POSTED OCTOBER 30, 2011

DEATH ON THE RIVE NORD         
ADRIAN MAGSON         
Allison & Busby   August, 2011
ISBN: 978-0749008390

After his success with his Riley Gavin (female investigative reporter) series and Harry Tate (MI5 officer) series, along comes Adrian Magson with a new hero, Inspector Lucas Rocco (French policeman).

Actually not quite new as this is the second book featuring Rocco, the first offering, DEATH ON THE MARAIS, having been favourably compared to Simenon's Maigret novels.

Nicole Farek and her young son smuggle their way into France disguised as illegal immigrants in an effort to get away from her husband, the vicious Algerian gangster Samir Farek, who is intent on killing her.

She arrives in the small town of Poissons-les-Marais where Rocco, transferred from Paris to this country town, takes it upon himself to protect her whilst himself busy on the trail of the illegal immigrants. But Farek gets closer, killing everyone who stands in his way, until Rocco is fearful for his own life.

Comparisons with Maigret are obvious. After all, there aren't too many French police heroes around. But Magson certainly paints an accurate picture of life in the small French villages, capturing the ambience of the place in a way that anyone who has been there will recognise. And, as anyone who has read his earlier books will know, he is also a master of building up the suspense, making this one of those books you just can't put down.

I can't wait for No. 3 in the Rocco series which is due out next May.

GOOD AS DEAD           
MARK BILLINGHAM             
Little, Brown & Company   August, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-84744-419-6

This novel is the latest - the 10th - in the Tom Thorne series featuring a British cop of a different stripe. His approach to solving a crime is to achieve a conclusion by any means. And, in this book, he shows no mercy.

It begins when D.S. Helen Weeks enters her local news agent's shop to buy her customary candy bar and ends up, along with another customer, as a hostage to the proprietor, who then demands that Thorne find the murderer of his son. Some months before, Thorne had been the arresting officer when the boy surrendered for killing another lad in self-defense. He received an eight-year sentence, rather an extreme incarceration based on the case. While in prison, he was attacked and taken to the hospital where he was later found dead of an overdose of drugs. His father refuses to accept the verdict that the death was a suicide.

Forced to reopen the case and "find the truth," Thorne fights against time and Helen's predicament. The time frame of the novel is three days, which certainly speeds up the action both behind the closed doors of the shop, as well as vis-à-vis Thorne's progress. The psychological aspects of the hostage system: the interchanges between Weeks and her captor, and the uncertainties of the situation, are manifested in the shifting conversations between the two. In contrast are the fears and doubts of the police officials outside who cannot determine what, if any, efforts should be made to free the hostages and apprehend the news agent. Thorne's determination that the news agent's belief is correct - - that rather than suicide, his son was murdered - - comes quickly, just as the various pieces of the puzzle are unveiled one by one. Nevertheless, Thorne is really a delightful and intriguing character, and the well-written scenario moves forward briskly. RECOMMENDED.

THE DEVIL'S EDGE          
STEPHEN BOOTH          
Sphere   April, 2011

The bodies of Zoe Barron and her husband Jake are found in their very up-market home in the affluent village of Riddings. It's a small Northern England community where everyone knows everyone's business, and at least one neighbor, Barry Gamble, makes it his business to have his eyes peeled at all times. The newspapers are convinced this crime is the latest in a series of home break-ins by the "Savages", villains who've been marauding the local area, but no one can provide any clues about their activities or the dual murder. Detective Sergeant Ben Cooper is puzzled about why the robbers have suddenly turned violent and trudges methodically through the necessary investigative procedures, quizzing and requizzing everyone in the area. The repercussions of the violence in Riddings resonate far afield and ultimately bring tragedy to Ben's family. Ben's former partner, DS Diane Fry, returns from an extended absence and finds herself embroiled in the cases which, as always, cause her considerable enigmatic anguish. This latest in the Cooper and Fry series moves at a slower pace than usual, and seems as concerned with the details of the unique physical features of England's Peak District as with the crime plotline. The confusing relationship between the two lead characters remains, well, confusing, although Ben's personal life definitely moves into new territory. Worth the read, but definitely not Booth's best.

THE RETRIBUTION          
VAL McDERMID         
Little, Brown & Company   September, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4087-0319-9

In her twenty-fifth novel, Val McDermid brings back Jacko Vance, introduced to readers in THE WIRE IN THE BLOOD, and to television viewers in its wonderful series adaptation. As the book opens, this truly malevolent serial killer, whose resume includes "killer of seventeen teenage girls, murderer of a serving police officer, and a man once voted the sexiest man on British TV" as well as an Olympic athlete and an outwardly charming and charismatic man, has served over twelve years in prison, owing mostly to the efforts of DCI Carol Jordan and psychological profiler Tony Hill. Vance has spent most of that time meticulously planning his escape, as well as his future after its successful completion: the revenge suggested by the book's title, directed toward those who had caused his imprisonment, first among them Jordan and Hill, as well as his ex-wife whose betrayal he sees as making her equally culpable. Of course, his plan for vengeance merely begins there.

Carol Jordan, as yet unaware of what is about to happen, is dealing with a shake-up at the Bradfield Metropolitan Police, where the powers that be are disbanding her Major Incident Team. In an attempt to go out in a 'blaze of glory', they are faced with finding a killer who has been killing street prostitutes in gruesome ways, and branding them with a distinctive tattoo on the wrist of each. Suddenly, Jordan's priorities change with Vance's escape, and its implications. Tony's priorities as well must be divided between these investigations.

The relationship between Jordan and Hill has always been difficult to define, becoming more so all the time. They are not quite lovers, although they share space, but different flats, in Tony's house. But their emotional entanglement has always been obvious to all, even if they themselves do not admit to it. That relationship, both professionally and personally, is about to be threatened now as never before.

The author goes into more of Tony's background, and the emotional and psychological paths that have shaped him, and caused him to work at "passing for human," than I remembered having been done in the past.

He tells a colleague, "I won't deny that the people who do this kind of thing fascinate me. The more disturbed they are, the more I want to figure out what makes them tick." It is his empathy and his oft-times brilliant insights that have made him so successful. But this is a challenge unlike any he has ever faced.

The pace steadily accelerates along with a sense of dread as Vance begins to carry out his plans, and the resultant page-turner is as good as anything this acclaimed author has written. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

THE CALLER         
KARIN FOSSUM         
Translated from the Swedish by Kyle Semmel
Harvill Secker Trade pb 8/11
ISBN: 978-1-846-55393-6

Lucy thought she had everything a woman could want [and who could disagree]: youth, beauty, health, a loving husband, and a baby girl they both doted upon. Until the warm summer day when evil is suddenly visited upon her perfect life in the form of an unknown monster; for when Lily approaches the pram under the maple tree outside their house where the baby had lain sleeping, she discovers that the baby is covered in blood. In their terror and panic, they rush to the hospital, where they are soon told that the baby is unharmed, that the blood was not hers, and that the police have been called. The Inspectors assigned to the case are Konrad Sejer and Jacob Skarre. Later that same night, a postcard is delivered to Sejer's door reading "Hell begins now."

Happy people content with their lives are suddenly made anxious, unable any longer to feel secure as "a soundless form of terror" and utter vulnerability spreads through the community. This is the story line of this newest in the Inspector Sejer Mysteries. And a gripping, albeit somewhat depressing tale it is, with a perpetrator who fancies himself as invincible, with unimaginable cruelty and an almost equally twisted quirk: He needs to see for himself the effects of his pranks: "Everyone lives on an edge, he thought, and I will push them over."

The writing is wonderful, as one has come to expect of this author. She describes Sejer's dog as follows: "a Chinese Shar Pei called Frank, lay at his feet, and was, like most Chinese, dignified, unapproachable and patient. Frank had tiny, closed ears - and thus bad hearing - and a mass of grey, wrinkled skin that made him look like a chamois cloth," and someone's "cat [which] slept in a corner, fat and striped like a mackerel." The humans are just as well-drawn. Widowed at a young age, Sejer is now feeling the frailty of impending old age, and along with him the reader feels a palpable sense of inescapable mortality, as well as "what was raw and brutal in the heart of every living creature." A disturbing but ultimately thoroughly enjoyable novel, very fast reading, and HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

OUTRAGE         
ARNALDUR INDRIÐASON         
Translated from the Icelandic by Anna Yates
Harvill Secker  June, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-846-55423-0

At the outset of this newest book by Icelandic author In d ridason, the eighth in the series available in English translation, a young man picks up a woman in a bar, slips some rohypnol into her drink and brings her back to his home in an historic area of Reykjavik. When, two days later, the police are called to the scene, the body found lying in a pool of blood on the floor is not that of the woman, but the young man who lived there, his throat having been slashed. The only clues are a woman's shawl, and a strange smell that lingers in the air.

In this latest entry in the series, Detective Elinborg has the primary role, while her colleagues, Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli, take on lesser roles, the former only by reference in the early and late parts of the book [referred to as "a failure of a father," an "irascible loner," and "an insightful detective" whom Elinborg admires but does not necessarily like]. As the book opens he has apparently taken a leave of absence to travel to the East Fjords, where he had lived as a young boy. Oli has only a secondary role in the present investigations, with Elinborg taking the lead.

As always, Elinborg has conflicts between her job and her role as a wife and mother, and worries that she is not devoting enough time to her family. The older of her two sons, sixteen years old and increasingly distant, has been a cause of concern lately, and she "sometimes worried about the relationships between parents and their children," a theme which recurs throughout the book. In the course of her investigation, Elinborg is drawn into an old case, one involving the disappearance of a nineteen-year-old girl six years prior, and the possibility that the two cases are tied together.

Having been steadily absorbing reading for more than the first half of the book, OUTRAGE suddenly becomes more intriguing as the plot turns more complex, and maintains that level till the denouement. This is a powerful book, consistent with all this author's prior work, and HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.