Reviews from JOHN A. BROUSSARD

NOVEMBER - DECEMBER  REVIEWS

NIGHTFALL ON DAMASCUS
FREDERICK HIGHLAND
St. Martin ’s Minotaur / Thomas Dunne Books  December, 2006

Middle Eastern countries are hardly known for their peaceful ambience and this one, now invaded and occupied by a Western power, is no different.  Terrorists/insurgents roam the countryside, roadside ambushes are commonplace, bombings a regular occurrence, power outages the order of the day.  The occupiers have no understanding of the "ragheads" they are trying to govern.  And the quisling bureaucracy they've put in place is riddled with corrupt and incompetent sycophants.  During these last terrible years of the occupation, France -- the occupying power -- is fighting a losing battle in the midst of sectarian violence.  Curfews, army patrols, arrests without charges, and the wide use of torture produce no positive results, and the French simply continue to wonder why the natives do not appreciate the blessings of democracy.  In the midst of all this chaos, a new chief of the Damascus police is appointed to replace the one killed by a car bomb.  Replacement Nikolai Faroun -- that rare creature, an honest policeman -- is now investigating the gruesome murder of Vera Tamiri.  Is it a crime of passion, or is money behind it?  Or perhaps it is merely one more meaningless death in the charnel house that the Syrian capital of the nineteen-thirties has become.  But Faroun continues to investigate, especially when pressures are brought to bear on him to desist. Highland has woven a complex plot set against this brutal background. NIGHT FALLS ON DAMASCUS is a well-told crime story unfolding in a thoroughly criminal setting: a nation in the midst of a civil war. 

 - John A. Broussard

THE SNOW ANGEL
MICHAEL GRAHAM
Schaffner Press  November, 2006
ISBN: 0971059853

If it weren't for the snow, it could be any major city in America .  The police department is typical as well: racism, corruption, and burnt-out-officers are the norm.  Detective Ralph Kane marks one end of the spectrum.  Addicted to alcohol, a dedicated pot-smoker, depressed and seriously suicidal, he is nevertheless fanatically committed to doing a good job.  Almost a polar opposite, though equally dedicated to his work, Detective Isaiah Bell is black, happily married, and a father of two.  Since they both have long experience with informers, Inspector Roberta Easterly calls upon the two of them -- who despise each other -- to work together to find the kidnappers of a mixed-race boy, age seven.  The one thing the police know for sure is that the boy has been abducted by two men: one black, one white.   THE SNOW ANGEL is much more than a police procedural, as it takes Kane and Bell out among the dregs of the underworld, seeking the help of individuals they detest, as they also wrestle with their own demons.  Graham does a superb job of describing the police department's political infighting, as well as the inner turmoil of the three main characters.  The suspense builds as the story progresses to the final crescendo.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

- John A. Broussard

EVERYBODY KILLS SOMEBODY SOMETIME
ROBERT J. RANDISI
St. Martin ’s Minotaur  November, 2006

Famous and infamous celebrities of the fifties people these pages.  The Rat  Pack, led by Frank Sinatra, heads the list.  Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis, Jr. and a host of other well known actors and performers of the day are prominently featured.  Even JFK makes a cameo appearance.  With a setting in Las Vegas , the reader who expects murder, mayhem, and hanky-panky with actresses, models and an assortment of other willing women won't be disappointed.  Eddie Gianelli, pit boss at the Sands, suddenly finds himself embroiled in the private lives of the "pack rats."  Because Eddie knows just about everyone on the Vegas scene, Sinatra enlists his aid to find out who is sending threatening notes to Dean Martin.  Eddie is given carte blanche, except that he's to tell no one - especially not the police - about what he's doing.  But someone finds out who wasn't supposed to, and Eddie is soon in danger of serious bodily harm as he pries into private lives where no prying is tolerated.  EVERYBODY KILLS SOMEBODY SOMETIME is one of the better celebrity suspense novels.  Randisi knows the period well, draws believable characters, both well-known and unknown, and will provide the reader who remembers the fabulous fifties with plenty of entertainment.  Even for those just looking for a nicely-paced suspense tale, there's plenty of intriguing action here.

- John A. Broussard

REDEMPTION
FREDERICK TURNER
Harcourt, Inc.  November, 2006

New Orleans .  1913.  The District: a large collection of brothels mostly owned by Tom Anderson, the area's unofficial mayor.  Francis Muldoon is one of his employees, and his job is to patrol the streets at night, keeping enough order so that the sporting gents who frequent the bordellos won't be scared off.  In a town whose whoring and drinking are its raison d'être, it takes all of Muldoon's policing skills to hold mayhem and rioting to a minimum and to keep it from spilling over into the more respectable parts of the city.  But then two incidents threaten the precarious peace of the District.  First, the Parker brothers, fresh from New York , move in and buy a brothel without consulting Anderson .  The second and potentially more troubling event is the arrival in town of Adele , a beautiful woman who hires out to the Parkers as a cabaret singer but who refuses to turn tricks.  When it becomes evident that the brothers are planning to take over the District, and that Adele has some strange hold over Anderson , serious repercussions are inevitable.  REDEMPTION is a rather different suspense novel set almost entirely in the brothels of this Southern city.  Turner is obviously well acquainted with New Orleans - and especially with the ambience of its whorehouses - at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Though there are occasional anachronisms in the narrative, such as clothes being washed with detergent, this is a very believable picture of life in a wide-open town. 

 - John A. Broussard

ASK THE PARROT
RICHARD STARK
Mysterious Press  November, 2006

The bank robbery seems, at first, to be a success, as the three perpetrators get away with a large amount of cash.  But the police close in on them as they cross over from Massachusetts to New York .  Stashing the money and splitting up, their luck begins to run out.  One manages to slip away; another -- who is now certain to trade the cash for a lighter sentence -- is captured; and the third one, Parker, finds himself climbing a hill in a forested area, the hounds within baying distance.  That's when he encounters the reclusive Tom Lindahl, a disability pensioner who has plans of his own for the bank robber.  Parker has little choice but to accept the "hospitality" of the shotgun-toting Lindahl, and soon falls in with a scheme that could enrich both of them.  ASK THE PARROT is a mix of police roadblocks, small town greed, and the fascinating skill of a professional criminal in avoiding capture while planning yet another robbery.  Stark is a master at suspense, especially the variety where the reader will keep wondering just what will happen next.  What does happen is almost always surprising.

 - John A. Broussard

THE FOURTH PERSPECTIVE
ROBERT GREER
North Atlantic Books / Frog Ltd.  October, 2006
ISBN: 1-58394-162-2

One might think that being an antiques dealer would be a less exciting life than that of a bounty hunter, but C.J. Floyd's cards don't play out that way.  One problem is that there's a crazy Indian woman stalking him.  She holds C.J. responsible for her brother's death and is willing to do just about anything to see him dead.  The other problem is C.J., himself, who can't get bounty hunting out of his blood, and so succumbs, finally, to his ex-partner's plea for help in a case involving murder and the theft of a million-dollar daguerreotype.  There are more than enough suspects to go around, including the proprietor of a security business, a librarian, a rancher, a college professor, a shady "book expert" and even the photo's owner himself.  As an African-American, C.J. has to walk carefully along the edge of the white world, but his race also gives him some advantages as he unravels multiple mysteries.  THE FOURTH PERSPECTIVE is an intriguing mix of race relations in present-day Colorado , the seamier side of the antique trade, and all-consuming and single-minded rage.  Greer successfully manages the difficult task of keeping two diverse plots moving along in one novel while maintaining the reader's interest in both. 

- John A. Broussard

CAUSES UNKNOWN
LESLIE HORVITZ
Leisure PBO 11/06
ISBN: 0-8439-5795-6

Alan Friedlander's death appears to be just another one of the city’s numerous suicides, but his brother Michael simply can’t believe that Alan would have killed himself.  No one shares his view, however.  Not the police; not the chief medical examiner; not even his own father.  Then Michael’s stubborn search for the truth produces an ally: Dr. Gail Ives, who had assisted at the post mortem.  Together, they begin to uncover far more than they had bargained for.  A local mobster with close ties to the police, local businesses and the medical examiner’s office itself, is definitely involved...and definitely dangerous.  CAUSES UNKNOWN is a suspense novel with perhaps more autopsy scenes than the average reader would care to view.  Bodies pile up — especially of those who might have any information about the deceased.  Horvitz has two threads running through her novel.  The first, and major one, is Michael’s search for the truth about his brother’s death.  The second is a parallel series of crimes committed by The Chopper, whose specialty is the rape, murder and dismemberment of a variety of victims.  Near the end of the novel, the two threads intertwine to produce what inevitably becomes a gruesome finale.  For those who enjoy suspense novels, this one should be near the top of their list...if they don't mind reading about headless corpses, bottled brains and some unattached eyeballs.

- John A. Broussard 

BLIND FEAR
LYNN ABERCROMBIE
Pinnacle Books PBO 12/06

Warming up a case that's been cold for decades is no easy matter.  Retired Police Lieutenant Hank Gooch finds this particular revival to be an especially trying one.  His former partner, Mechelle Deakes, has been kidnapped.  Her eyes glued shut, she's now hidden away in a soundproof room with thirteen hours to live . . . unless Gooch can find whoever raped and killed Kathleen Morris Bolligrew many years before.  The result is a frenzy of hunting through old files, interrogating old witnesses, agonizing over the three one-minute phone calls per hour which Deakes's captor has allowed Gooch to make to the imprisoned detective.  And Deakes can do little more than try to blindly piece together a few ambiguous clues left in her cell.  As he gets closer and closer to the killer, Gooch encounters a varied string of characters, from a nun who smokes and swears, to a businessman who collects dolls, a very successful prostitute, a clumsy hit man, and an assortment of blind persons.  If one can accept the especially absurd plot, BLIND FEAR is a suspense novel supreme.  Abercrombie's use of the thirteen-hour deadline results in a breathtaking pace that will make it difficult for a reader to put the book aside anytime prior to its wild conclusion. 

 - John A. Broussard

FALSE IMPRESSION
JEFFREY ARCHER
St. Martin ’s Minotaur pb 12/06

Fenston Finance is an amazingly successful enterprise.  The secret of its success is simple.  The owner and manager of the company, Bryce Fenston, provides loans to anyone who is short of cash and who also owns expensive artwork and is willing to put it up as security.  Shortly after the papers are signed, a hired assassin disposes of the debtor.  That leaves the estate contending with financial disaster and Fenston in possession of the art and a claim on the estate.   His recently-hired art expert, Anna Petrescu, becomes aware of some of the shady aspects of Fenston Finance and confronts Bryce Fenston in his office in the North Tower of New York’s World Trade Center , early on the morning of September 11, 2001 .  Fenston fires her, then leaves the building for an appointment elsewhere.  Petrescu is less fortunate and manages to get out only moments before the structure collapses.  Taking advantage of the belief that she was one of the casualties, Petrescu sets out to foil the latest Fenston plot, which involves a multi-million dollar Van Gogh owned by a British woman.   When Fenston discovers that Petrescu is still alive, he dispatches his assassin to get the painting and finish her off.  From there on it’s a race to England , to Romania , back to New York and once more to England , with the FBI also involved in the pursuit.   FALSE IMPRESSION piles suspense upon suspense, and though there are some amazing and difficult-to-accept coincidences, Archer has managed to weave a tale which is both mystery and post cold-war thriller with terrorism as a backdrop.

- John A. Broussard

John's review of MARK OF THE LION by
Suzanne Arruda appears on the PAPERBACK PAGE.

John's e-mail address is:
broupome@kona.net

He has been writing and selling fiction, 
including novels and short stories, for several years.

Many of these may be found at:

http://www.powells.com/s?kw=john+a.+broussard&x=51&y=9

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