle editing.
What is the story? As with all good thrillers we’re thrown in on page one. A CWA operative, Steve Conway is given a chance to help capture a technology-thief called ‘Angel Eyes’. The deal goes wrong and Conway’s shot, saved by his lover-to-be, Pasha. That was the first flash-back.
Now in the present day, we learn more about Angel Eyes. He’s taking any modern, useful military hardware but without selling it on. He has laser rifles designed to blind, gluey string that hardens to freeze people in position (both these do exist, I should say) and now he’s trying to steal a new cloaking body-armour. America is developing bodysuits which have fibre optics linked to cameras which can show anything behind the soldier. In other words, the man in the suit can become invisible. Angel Eyes has already stolen a helicopter with this technology.
But Conway’s CIA group are on his tail. They know Angel Eyes wants the suit, and they’re after him with a trap that should contain him.
The trouble is, when the trap is turned back on the CIA team, and only Conway survives, he realises that the CIA must have a mole, and not only is Angel Eyes after him, so are elements of his own colleagues.
A tale of manhunt, murder, Mafia and serious industrial espionage, this is for those who rather liked Modesty Blaise and early 1960s thrillers. Mooney has potential, but this one doesn’t quite hit the mark, not for my taste, anyway.
Reviewed by Mike Jecks
DOUBLE SHOT: Michael Carlson examines the latest chapters in the casebook of the Twentieth Century’s busiest detective, Nathan Heller…
MAJIC MAN BY MAX ALLAN COLLINS, SIGNET (USA) ,$5.99, ISBN 0451199456
ANGEL IN BLACK, BY COLLINS, SIGNET, $6.99, ISBN 0451205170
Perhaps these two volumes will one day be collected together and sub-titled “The Best Years of Nate Heller’s Life”, because they are both set in the immediate post war era. And though the Roswell UFO phenomenon (and the suicide of James Forrestal, America’s first secretary of defense) would seem to have virtually nothing in common with the Black Dahlia murder, and these are very different stories, Collins’ own approach to the historical events is remarkably similar.
This may be because both novels deal with events which have been ‘done’ to death in recent years. In Majic Man, Collins’ linking of Roswell and the space programme with Forrestal’s demise is a very effective shorthand for describing many of the problems lurking under the surface as America developed her national security state. Many people believe that the ‘arrival’ of aliens in New Mexico was somehow connected to the first atomic bomb explosions, an explanation that makes a certain interplanetary sense. Collins is a very down to earth historian, however, yet he manages to make the connection in a different way, bringing another somewhat forgotten bit of America’s space history to light in his explanation. I can’t say it really convinces me, mostly because it leaves a couple of the most inexplicable pieces of observation still unexplained, but I do confess to enjoying the way the whole hounding of Forrestal by Drew Pearson works, and I also enjoy Collins’ characterisation of Harry Truman, which rings relatively true. So if, Collins’ explanation of UFOs and Sector 51, which tries to draws a few theories together, falls short, its measure of the political times rings true.
Ringing just slightly less true is Nate Heller’s growing allure for
the opposite sex. As the series progresses, Heller is evolving from a
piece of rough who may appeal to the occasional woman to a vertible
lady-killer. Or maybe it’s just the post-war atmosphere which has
women throwing themselves at him. In any event, Heller never should forget
his hardboiled roots, because whenever a woman appears to want him, she
usually wants something from him instead.
This
may be the case with Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, whom Collins
manoeuvres into a liason with Heller in order to insert him, as it were,
more forcefully into the narrative of Angel In Black. The Dahlia
murders have had a number of solutions suggested in recent years, and, as
he did with Majic Man, Collins suggests a synthesis, one which
allows him to go back and revist the Cleveland Torso murders, which Heller
investigated with Elliot Ness (see the 1988 Ness novel The Butcher’s
Dozen). Ness remains an overlooked American tragi-hero, and Collins’
Ness novels are worth seeking out.
Again, Collins creates a synthesis of existing theories, particularly John Gilmore’s Severed, which also revealed that Short’s suffered from undeveloped female organs. This was a question I put to another Dahlia-phile, James Ellroy, who said the autopsy said no such thing. I mention it not because it invalidates Collins’ thesis, far from it, but merely to indicate the dangers of sticking too closely wit some of the theories out there. Gilmore is a fascinating character in some ways, as anyone who has read his autobiography Laid Bare can attest. In passing, Ellroy is not a reference point for Collins, though he shares with Ellroy a portrayal of the corruption of both the LAPD and the fiercely competitive newspapers in LA at the time.
Collins’ other major source is Larry Harnisch, the LA Times reporter whose still unreleased Dahlia book Stairway To Heaven was more or less previewed in a Pacific Dining Car session shown in James Ellroy’s Feast Of Death, the BBC documentary by Vikram Jayanti. It is to Collins credit that he can enter this morass of theorising and draw them all together, and add a new twist connecting the Dahlia to the LA mob, and have it all make sense.
Which brings us back to the best years of their lives. Heller is still shaken by his war experiences, which were related years ago in The Million Dollar Wound.
In Angel In Black he’s married, and his wife is pregnant. Since the series has not been written in sequence, we not only know that Heller has survived, but we know about changes in his life. Collins manages to keep the character developing, maturing, and changing himself. It is a tribute to such a prolific writer that he is able to maintain that focus in a series that by definition needs to revisit the historical past and of course must be entertaining. The real crime is that these books remain unpublished in the UK.
Reviewed by Michael Carlson
BASKET CASE, CARL HIASSEN
(Macmillan, £10.00 hbk)
Basket Case is Carl Hiaasen's first novel told in the first person, that person being Jack Tagger, one-time investigative reporter, now the obituary writer on a Florida newspaper. As in Britain newspapers are changing but Jack is having difficulty changing with them - he hates to see pages of press release for skin toning clinics being printed as news, and even in the backwater to which he has been banished in disgrace he hates to see the news value of an obituary reduced.
Jack is too young to have been a child of the sixties, but the stadium rock bands of the seventies - he knows them and has their re-released CDs in his car. He is not too surprised to discover what some of these people are doing now - gardening, opening shopping malls, turning up in congress - but he is surprised to discover that Jimmy Stoma, of Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, has turned up dead after scuba-diving in the Caribbean. Jimmy seems to have been half Jim Morrison and half Gene Simmons, a cultural or anti-cultural icon, and Jack not only has a regard for the man's passing, he also knows that he has been the first person to notice. News is coming across the obituary desk, but with the nose of a hot-metal man Jack has feeling their is something more. A performer with a soul so dismal as Jimmy Stoma seems to have been accepted by the blue waters of the Caribbean too easily. Unfortunately, no one is willing to allow Jack to leave his desk - there are no expenses, and the former owner of the paper is likely to pass over at any moment. Jack's obituary's editor is a power-dressing, organisation woman who is going to allow him no leeway, so he starts to investigate in his own time.
Jack has a dead lizard in his freezer, kept with the choc-ices - he sleeps with the Dove Bars, Jack says. You can guess that for such a man a concept of "their" and "my" time is as fixed as in a Salvador Dali painting. And after some experiences of the effects of embalming on human remains as evidence we are off into a wacky world where other people have ideas just as soft of what is yours and what is mine, and what was Jimmy's and is now mine, or perhaps could be.
By an unfortunate slip of fate, Jack has an unusual aptitude for dying that makes him a good obituary writer, since he is obsessed with the ages at which individuals have died - he has been hunting down his missing father to attempt to discover what might be in the gene pool and his own likely date of demise. Jack's mother is unwilling to let him know. Some mothers are like that.
Meanwhile, as Jack discovers, some people are just mothers - like Jimmy Stoma's widow and the guys hanging around her. Unfortunately, they have ideas about what Jack has discovered and start coming unhealthily close to Jack as well. On the other hand along the line Jack discovers that some newspaper magnates are different, and that some editors are different, and some internet striptease artistes are different.
Carl Hiaasen fans, who like their violence leavened with humour will find, though, that this book is just as black as any of his others, ending in an unusual experience with an airboat. And it is possibly better plotted than LUCKY YOU. Start reading.
Reviewed by Les Hurst
BARNEY THOMSON & THE FACE OF DEATH
DOUGLAS LINDSAY
(Long Midnight Publishing £4.99)
A between courses snack in Lindsay's very dark and very funny Barney Thomson trilogy, this novella will not only appeal to established fans, but could serve as a taster for readers new to the author. There are enough of the Lindsay trademarks here to tell anyone if they want to go further into Barney Thomson's wrapped Scotland; the pop culture jokes, the Monty Python-like out of context philosophy references, unlikely newspaper stories, humour black enough to trap light and bad haircuts. Set between the first and second books (for obvious reasons if anyone has read the last of the full length novels), this episode in the life of the Glasgow barber ever fated to be a suspected mass murderer takes him to Strathpeffer, a quiet spa village about a rude awakening in Lindsay's bloody way. Four American backpackers are found murdered and it all points to Barney when they are found with really bad haircuts. It is a murder weird enough to be an X-File and sure enough, two oddly familiar FBI agents, Damien Crow and Lara Cameron arrive to investigate the case. Events are wrapped up rather too quickly in a traditional final gathering of suspects and there are enough loose ends left over to make a sequel almost mandatory. After three novels, Barney Thomson is beginning to feel a little over stretched, but the novella format ensures he does not overstay his welcome and above all retains a quick paced laugh-out-loud-ibility. Published by the Lindsay family as a little cottage industry, the book happily looks professional and error free. If your local bookshop doesn't have a copy, clicking to the entertaining www.barney-thomson.com website will allow you to order a copy direct from the author, but the website is worth a look in its own right, complete with author's diary and who-would-make-the-best-big-screen-Barney poll.
Reviewed by Calum McCleod
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY, ED MCBAIN
(ORION, £12.99)
Was Ed McBain always with Orion? Or is this yet another major capture for the brightest star in the crime fiction publishing galaxy? But, despite the fact that he's been around for more years than I care to mention, and add to that the fact that I have several volumes of his, I am shamed to confess I have never (until now) sat down with an Ed McBain. I expect others will chastise me for that which means I can forestall any further self-chastise.
So what's the descent into the world of the 87th Precinct like for those who have never before entered those mean streets. Well, it's none too bad if you can avoid intrusions from the Latin American drug rings, the bros from the local ghetto trying to muscle into the local drugs trade, and the local dealers, who in this case take on a very unusual guise. And don't forget the Arabs. Even before September 11, McBain has them intent on changing the face of the urban landscape. Finally, there's the good guys: 87th Precinct regulars like Detectives Carella and Meyer, and their larger than life neighbour from the 88th, Fat Ollie Weeks. The cops are brought together when the body of an attractive young blonde is found in the lions' paddock at the local zoo. Their problem is that half of the body is in the 87th's territory, while the other half is in the 88th's. Well, actually, they do have a bigger problem than that. First of all they have to retrieve the bits of the body before the lions eat it all. Not the sort of problem that the doyens of crime usually have to deal with, but this is Ed McBain, probably at his most ferocious.
The body has a name and a history. Cassandra Lee Ridley had recently been using her skills as an airforce pilot to run drugs across the border from Mexico, for which she is paid exceedingly well. The only problem is that she has been paid in counterfeit dollars. So have the Latin American dealers, and that is the sort of problem which gets you fed to the lions. Literally in this case.
While they are sorting that one out, another untimely demise is brought to their attention, that of a technical publishing representative who is found murdered in the local ghetto. Not the sort of place where he would be expected to hang out, dead or alive. Pretty soon out tecs have found out that there's more to the rep and the publishing company than meets the eye. Thereafter, the plot gets more and more cloudy, and the text begins to border on the hilarious. The only problem is that cloudy can soon become opaque, and hilarity can descend in to farce, and McBain pays little attention to the crossover points. That might be the cost you have to pay for reading the 87th Precinct series. I have no doubt that confirmed McBain won't object to the cost.
Reviewed by Bob Cartwright
THE DEAD SIT ROUND IN A RING, DAVID LAWRENCE
(MICHAEL JOSEPH £9.99)
I jumped on this one with a goodly haste. Based in Notting Hill - always a good place to situate a murder mystery. And as many of you will know, the Gate is not a million miles from Shepherds Bush, home of QPR, for whom I have a less than passing obsession. Well sad to relate, Lawrence fails to mention QPR at all, while embarking on one of the best crime fiction books I've read in ages. As a debut, it is an extremely promising effort. But as the writer as a background in TV, I shouldn't have been too surprised at the quality.
Impressive start. A group of people, sisters and brother for the most part, are found dead sitting in a circle, a response to the fact that one was dying with cancer, one with angina, and they were all just a mite pissed off with the world. Well that's not completely true. One of the corpses stood out like a sore thumb. He wasn't an outstandingly respectable character like the others. Indeed, he is well known to the police in West London as a bit player in one of the local thuggeries. And, unlike the others in the circle, he hadn't taken his own life. Somebody else had.
Enter Detective Sergeant Stella Mooney. Well, not so much enter, as welcome back to a local lass who “had worked both sides of the street, and worked them well, but she knew the poor side better than the rich: knew it from having lived there. She had grown up on a west London estate, one of only three kids to go from her school to university”. In these few lines you get to know Stella, and what makes her tick. She also lives with George, a boat designer, in Fulham (probably couldn't afford the Bush). And she's prone to a three in the morning nightmare - a particularly nasty residue from a previous case. Her life is also about to be complicated by acquaintance with John Delaney, a local journo covering the dead circle case.
Soon after the dead circle is discovered, the cancer victim's brother turns up at the nick, and explains why his sister and her companions turned to suicide. And the outsider is revealed as one Jimmy Stone, who was not just a petty crook, but also a police informer. The sort of guy with any number of enemies, but which of them did him in? Before Stella can sink her teeth into that one, she is called to deal with the surviving brother of the cancer/angina sufferers. He's up on a roof in the Gate, threatening to jump. Stella tries to talk him down, but all she gets by way of thanks is a boot in the shoulder as he jumps.
The plot expands wonderfully to bring in Serbian imports, even more gruesome than those playing for Chelsea, who are providing the raw material for most of West London's prostitution, and who, not content with the proceeds from selling the girls want the full fruits of their labour as it were. So they're biding their time, trying to negotiate a better deal with the west London boys while preparing really to cut them out of the deal completely. It's all good stuff, which I enjoyed thoroughly. I hope David Lawrence is going to give us more of Stella Moody. I hope also the CWA has got this one down as a contender for their new writers award.
Reviewed by Bob Cartwright
A HANGING MATTER, MARGARET DUFFY
(ALLISON & BUSBY £17.99)
Ingrid Langley, former MI5, agent is now a successful crime fiction author and happy with her life. Her husband, Patrick Gillard is now out of the service and has a highly paid job at an army staff college. Boring but safe. Everything seems to be going well until he is arrested for taking part in the murder of a former colleague who had gone bad. Ingrid has to prove that he is innocent, but this is far from easy as Special Branch are involved, and doing their utmost to keep her from finding out the truth. her quest takes her from Devon to London, and theen to Scotland before the final climax in Wales.
Margaret Duffy spins an exciting yarn, that grips from begin to end. The pace never lets up and there are some wonderful pieces of humour, especially when the heroineis chaes by Special Branch and manages to leave them stranded in cars on Dartmoor. Well plotted, a cracking pace, and good characterisation. Another gem from this sadly under rated author. Recommended.
Reviewed by John Orum
PAYBACK, ALAN DUNN
(PIATKUS £17.99)
Billy Oliphant, an ex cop, now a security consultantis not a happy man. His ex wife has just gone on honeymoon and left their teenage daughter in his charge, wwhilst his lover is working abroad. When his friend and sometime employee Sly invites him to go on holiday to a resort in the Scottish Highlands, he is reluctant but his daughter helps to change his mind. On arrival the managertries to enlist his help to find out who is poisoning the water.But he's on holiday and just wants to spend time with Kirsty, his daughter. Then things really start to go wrong. First the place is cut off by blizzards, and then the body of the payroll manager is found , dead in his room. Suicide or murder? Then Billy is informed that a prisoner with a grudge has escaped and is intent on killing him.When a young girl is shot with a stolen rifle because she is wearing his distinctive coat he thinks it is the escaped prisoner, but things don't add up. As he investigates things become more complicated, and the denoument comes as a complete surprise.
The first half of the book is a bit slow and took some getting into. It seemed derivative of Agatha Christie: Ten Little Indians crossed with The Mousetrap. But the second half cracked along and there were some genuine surpises. Billy, his daughter Kirsty, and his friend Sly are well thought out characters, and Billy's confusion aat finding that his daughter is a young woman and not a little girl is genuine and recognisable to any parent.
On the whole a good read. But wait for the paperback.
Reviewed by John Orum
NEVER SOMEWHERE ELSE, ALEX GRAY
(CANNONGATE CRIME £9.99)
Three young girls have been murdered, their bodies dumped in a Glasgow park. Not just murdered, but scalped. The police are getting nowhere. DCI Lorimer, who is in charge of the case is not a happy man when his superior 'suggests that they bring in a psychologist to provide a profile of the killer. However it is a turning point. Especially when the profiler, Dr.Soloman Brightman queries whether they are looking for a serial killer. The deaths seem motiveless. None of the victims were raped or robbed. None of the victims have anything in common. It's time to take a look at the individual victims as individuals.The investigation leads to the local art college, but just as they ahave a lead, one of the main witnesses is murdered.
Meanwhile, Martin Enderby, a local reporter is cconducting his own investigation. And what he learns could endanger his own life.
A stunning debut for a new writer who could become Glasgow's answer to Rankin. Well drawn characters, tightly plotted. I found it difficult to put down. Highly recommended.
Reviewed by John Orum
THE MAN WHO FOUGHT ALONE, STEPHEN DONALDSON
(ORION £17.99)
Best-known for his science fiction and fantasy novels this seems to be a departure for Donaldsdson. Actually this is a follow up to noves published in the early 1980's under the name Reed Stephens. Twenty years is a long time but the wait has been worth while. Mick Axbrewder, the hero of these early stories returns. A PI operating under his partner's licence, he's recovering from a gunshot wound, and now he and his partner Ginny Fistoulari are on the run from Puerto del Sol's only crime lord. Out of work aand in a strange town he has no contacts except for an old 'friend' of Ginny's. He goes to him cap in hand, his usual lack of tact and rudeness notwithstanding Ginny's old friend comes through and Mick finds himself acting as security at a martial arts contest. The antagonism between the various styles and schools puzzles him, and he is at first contemptuos of the fighters, but as he learns more about the arts, he begins to show some respect for the contestants. To make things even better, he falls heavily for one of the orgaanisers. But then a murder is committed. The head of security is murdered when trying to apprehend a petty thief.It doesn't add up.
Even with the murder, Mick has obviously done something right, as he is engaged to look over the security at a Martial arts centre. It is especially important because some highly valuable amartial arts artifacts are going to be stored there. These antiques are causing dissent among the schools at the centre, because they are Chinese , but have come into the hands of a Japanese teacher. When the antiques are stolen and the Chinese teacher murdered all hell is let loose and Mick must find out who really committed the murder before war breaks out between the schools.
Donaldson has a real feel for the politics that drive the martial arts schools and the rivalry between them. Brilliant - buy it.
Reviewed by John Orum
(SIGNET $6.99/£4.99)
The fourth in a series which started with Tracking Time, The Silent Bride sees Detective Sergeant April Woo of the NYPD and partner Lieutenant Mike Sanchez investigate the murder of a young bride, shot as she walks up the aisle.
An interesting array of suspects emerges, Wendy the wedding planner, upmarket dressmaker Tang Ling, Kim the sewing man and a hairdresser colourfully named Louis the Sun King.
The case develops personal connotations for April, through concern over her friend Ching's imminent wedding and pressure from lover Mike to get married. Torn between the conflicting demands of background, relationship and job, April struggles to please everyone. She comes across as a very human detective, an endearing mixture of intelligence, sophistication and superstitions of the Chinese culture into which she was born. This culture is personified by April's mother, Skinny Dragon, disapproving her daughter's job and choice of boyfriend. It is not just her parents' disapproval of her potential marriage with a Mexican American which makes April hesitate to accept Mike's proposal. She fears something unlucky in their marrying. Yet Mike feels it unlucky that they should be together without being married. The case is disturbing to both detectives.
Despite personal differences, April and Mike are professionals, a good team who respect each other's opinions. Although he is the senior rank, he often gives her the lead in questioning witnesses. April's thoroughness is made clear when we are told she keeps personal as well as official notebooks. Through her thoughts we receive interesting cultural information, embracing the Jewish community of the dead bride as well as the background differences between herself and Mike. There are also two or three references to September 11, handled with commendable sensitivity.
An enjoyable novel, which holds the reader's attention to the end.
Reviewed by Mary Andrea Clarke
INVITATION
TO A DYNAMITE PARTY
PETER LOVESEY
(Allison & Busby, £6.99)
Invitation to a Dynamite Party is an historical novel whose bare outline—policeman infiltrates gang of Irish nationalists engaged on a bombing campaign in London—could relate as easily to the year of its original publication (1974) as to the year in which it’s set (1884). That’s probably no coincidence. The nationalists are the Clan-na-Gael, the policeman Sergeant Cribb (one of Lovesey’s series characters), and the campaign culminates in the attempted delivery of “an infernal machine” (that would be a bomb) via prototype submarine to an unsuspecting member of the Royal family, himself familiar from other of Lovesey’s series, though no less real for that. The scenario here is the enjoyable, if familiar, one of the undercover agent having to further the villains’ plots in order to win their trust—without his assistance, their scheme would collapse long before completion—and it results in a brisk and pacy read with plenty of incidental pleasures; one in which the historical detail comes across as authentic without ever being an end in itself. Lovesey sensibly forbears, too, from overdoing the period dialogue (when he has a character say “By Jove, I detect the hand of Providence in this”, we know it’s because the character’s an idiot). Victorian mysteries are a vogue genre now, but Lovesey was one of the first on the beat, and the Cribb series is well worth reprinting. It would have been nice, though, if Allison & Busby had put the pages in the right order. Maybe they could make up by publishing a “best of” collection of Lovesey’s short stories.
Reviewed by Mick Herron
2nd
CHANCE JAMES PATTERSON with ANDREW GROSS
(HEADLINE £16.99hbk )
I’ll confess my heart sank when I was sent the new James Patterson to review. I’ve read a couple of his previous, and thought Along Came A Spider had plot-holes big enough to stage the World Cup in, and that in The Midnight Club, he lied to the reader—didn’t mislead or misdirect or cunningly wrongfoot to produce a startling plot reversal, à la, say, Jeffery Deaver. He just lied.
So anyway, 2nd Chance. This is the second (duh!) in a series about a woman who’s a lieutenant in the LAPD, but prefers to catch criminals with the help of her chums, “the murder club”. The criminal in question here is a serial killer who favours a two-headed lion device he usefully decals to the side of his vehicle (if I were a serial killer, I’d consider going No Logo), and how they catch him is described in very short chapters, in which information deemed surprising is usually relayed twice. I suspect we’re supposed to be as surprised the second time as we were the first. Whether this is because Patterson thinks his average reader has a tiny attention span or because he has one himself, I couldn’t say. Along the way, the most godawful clichés are exhumed. We’re introduced to a cop eager to go off-shift in time for his seven-year-old’s birthday party. “Davidson had five kids and he lived for them.” Guess who gets his head blown off next page? I could go on, but with writing this lazy, who cares?
This book is by James Patterson “with Andrew Gross”, though no further explanation is given. I can’t think of many reasons why a bestselling author might take on an unknown collaborator. One (dodgy) motive might be to effect some kind of creative rejuvenation. No sign of that here. Another is to shift more product more quickly, which shows only contempt for the readership. Caveat emptor.
Reviewed by Mick Herron
(HarperCollins, £12.99hbk)
Angel Rock is a long drive from Sydney, and takes its name from the peak that overhangs the town. The stone face must have looked different in the past because it is difficult to see the magic in the rock now, while things in the town below are little better. This is where Tom Ferry lives, outside the town centre, with his mum and stepfather and stepbrother - misunderstood by his stereotypical step-dad, not getting enough time with his mother who has to work, and not getting enough time with his step-brother. Particularly not getting enough time with his step-brother after they both go missing in the bush.
Pop Mather is the town police officer. He is there when they find Tom, and when they don’t find Flynn. Mather has a daughter just about Tom’s age, and knowing that Tom’s step-dad’s sense of loss over his missing son will not stop him beating the returned step-son, takes Tom into his own home. The bush swallows things - after the initial days there is little that can be done in the search. They wait for Tom to recover, to see if he can tell them anything.
Grace, Officer Mather’s daughter, once had a friend - Darcy Steele, but Darcy had grown strange and had stayed out at her family station with her unattractive father and less attractive brothers. Six months later, the police found Darcy’s rat eaten corpse in a dump in Sydney, along with her Bible which had survived. By chance, Detective “no first name” Gibson, was just coming around from a drunk when he was called out to the remains, and his demons started to eat his soul again, just as the rats had eaten Darcy. It was soon afterwards that he found how long a drive it is to Angel Rock.
Angel Rock is not in a good way - the farms are going to the devil, and there’s only the sawmill providing work. The shop and the lady running it are moving towards entropy. Things must have been different in the past - when the preachers did their preaching, when a farmer could afford a Rolls-Royce motor car, perhaps even when boys like the Steeles did not bully boys like Tom, but those days are long gone.
At odd moments things seem to suggest otherwise - when the circus comes to town, for instance. Tom can see magic in the mangy lions in their cage, and for a moment he can imagine a lion lose in the outback - a lion might have taken Flynn. Tom has only once seen a kangaroo in the wild, though. If even the native fauna is strange, how much more unlikely is it that lions are running free. More likely are the feral men, who sometimes appear at a backdoor for tucker, and who may be glimpsed in the distant trees, if they are not an illusion of the heat.
Detective Gibson sees strange things, too, but then he wakes up to find he is in someone’s yard with his empty rum bottle or three. His hosts find it natural to be waking up with him. Against all this, Gibson has Darcy’s diary scrawled on the pages of the Bible, of a different world in the bush, when his demons allow him to get on with his search.
Things were different in the past, Gibson discovers, as he traces the individuals who have moved on from the town, and he discovers even more and worse locked insanely away.
ANGEL ROCK comes with a suggestion that it is comparable with Joan Lindsay’s PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK or Stephen King’s STAND BY ME, but they are not good comparisons. PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK was unique, and ANGEL ROCK has a major difference: since all of its plots and disappearances are resolved it is a police procedural written with other overtones. Nor is ANGEL ROCK particularly individual today - the Australian setting makes it unusual, but the combination of poverty and misery and the uncanny as plot catalysts has been a regular feature of horror writing for the last ten years at least. Last year Big Engine, the new British fantasy publishers, published Gus Smith’s FEATHER & BONE, which is set in a Northumbria just as strange as Angel Rock, and just as miserable and just as poverty stricken.
So, like J D Salinger’s Esme who wanted “love and squalor”, the reader who discovers ANGEL ROCK will discover a library of this sub-genre waiting.
Reviwed by Les Hurst
(ORION £16.99 Hardcover £9.99 Trade Paperback)
This is a novel that I would probably not normally read, as its theme is not to my normal taste. It is a crime mystery set in the Yorkshire Asian Community. Although being Asian myself, I was brought up by my parents in a western atmosphere, so the book's landscape was an education to me in a surreal way.
This is a debut novel, but for the life of me I couldn't spot any traces of an amateur, in fact, it reads almost like a professional, writing under a pseudonym. This in itself is a remarkable achievement illustrated particularly in the dialogue, which reads with the waxy polish of an experienced novelist.
The plot involves the murder of an attractive Asian woman - Rukhsana Mahmood in a health centre car-park. DI John Handford is assigned the case as a kind of 'olive branch' from his boss following allegations (disproved but leaving the tainted residue) of racism. Due to the sensitivity of the matter in the Asian community, he is assigned DS Khalid Ali as his assistant. The case is complex and convoluted as Rukhsana's husband, Amajit was a Muslim while she had been a Sikh. Family tension mounts, as do the secrets in their former lives that Hanford and Ali uncover.
Lesley Horton writes with sensitivity on a subject that is difficult to balance, especially the cultural divide and the issues of race and religion. It does not preach, nor does it make comment on the issues of race, especially when Ali is faced with either the mundane day-to-day racism within the police force, or the evil-faced racism of the street. The catalogue of characters is large, and everyone is a suspect but Horton manages to sketch each one with a flourish that breathes life into them all.
The resolution is handled extremely well, keeping the red herrings on the line long enough to catch the reader with some surprise. I enjoyed the denouement immensely as all the threads were pulled in one rapid movement to reveal the finale. The only negative comments I have were that Ali's character did, on occasion, irritate me because he was on-stage for lengthy sequences. This deprived the book of investigating the character of John Handford, who was by far the more interesting of the pair. I found some of the 'bad-guys' particularly memorable and to indicate why would add a spoiler.
I think this book will do remarkably well considering the right wing climate with Le Pen in France, Jorge Haider in Austria and our very own BNP. It however mirrors life, in so far as it is not race/religion that divides people, but often the evil nature of the human condition that lives like a fungus on that divide, exploiting the differences within communities as a form of camouflage.
Highly recommended debut and here's hoping that we see more of DI John Hanford.
Reviwed by Ali Karim
ANTHONY PRICE
(Orion Crime Masterworks, £6.99)
Reviewed by Michael Carlson
This was the only one of the first batch in the Crime Masterworks series which wasn’t familiar to me, and reading it I remembered why I hadn’t been drawn to Price in the early 70s, when I was pursuing Westlake’s Richard Stark books and rediscovering Hammett and Chandler. A few decades on, and with a quarter of a century in England already served (life without parole?) I’m glad Orion brought this one to my attention now.
Price’s Dr. Audley, who works for some nebulous group somewhere in the MoD, is a very traditional type of English super-spy. James Bond was always a bit, well, flash on the one side (and look where he’s got us) and Smiley always a bit too, well, defeated (and wasn’t LeCarre spot on in his prescience?). Audley harks back to the olden days, when gentleman amateurs shambled around disguising their true English "it’ll be all right on the night" uber-competence, and saved the world for Queen and Country.
A series of deaths disguised to look like accidents, and a near murder arranged to look like a suicide drag Paul Mitchell, an historian researching the Great War, into a mystery: why should a lonely portion of the Battle of the Somme generate such violence? Audley gives Mitchell a new identity, and together they travel to the dangerous countryside of France, full of strange, tempermental people, and investigate. It proves to be a deeper, literally, puzzle than anyone suspected.
It’s also very much RIDDLE OF THE SANDS territory. The enemy is the Russians, not the Hun, but the nature of the beast, in Price’s pose, hasn’t changed much since the days running up to August 1914. What makes it all work is the reality of the Great War, as we see it through Mitchell’s eyes. It is as if he stands in for a society which remains ever-trapped in its trenches, reliving the last gasp of its imperial glory, before four years of ritual suicide began its great decline. That’s the spirit OTHER PATHS TO GLORY harkens back to, and it does it well.
As I’ve said before, an introduction, putting the book into context and suggesting why it should be considered a masterwork, is all this reissue lacks.
OTHER
PATHS TO GLORY