Reviews by Carl Brookins

EASY INNOCENCE
by Libby Fischer Hellmann
Bleak House Books, 2008

Authors work hard to develop their series characters because they know agents and publishers like the relative security of known quantities; the characters are already vetted and there is almost always a growing audience of fans. Every new book in a series helps to sell the previous ones. Authors are like anybody else, they too like the security of series work. Crime fiction authors are also like creative artists in other fields. They get ideas for work that may not fit their series. And that is particularly true if, to quote Patrick Anderson in "The Triumph of the Thriller," they are working at the "white-hot center of American fiction."

But it's scary—for the author whose established readership has certain
expectations—and for a publisher as well. Some authors take their fears in hand and forge ahead. Libby Hellmann has done just that. Easy Innocence is not like her comfortable and intelligent traditional mysteries featuring TV producer Ellie Foreman. This is an uncomfortable novel at every level. It is a tough read. It takes a clear-eyed and unflinching look at a rising phenomenon in our society that every parent ought to know about.

We're talking about a particular and very disturbing aspect of teen-aged prostitution. This is not the over-used inflamed tale of drugged up runaways, or poor white girls kidnapped by evil criminals, those who used to be tagged "white slavers." This is not about young innocent women, enticed with drugs and alcohol, seduced with false tales of the party life, and then whisked off to sexual slavery in far away lands.

These young prostitutes are self-selected, recruited by their classmates, and they live in often upscale stable homes in affluent neighborhoods. Some of them may live next door. Hellmann bends a keen and unflinching eye on the phenomenon and readers are treated to a strong dose of reality.

Newly licensed P.I. and former cop Georgia Davis is hired to examine the slaying of a girl by a man in a forest preserve on Chicago's north shore. Her client is the sister of the man accused of beating to death Sara Long, a high school student. The accused is a functioning, mentally deficient individual, who was found with the girl's body, bloody bat in hand. It looks like a slam dunk and the accused man's lawyer seems to be going along. What's more, the dead girl's family is connected to local authorities. But what Davis discovers as she pressures the people linked to the case, is a multilayered conspiracy to get rid of the case before the real truths are revealed, truths that destroy families and shock some right out of their shoes.

Hellmann does a nice job of linking class distinctions, legal shenanigans, ethical considerations and street-level realities, to a new character who already has the dimensions to interest readers for a long time in an extensive series of cases. This reader hopes that comes to pass.

CHICAGO BLUES
by twenty-one Chicago blues artists
Edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann
Bleak House Books, 2007

Chicago, like most large cities anywhere in the world, is really two or more cities. It exists in different times and sometimes in different universes, even while occupying the same real estate. Daytimes the people of the upper world are there, crowds of shoppers, traffic, wheelers and dealers, the thousands or millions who go busily about their daily lives in the hard sunlight, visible to almost everybody.

Then there's the other city, the one you may encounter at night after the sun departs along with the suited workers. This city is a little less crowded, except in the sometimes stifling bars or underground caverns. In this city you'll meet good cops trying to control the violence, and you may brush up against the others, those acquiring their reputations as bad and dangerous boys and girls. In the nighttime you can meet the scufflers, the dealers, the thugs and the killers.

There are other players in Chicago. They are the makers of music, of art, of story. And while they intersect with the rest of the night crawlers, it's often the horn players in the bars and night clubs who lend texture and rhythm to the boozy, bluesy night, that night thick with desire and trepidation, with humidity and icy winds. This city is sometimes violent in places where the sun never filters in, where dark denizens shun the scrutiny of the day. The urban canyons of Chicago are often dark enough all day long to sustain the underlife, and the river runs the wrong direction.

Intermingled with the busy daytime traders and the nighttime scufflers are the watchers, the storytellers who observe and remember and write it all down. They often go down the dangerous streets and trash-strewn alleys so you don't have to. You can read all about it and experience it at a safe distance, that frisson of danger, without really getting dirty.

If that's your thing, this is a book for you. If you want to have an up-close experience of the down and dirty blues of Chicago, this is a book you really want to read. Here, collected by astute and talented storytellers who drift through this urban scene, observing, recording, writing it down, are some of the best stories. Twenty one of them, collected and shaped in a single volume aptly named Chicago Blues. Dark stories of dark deeds, crisply written, sometimes enlightening, mostly relating tales of unregenerate and occasionally ordinary crime and criminals. Here is the corrupt politician, the vengeful ER nurse, here is history and flashback, here is skin-crawling realism. Life and death in the big city.

I have a tenuous connection with Chicago of an earlier time, of Count Basie and the old Blue Note, of North Clark Street. I have connections with several of the authors represented in this excellent anthology. That said, if you are looking for the true blue essence of the canyons of urban Chicago noir, if you want a sample of the gritty, sticky pavement of crime, of individuals pushed beyond their limits, of the grasping, panting, unredemptive jazz and jive of big city noir, here's a collection that takes hold and grasps and satisfies until the final curtain. This one is a winner, a keeper. This is the blues.

DRIVE
by James Sallis
Poisoned Pen Press, 2005
ISBN: 1590581814

Here's a man who can write, this James Sallis. Why he isn't perennially on the best-seller list is a mystery in itself. Maybe not. This novel is short, intense, laconic and spare with language. It features a man who you might not want living next door. He epitomizes the anti-hero in our modern society. Drive is a kind of anti-novel. The man's name is, well they call him Driver. Not the driver, just, Driver. That's what he does for a living. He drives stunt cars in Hollywood.

It's not a full-time occupation, so he also drives for people who rob banks and other establishments where there are frequently large amounts of cash to be scooped up. The book is set in Arizona and California, of course. And it features a classical noir protagonist who never really had a chance, given his background and the people he falls in with.

Driver has a conscience and he has a certain ethical creed. When he drives for a heist, that's it. He acquires the vehicle, plans escape routes, delivers the bad guys and takes them away after the job. But he doesn't participate in the planning and he doesn't know who is being robbed. He's a tightly focused very bright and very experienced specialist who is constantly learning, mostly from others' mistakes.

The story begins with a rush and doesn't let up. Ever. Sallis grabs you on page one and never lets you go. Chapter One, first sentence. "Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake." Take a ride with a wonderful writer. You won't be disappointed.

Congratulations to Poisoned Pen Press for its willingness to go against the currents and publish fine literature that doesn't quite fit the mold.

DRINK WITH THE DEVIL
by Jack Higgins
Berkley, 1997
ISBN: 0425157547

Here is the master storyteller at the top of his game. It's a cracking good story with fascinating characters emeshed on a high ride to a satisfactory if sad conclusion. Drink With the Devil spans a ten year period and finally pits Higgins charming Irish rogue, ex mercenary, ex IRA enforcer, now a hired killer for His Majesty's Government, Sean Dillon against an evil American Mafioso.

The goal is a truckload of British gold bullion that lies in nearly one hundred fathom, off the Irish coast. It was sunk after a hijack that went awry in 1985. Now, ten years later, the hijacker, an Irish Protestant and his niece, have joined with criminal elements in the USA to try to retrieve the lost cargo. Higgins' protagonists don't rely on high technology, except in incidental ways. This is a story of derring do, a throwback to the time of heroes and villains who were strong, athletic, resourceful and not at all adverse to killing anyone who got in their way.

And yet, part of this tale of honor and betrayal, of murder, of good and evil, is energized by the inexplicable feelings that one man develops for another man and his niece. And in the end, the question remains.

CARNAGE ON THE COMMITTEE
by Ruth Dudley Edwards
Poisoned Pen Press, 2004
ISBN: 1590581334
Rating: 5 sails

Satirical, funny, clever, ingenious, damn good. This is easily one of the best novels of the year. In Britain, inventor of the stiff upper lip, the committee of the Knapper-Wharburton literary prize are meeting to devise first, the short list of nominees, and then, the winner of this prestigious annual award.

So far so good. But then the chair of the committee dies, under the proverbial suspicious circumstances. All right then, a literary mystery, right? So what if the reaction of one of the committee, on page one, mind you seems a bit over the top for a mystery. Then, we discover that one of the members of the diminished committee is named Robert Amiss. A bit suspicious that. Other members of the committee, all deemed unsuitable to lead the committee back to its task, have quite ordinary names, and they also possess some unusual foibles and attitudes. Not Mr. Amiss.

He is immediately tasked to find a new chair. Whom does he choose? None other than the redoubtable Baroness Ida Trout, famed literary cognoscenti, fondly called "Jack" by her intimates. A woman readers of earlier Edwards novels will recognize immediately. Jack Trout is one of the most formidable, unusual, self-centered and flamboyant characters ever to erupt from the pages of crime fiction.

With great élan, understandable autocratic direction, and clever underhanded manipulation she and co-conspirator Amiss endeavor to get the work of the committee done in handy fashion. In the process the dynamic pair thwart a killer who is likely to strike again at any moment and manage to allow their creator to poke at every cherished shibboleth and icon of the literary and mystery world. And woe to those who read this story and say to themselves, well, that's just the British world, you know.

Edwards slings arrows of deflation at literary pretensions, at awards, at awards ceremonies, at authors, at conventions, at publishers and agents; and yes, at readers and fans. Almost nothing and no one is safe from her cudgels. Rude, this author is, delightfully so. Politically incorrect, even. Honest and wonderfully funny. And what's more, she throws in a carefully crafted, honest, mystery that is more than likely to keep you guessing to the very end. Risible, laugh-out-loud entertaining and so right on it smarts.

Congratulations to Poisoned Pen for bringing us this delicious, funny, engaging novel. And kudos to Ruth Dudley Edwards for an excellent mystery and a terrific story.

COCAINE BLUES
by Kerry Greenwood
Poisoned Pen Press, 2006
ISBN: 1590582365
Rating: 4.5 sails

The mystery novel that introduces Phryne Fisher, Melbourne in the Twenties, and a cast of terrific characters. Here's Bert & Cece, Dorothy, cocaine, adventure, high society and low neighborhoods.

My oh my, what a story. Face it, not many young titled and wealthy women of society are likely to suddenly decide that, being bored with local English society, they ought to return to their native land, that being Australia, to become a private investigator! But if you're willing to shrug off that improbability, you'll thoroughly enjoy this introduction to one of the most delightful, bright, and completely liberated young women of the age. Here, most definitely, is a fresh look at the private investigator. Here is a detective who is truly unafraid to jump in where more prudent souls might hesitate A long time.

Phryne is asked by some friends of her father to go off to Melbourne to try to learn why the daughter, once thought to be safely married to a real gentleman, seems to be riding a sickly rollercoaster of good and bad health. Her parents are worried for her and every willing to seek new adventure, Phryne goes off.

With an attitude as jaunty as Phryne herself, the novel whisks us to Australia and in short order deposits the Honorable P. Fisher in the very best hotel in Melbourne and embeds her in what passes for colonial high society. But Phryne, who was born into very modest circumstances in her family, has not forsaken her humble roots. In short order she enlists the friendship and support of a couple of dock-side taxi men, rescues a suicidal young woman to be her maid and engages in hot encounters with a Russian dancer fleeing from the Revolution.

The scenery, from bustling commercial district to steamy Turkish baths, provides our detective with fascinating context and enhances our willingness to give the willful young woman every benefit of the doubt. Her language is fresh and enjoyable, the pace varies from a rapid walk to a dead run and there's hardly a misstep in the whole thing.

Phryne Fisher is a beguiling character one wants to meet and get to know, and even to just bask quietly in her aura. Author Greenwood has woven such a fantasy character with such intelligence and such care that this reader would go on reading these novels long into the night. And if you stop a while and examine her underlying themes and attitudes, you'll be mightily impressed. And then she sets you up for a the final fillip, after a couple of blind alleys, of course, so that the core of the mystery is able to stand solidly on its own.

THE WOMAN IN WHITE
by Wilkie Collins
Tor Publishing, 2005
ISBN: 0765353954

Mystery fans should read the first few pages headed Preface. The preface was written in 1861 by the author, apparently upon first publication of the story in novel form.

The novel is, as Collins suggests, first and foremost a story, and it's appeal stems largely from the author's adherence to the belief that stories, to be popular and good, needed to relate to real people, so readers could identify with the characters. It is also useful to remember that like A Tale of Two Cities, The Woman in White first appeared in a weekly serial form, in a journal titled All The Year Round. The publisher of the weekly was Charles Dickens. The novel's serialization began the same week that ther serialization of A Tale of Two Cities was completed.

The novel is very long, and like other Victorian novels, relies heavily on the language and narrative skills of the author, rather than the dialogue of the characters. The current edition weighs in at a daunting 672 pages. But they are rich pages filled with illuminations of the times. From this novel readers will gain a deeper understanding of the way in which the social structure of the time was organized, between the sexes, and the classes, the wealthy and the poor, the unlettered and the educated. Women deemed themselves powerless at many levels, and were seen to be so by men who too often preyed upon them.

Collins is considered by many to be the inventor of the sensation or thriller novel, and here one finds multitudes of thrills of every kind, as well as crimes of almost any description, from fraud, spousal abuse, slander, thievery, and kidnapping, in addition to steadfast loyalty, love and long-lasting high affection. These are exactly the kinds of emotions and motivating factors we expect today in our mystery novels and which are too often lacking, at least in sufficient quality.

The form of the story is as if each of the participants is called to provide a deposition to a court that will rule on the efficacy, accuracy and completeness of the record. Thus readers will experience some of the same events from different points of view, sometime contained in separate sections, but occasionally, particularly toward the end, in a judicious blend of viewpoints. That court, of course, is the reading public.

As principal narrator, Collins offers Londoner Walter Hartright, a commoner, a young teacher of drawing. He is engaged to teach a titled woman in an estate outside of London, near Cumberland. Laura Fairlie is pretty, untalented as a painter, an heiress and engaged to be married to a titled Lord. She falls in love with Walter and he with her, and from that emotional connection, the long winding road of the novel is energized.

The night before he is to leave for the Fairlie estate, Hartright is walking to his lodgings when he encounters a near-apparition in the road, a woman dressed all in white who is in a highly agitated state. As a gentleman should, Hartright provides her with a modicum of assistance which allows the unnamed woman to avoid her pursuers. This single act of kindness has many consequences and infuses the novel with a tangled thread that will carry readers through the entire book and adds a profound sense of mystery and even other-worldliness to the narrative. A discovery of the woman's identity, why she dresses all in white, and her connection to Walter Hartright and the good and evil people in the Fairlie estate is only a part of this novel.

Victorian language can be fulsome and tedious, and a consideration of the book should be tempered by the fact that the novel came originally to readers in weekly segments, yet the power of Collins' writing, his mastery of the elements of the story and his deep understanding of basic human motivations, make The Woman in White a compelling read.

A COLD TOUCH OF ICE
by Michael Pearce
Poisoned Pen Press, 2004
ISBN: 15090580656

Michael Pearce is an unqualified success, if you like good characterizations, an exotic locale and a satisfying mystery that illuminates real history from the early part of the twentieth century.

Gareth Owen is the head of the secret service in Egypt. He is called the Mamur Zapt. It is an interesting position, in that he works for the Khedive, the ruler of Egypt. But he is British, because at the time of the novel, 1912, Egypt is a British protectorate. The Brits are in no way about to allow Egyptian police free rein to poke about in private affairs. Owen is an interesting character, urbane, very focused on Cairo, and not much on things like the desert and rural Egypt. Well, he has enough to do, it seems, Cairo being a central gathering place for agents and counter-agents of every stripe.

It is 1912 and Lord Kitchener has come to Egypt to assume the ruling hand. There are many tensions in the air, because, although America was blissfully unaware, war clouds were gathering and already attempts are being made to implant a German nation inside the Egyptian government. The Turks are at war with the Italians, increasing the pressure and destabilizing the normal tensions of the place. Then an Italian businessman, a long-time resident of Cairo, is murdered. Normally such an event is not in the Mamur Zapt's purview, but he is naturally acquainted with the local government authorities. When it becomes likely that the fighting in Tripolitania is somehow related to the murder, Owen is drawn in. More complications arise of both a professional and personal nature.

There is a wedding, there are disagreements within and without Owens's personal life and we are made privy to some eternal prejudices which affect Owen and his colleagues. Yet there are no polemics here. The author's matter-of-fact straightforward style draws us in and maintains the interest and the tension without resorting to devices like car chases and shootouts.

Pearce is a master at bringing to vibrant life in subtle and direct ways the life of turbulent Cairo from its high governmental maneuverings to common, everyday events. In the intense heat and dust of the city and the important camel caravan oases, Owen walks a slow steady path to motive and resolution. This is a fine police procedural with many excellent nuances.

COLD HUNTER'S MOON
by K.C. Greenlief
Thomas Dunne Books, 2002
ISBN: 0312278470

Murder among the pines and bucolic snowy life of central Wisconsin brings chills.

Cold Hunter's Moon has just about everything you could ask for in a novel. The author has created a fascinating pair of detectives in sheriff Lark Swenson and Wisconsin State Bureau detective Lacey Smith. There's a nice blend of early antagonism, questioning, interesting circumstances, and psychological dancing as the pair becomes better acquainted and more respectful of each other's experience and talent.

The story begins with the discovery of human remains on a cold and snowy November day in middle Wisconsin. Ann Ranson's dogs bring home a boot which, on closer examination, contains part of a human foot. This chilling discovery starts a chain of events that will keep readers reading long into the night. While the cold and snow creeps into the corners of the reader's mind, the authorities in the story are forced to deal with weather and a perplexing find. Is the body evidence of a crime? Or is it accidental death, an individual who simply became lost in the woods?

When another female corpse turns up, the county sheriff, Lark Swenson, decides he needs help and contacts the State police. Enter Lacey Smith. The weather, a huge factor during this deer hunting season, begins to close in even more, hampering the efforts to identify the victims and find the killer or killers.

Greenlief has surrounded her principal characters with a logical, carefully differentiated group of secondary characters who consistently act the way they are suppose to. The flow of the book is first-rate. The descriptions are often chilling and are very much to the point.

Cold Hunter's Moon is that rare novel in which every word counts. Throughout, characters find themselves in logical if sometimes amusing situations which leavens the almost unremitting suspense just enough to give the pace rhythm. The surprising conclusion fits exactly into the fabric of the story and the final scenes leave just enough questions to leave us wanting more about the police duo. Excellent from start to finish, I expect more good reading from this author.

BLOOD COUNTRY
by Mary Logue
Walker & Company, 1999
ISBN: 0802733395

Claire Watkins is a damaged ex-Minneapolis police detective. She's also the protagonist of Mary Logue's new crime novel, following Red Lake of The Heart and Still Explosion.

In Blood Country Watkins and her partner are moving toward arresting members of a major drug ring when Claire's husband, Steve, becomes the victim of what appears to be a hit-and-run accident. Shocked and desolate, Watkins abruptly resigns from the department, takes her young daughter, Meg, and flees to the small Wisconsin town of Fort Antoine. To support herself and provide a protective environment for Meg, Claire joins the county sheriff's department, which hasn't seen a murder in at least a generation.

Then, Claire's neighbor is found face down in his garden. Greed has raised its ugly head, generating conflict over a real estate development. Citizens are split over maintaining traditional values, and the prospect of substantial new money.

Logue sets a consistent pace, entwining the major plot elements with other developments in a pleasing manner and, through shifting points of view and realistic action, continually raises the feeling of mystery and danger. Logue's background as a successful poet shows in her narrative style which flirts with free verse, providing an interesting meter that enhances the mood and atmosphere of the novel.

One of this novel's strengths is its thoughtful incompleteness. The main plot and some subplots are carefully resolved by the end, but other questions posed by characters to themselves and others are left unanswered. It's an invitation to the reader to speculate about their future.

ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY
by Rose Connors
Scribner, 2002
ISBN: 0743229061

A fresh take on the criminal justice system from a true insider with a strong voice. This is an auspicious first novel by a savvy, experienced, trial attorney. Rose Connors has got it all really right: from her tough but vulnerable protagonist, Cape Cod ADA Marty Nickerson, and her completely believable relationship with an ex-husband and a teen-aged son, to a small select cast of interesting supporting characters.

We're in Barnstable County on Cape Cod when the novel opens and Nickerson is deep in the final stages of a rock-solid case against a vicious killer. The case is clean, the evidence huge, even the Public Defender agrees. All seems eminently satisfactory and the jury finds the man, Manuel Rodrigez, guilty. But then another body, is found under disturbingly similar circumstances to that of the first. Evidence points to the same killer. Copycat? Faced with a politically astute boss working hard to become the first female DA in the county, Nickerson can't get Rodrigez' case reexamined. She goes way out on a limb in fairness to her own sense of justice and right. What happens next is surprising.

We have a fine sense of place in this novel and the characters seem to be completely comfortable. They belong in these settings. One's sense of credibility is never strained beyond the breaking point. The dialog is crisp and centered. The pace is measured and the structure of the novel is taut. There is a relentless feeling, particularly in the last half of the book, which seems to take hold of the reader in a way that many novels are unable to exert. Add a handsome dust-jacket, good production and careful editing to a thoughtful, well-written provocative novel, and you have an outstanding debut.

FIRST, DO NO HARM
by Larry Karp
Poisoned Pen Press, 2004
ISBN: 159058130X

When Martin Firestone decides, at twenty-eight, to go to medical school, he assumes his father, Leo, will approve. He is unprepared for the explosion that comes with his announcement, and for the preemptory summons that follows. His father is a hard-drinking painter of acclaimed if bizarre paintings, for whom odd behavior is not unknown. He demands that Martin meet him for lunch forthwith to learn why he must abandon any idea of a medical career.

What follows is a long, richly detailed tale of Leo's father, Martin's grandfather and his career as a physician during the thirties and forties in New Jersey. Martin's grandfather, it develops, is the renowned physician, Dr. Samuel Firestone, celebrated in the annals of medicine. Leo's story to his son, about growing up with this celebrated GP is, truly, the stuff of legends.

What we have here is a richly detailed roaring tale of medicine, social mores and political acumen. When Samuel Firestone decides to make his son, Leo, his assistant for a summer, in Hobart, New Jersey, Leo discovers that his father is revered far and wide as a compassionate, caring, doctor of people, not just of medicine. Dr. Firestone is a friend of politicians, black marketers, junkies, and of unmarried, pregnant girls. He rarely sees a golf course or a tavern. He provides medical services to an enormously wide range of people who are ill. House calls at three a.m. on a Sunday night? No question, and through the novel, the false birth certificates, the unregulated adoptions, son Leo learns to drive his father's car, meets hoods, pharmacists, a junk man who acquires a false death certificate, and officials who will conveniently look the other way when the patient's well-being is at stake-and the cash is there.

Make no mistake, compassionate Dr. Samuel Firestone is a criminal. I lost track of the number of laws he broke, laws which for the most part protect society. But not everyone, all the time. The overall law that operates throughout this novel, when applied to individuals, is the law of unintended consequences. Legislators and political leaders could learn from this book. First, Do No Harm should be a must read for everyone, not just physicians. Author Larry Karp delivers a powerful message wrapped inside a fascinating, well-written mystery.

THE TARNISHED EYE
by Judith Guest
Scribner, 2004
ISBN: 0743257367

Minnesota author Judith Guest hasn't written a lot of fiction. Her first, Ordinary People, an acclaimed and best-selling debut, was transformed into a popular, award-winning motion picture. Now we have only her fourth. She may not write fast, but she certainly writes well.

The Tarnished Eye is variously described as a novel of suspense and it is that; as a fine police procedural, and it is that, too. It is also a finely conceived observation of human dynamics. It is not a long novel. Guest's spare, precise style lends itself to this kind of page-turning story with its careful, nuanced prose, multi-layered characters and intricate human dynamics. Yet a reader is not drawn to rush pell-mell through the action. Rather, one settles in, appreciating the language, the individual scenes, the thoughtful, careful way in which Guest hovers over the characters, examining, illuminating, observing even minor characters. "The driver of the yellow Link-belt Tractor is waiting on the road. 'What a bitch, gettin' up that hill!' he shouts. Stu turns to snap a picture of the rig." A few words that tell us a great deal about two minor players.

The Tarnished Eye has its roots in a still unsolved multiple-murder that took place in Michigan many years ago. The novel follows the sheriff of Blessed, Michigan, Hugh DeWitt, who is still struggling to cope with the death of his infant son three years earlier. His wife, Karen, who has coped better with the tragedy of SIDS, now struggles to support her husband and her marriage.

DeWitt is faced with a multiple homicide. An entire family has been wiped out in their expensive, almost palatial, nearby vacation home. Perhaps this is the final; crushing blow for Sheriff DeWitt, an experienced, dedicated, rural sheriff who is beginning to believe hope for the human race is a lost cause. Written in present tense with multiple points of view, the novel is a masterpiece of structure. What happens next is a finely wrought example of good, careful police work, putting Guest in league with author Michael Dymmoch.

Steadily, carefully, coping with a media frenzy, unhelpful fellow law enforcement agency colleagues, and a host of odd and wonderful idiosyncratic minor characters, DeWitt and his small agency gradually put the pieces together, working against the possibility that the killer may have other targets, until they arrive at a final, surprising, solution. This is an eminently satisfying and wonderful novel.

NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT
by Bill Pronzini
Walker & Company, 2000
ISBN: 0-8027-3330-1

From the first page to the last, Nothing But The Night demonstrates author Bill Pronzini's strengths as an author of crime fiction. The novel is a solid effort continuing what is essentially an interesting new direction for the author, preceded by A Wasteland of Strangers and Blue Lonesome.

The novel explores the inner landscapes of two men, both driven by horrific incidents in their pasts to a violent confrontation, a confrontation that seems as inevitable as two steam locomotives running toward each other on the same track. It is this inevitability that Pronzini exploits to the fullest, drawing the reader into the lives of Cameron Gallagher and Nick Hendryx, two men in the grip of psychological dysfunction. This is a novel that looks at trauma, obsession and madness. It is a novel one remembers with considerable satisfaction and disturbing clarity.

Hendryx is on a quest in Northern California. He's looking for a man, but he has no name, only an artist's sketch. In a small town near the Russian River he encounters Gallagher, a man who closely resembles the sketch, and thereby sets in motion confrontations and other actions which lead inevitably to death and disaster. Amid the swirling dark waters of a river flood, Hendryx enacts his carefully laid plan.

Author Pronzini has laid out an exacting plot in which each reaction to a previous action has a result which might have been foreseen, yet was not. Page after page, this solidly constructed novel builds to a surprising resolution which, in retrospect, may be seen as inevitable, yet quite unanticipated. The result is a wonderful multi-dimensioned novel.

ECHO BAY
by Richard Barre
Capra Press, 2004
ISBN: 1-59-266042-8

Shawn Rainey, ex-Olympic skier, is forced into a dangerous set of circumstances in his former home town.

After he blew out his knee on the mountain, Shawn Rainey's life and family circumstances descended nearly as fast as he'd been going in that fall. Years later he reluctantly returns to his family home near Echo Bay on Lake Tahoe. It's the scene of an escalating controversy between civic and business interests who want to raise a famous sixty-year-old ship from the bottom in order to boost tourism, and the daughter of the owner who sank the ship in the first place.

Shawn's boss, a mean, mean-spirited public relations CEO puts the arm on his ex-partner who would rather be almost anywhere than back in his home town. There are still high school buddies, or acquaintances who have varied feelings about Shawn. They include his old girlfriend, his father and the woman who is the principal resistance to the ship-raising project.

This is crime fiction at its best, multi-layered with plot circles within plots. It touches on family and community relations, past and present, prejudice, racism and greed. In spite of its complexities, author Richard Barre continues the high standards he established with the Wil Hardesty PI series, and maintains a clarity of purpose, a sense of where his characters are at all times. Piece by piece he lays out the actions Shawn and his supporters take to build the success of their project. Piece by piece he supplies more and more of the background that fuels the animosities and rising tension and violence. He reveals, as a magician might in drawing back a curtain, the stunning reasons why some people in the community are unalterably opposed to the project.

In the end, the final resolution of the puzzle is logical, sympathetic and honest. It does not shrink from shining a spotlight on past injustices and present-day dishonesty. Like all good fiction Echo Bay holds up a mirror to every reader and asks fundamental questions. This is a powerful, cracking good read.

THE FOOLS IN TOWN ARE ON OUR SIDE
by Ross Thomas
Thomas Dunne Books, 2003 (reprint)
ISBN: 0-31-231582-1

Ross Thomas was a skilled and highly accomplished novelist and storyteller. He wrote a lot of mysteries, most excellent, Morrow originally published this one in 1971. Except for a few words and some financial stuff in which the amounts are way too low, this suspense thriller could have been written yesterday.

Thomas is able to keep us grounded in a story that moves back and forth through three separate time periods in the life of protagonist Lucifer Dye, born in Montana in December, 1933. He comes of age a few years later on the streets of Shanghai when his father is blown apart by a bomb, leaving this American boy, fluent in Chinese but not in English, holding the bloody stump of an arm with his father's wristwatch still attached.

He is rescued by the owner and operator of Shanghai's most prestigious sporting house, where he learns several other languages, a good deal about variant sexual tastes and the venality of most people in high places. Lucifer C. Dye goes on to experience more war as a soldier in Korea, then higher education, espionage and graft.

The core story focuses on a strange group of individuals brought together by a wealthy genius-level young man named Victor Orrcutt who makes money by corrupting already corrupt public officials in order to inflame the good citizens to revolt and throw the original thieves out of town. A most interesting concept. There is Carol Thackerty, ex-whore, Homer Necessary, ex-police chief with one brown and one blue eye, Victor and then, Lucifer Clarence Dye, man of all tools, an accomplished raconteur, cynic and wise manipulator of people and systems.

None of these central characters are the fine upstanding and highly moral individuals we'd like them to be. On the other hand, their illegal and questionable immorality are a far cry from those of their adversaries. Homer and Dye in particular throughout this fine novel manipulate their greed and power-hungry enemies in ways that eventually lead to their defeat and destruction. But, they are the bad guys, right? So we wink and feel, at least a little, that it's okay. Sorta.

The action moves briskly along, and this novel is excellent in all aspects. Thomas' genius lies not only in his exceedingly strong writing and compelling characters, but in his ability to carry these separate plots in Lucifer's life forward with interest and clarity for the reader.

BARBADOS HEAT
by Don Bruns
St. Martin's Minotaur, 2003
ISBN: 0-31-230492-7

Tock Tock, Tick Tock. Like the sound of steel wheels over the gandy dancer's rail joints, this novel rocks along. A Congressman is dead. He was preparing to attack the Hip Hop and Rap music industry. He wanted to join his brother-in-law, the Reverend Joseph Evans, in an attempt to rein in bad lyrics, violent lyrics, sexual lyrics. Now the congressman's son, Nick, is charged with Congressman Shappley's brutal murder. It's said he's in it up to his elbows along with Rap star, Chilli D, who may have been the triggerman. Chilli D's producer, T-Beau wants to protect his investment so he calls on a music industry star, friend Mick Sever. Mick is already in Washington on the case.

Tick Tock. Time is running on and readers may have the feeling they're on a fast train going downhill. The whistle screams and the scenery goes by in a blur, leaving out whole pieces. There are complications. Sever, whom we last saw in the author's debut novel, Jamaica Blue, calls in his divorced wife, Ginny, to do research. Tension. Sever once had a childhood friendship with the accused Nick, the Congressman's son. More tension. There are other family presences, not just in D.C. Tick Tock. Sever's off to Florida to talk to Nick's sister, Amber, and then to Barbados, where old wounds still fester.

Page by page Barbados Heat gathers speed. Tick tock. And just when you think you've got the characters and their relationships sorted out, even with the missing bits of action, the train roars around a sharp curve and carries you off in a new direction. Author Bruns is evolving a fresh, and breathless style of pell mell writing that may be a little short on detail but long on action, surprises and thrills. Tick Tock. When's the next one due?

THE BIG LAW
by Chuck Logan
HarperCollins, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-109687-3

Chuck Logan's third, after The Hunter's Moon and The Price of Blood. If the other two are as good as this one, fans of moody, dark hard-boiled thrillers will be seeking them out in sizable numbers.

Ex-cop Phil Broker, now a resident of the North Shore of Lake Superior, near Grand Marais, unwillingly becomes involved with St. Paul Police Lieutenant, Keith Angland, when Angland's wife Caren, appeals for help. Caren was once Broker's wife. The relationship is further conflicted by the fact that Angland was once Broker's boss in the PD. Broker is alone with his infant daughter while his wife and Kit's mother is in Bosnia with a Military Police unit as the story opens. With the exception of the innocent Kit, no one comes out of this one clean.

It appears Angland is moonlighting as a mob informant and Caren is ready to blow the whistle if she can get Broker to help. There's a lot of cash hanging around as well. Not wire transfers or accounting entries but real cash -- bags of it. Meanwhile, as Caren Angland runs for Broker's home, she entangles herself with a St. Paul newspaper reporter looking for a hot story to redeem himself with his editors. The FBI gets involved, as does the Witness Protection Program of the US Marshall Service, along with assorted local lawmen.

It may sound complicated and when the author inserts internal dialogues for the characters, one might worry about pace and structure. But Logan writes with a sure hand and the clean structure never leaves the reader floundering. The author's style is spare and direct, the dialogue is honest, and the story bowls along at increasing speed and levels of tension. This is a great story, strong examination of characters' motivations, and enough tension to satisfy anyone.

The dust jacket is handsome and understated, providing clues without revealing essential story elements and the color combination is nice.

A STONE OF THE HEART
by John Brady
Steerforth Press, 2001
ISBN: 1-58642-029-1

The first Inspector Matt Minogue novel, a very Irish book, is set in Dublin, not too long after Watergate. The inspector is married, with children about whom he worries. He worries too about the subtle and not so subtle politics of the police department when rival gangs, down from the north for a little R & R, get restless.

It's a difficult time in Ireland, and Minogue knows it. He's recovering from the effects of a bomb aimed at a man he was supposed to protect from such outrages. He worries that his superiors no longer have complete confidence in his abilities. The story is like a lot of Irish tales and tale tellers. It's all right there on the page but in the telling there are the occasional asides, more than a few wanderings down paths that don't go directly to the point, but still inform the central story.

The novel is infused with Irishness. It is a subtle tale, bringing to the page an astute and wise detective. Almost from the very beginning when Minogue is sent to Trinity College in Dublin to look into what appears to be a random, perhaps casual, death of a student, Minogue senses something a little off kilter. The boy, Jarlath Walsh, is an innocent, young, idealist, though there are those who insist he's just another drug pusher. Minogue is not put off. With tenacity he follows through, even when things come crashing down and his immediate superior begins to doubt him.

A Stone of the Heart is not an easy read. It reveals much of the ambivalence and the difficult attitudes of the warring parties in the contest for peace in Northern Ireland and it raises questions regarding the pain and suffering that attend the innocent as well as the guilty. And in fresh ways we come to know a man who is a good cop and who struggles to be a good family man as well.

WOLF PASS
by Steve Thayer
Putnam, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-14991-0

Steve Thayer can write, there is no question about that. His plotting is fresh, his characters are interesting and the story is always engaging. Principal character P.A. Pennington, now retired to the wild shore of Lake Michigan, is the narrator of this tale. At the time of this story, Pennington was a deputy sheriff in Kickapoo Falls, Wisconsin. He got the job after a stint as a sniper in the U.S. Army in World War II. Late in that war he was assigned to help stop Nazi escapes through a part of the difficult Bavarian Alps at a place called Wolf Pass. These segments are among the best parts of the book. The story moves back and forth in time, sometimes jumping several years, sometimes days, sometimes minutes. Readers must pay attention.

The narrative is dense, usually compelling and well-paced. Like its immediate predecessor, The Wheat Field, it contains a number of fascinating pastoral descriptions, jarringly interrupted by sometimes incredible mayhem. Since Pennington's position in the community is already suspect, and his war record is no help, when a sniper kills two train employees during a stop in downtown Kickapoo, Pennington's immediate reaction is to recall his wartime exploits. Since the community does likewise, he falls under suspicion. In a corrupt police force, complicated by personal animosities, election politics and the author's apparent unhappiness with various developments in the area of the Wisconsin Dells, as well as a list of other social ills, the deputy struggles to find the killer, fulfill his creator's interest in off-beat sex, and protect the nation.

If you can forgive and ignore the holes in the investigation, you'll enjoy the book.

AN EYE FOR MURDER
by Libby Fischer Hellmann
Poisoned Pen Press (hardcover)/Berkley Prime Crime (paper), 2002
ISBN: 0-4251-8739-X

With roots in World War II, this finely constructed novel takes place in present-day Chicago. Commercial television producer Ellie Foreman is slowly drawn into an insidious plot of broad proportions which gradually threatens her family, her beliefs and finally, her very life. Hellmann demonstrates a complete grasp of the vital elements of suspenseful thriller writing. Her characters are believable and nearly always act in a believable manner.

Principal actor in this compelling drama, Ellie Foreman, struggles to get on with solving the very real problems of her life: an errant ex-husband, a teenaged daughter, a mortgage she can't afford, and a career that requires enormous energy and attention to be successful. Yet step by step she is drawn unwillingly into an insidious plot and is forced to divert her energies to solving a mystery that surprisingly and logically involves her own father. Although there are occasional coincidences, the strength of Hellmann's writing and fascination with the story carry us swiftly down the pages.

But Ellie Foreman is no superwoman and Hellmann portrays her with compassion, wit, and a keen eye for some of the ordinary details of the woman's life, while at the same time we see missteps, anxiety, fear, and even a reawakening love interest. The author's hand is less sure in the uses and portrayal of violence in the book, but that is largely a quibble. In a less significant work, such small lapses would go unremarked. An Eye For Murder is an eminently worthy first novel, an enjoyable experience, and I look forward to more from this new voice.

BLUE WOLF
by Lise McClendon
Walker & Company, 2002
ISBN: 0-8027-3352-2

This is just an exquisite novel, the best McClendon has produced to date. We're back with Alix Thorssen, artist and gallery owner in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which lies in the shadow of the Teton Mountains, not far from Yellowstone National Park. It's a place where not long ago, and over the angry protests of ranchers, and hunters, the gray wolf was re-introduced, using Canadian imports.

One older alpha male was nicknamed Old Blue. He survived two years and had a profound effect on the park rangers and ecologists who favored reentry of the wolf into the ecological mix of the Yellowstone-Teton ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Most people, encountering a wolf in the wild, are profoundly affected. McClendon has taken the spare facts and interwoven complexities of human existence in and around Jackson Hole, with the powerful presence of the Blue Wolf. As the characters in this novel rub up against Thorssen, Queen, the reclusive painter, Derek, the dead boy, Terry and Percy Vargas, ranchers and important personages in the area, and Sonny Garrett, attorney, mover and shaker, their lives are significantly changed by the Blue Wolf.

Queen wants Alix, who's having personal relationship problems at the moment, to try to find out what really happened when Derek Wylie was killed. The problem is that Derek's death occurred over twenty years ago. The more a reluctant Alix probes, the more she comes to realize that there is more to the tragedy than first supposed. Her persistence pays off in startling and dangerous ways as she discovers that several people in town have vital information and there appears to be an informal agreement to keep that information secret. Moreover, important people want the entire episode erased from the public consciousness.

And there is a dead wolf. Somebody shot a killed a young female wolf which may from be one of the Yellowstone packs. As tempers get out of control Alix sees prejudicial action taken against herself and against Queen. This is a tension-filled novel which shows McClendon's keen sense of people and their emotions and their conflicts. And always, watching from the mountains, as Alix and the others caught up in this surprising and twisting tale, is the avatar, the catalyst, the blue wolf. This is a powerful, moving novel.

RAG MAN
by Pete Hautman
Simon & Schuster, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-0559-6

What happens when you abruptly discover that after years of ordinary labor, acquisition of all the usual attributes and goods of a reasonably calm and settled life, there's a different person inside you? How do you react when you discover the dark side? What do you do when your moral compass breaks?

For decades, comfortably married Mack Wray has worked away in the garment business in the Twin Cities. He's good with machines, a hard worker and he gets the job done. Life in Minnesota is pretty much okay. If there aren't a lot of soaring highs, there aren't any disasters either.

But then comes Lars Larson, the people person. He persuades Mack to take a flier, to reach for that brass ring. Mack re-mortgages his house, borrows heavily wherever he can, including from his in-laws and quits his steady job. He and Larson are now in business together. They establish a new specialty garment manufacturing company. Mack Wray, the rag man, is in charge of production and Larson, the people person, handles sales.

The purchase orders pour in and Larson arranges with Mack's friendly banker to lend money against those purchase orders. Money flows and things are looking great. And then one day, Mack discovers that Larson has disappeared, and he's taken every cent of cash in the company accounts. It gets worse. Mack Wray discovers a whole web of theft, fraud and other assorted chicanery, all part of Larson's history.

What do Mack and his wife do as creditors circle? They take a free vacation to Mexico. What Mack discovers in Mexico, about Larson and about himself, will surprise and delight readers. In scene after snappy scene, the author brings us up short with sardonic and trenchant wit, with keen-sighted observation. The plot, well realized and fast-paced, has more than enough twists and reverses to satisfy the most ardent mystery/adventure fan. Hautman has peopled his novel with characters who climb off the page and dance you around the room. They are rich and multi-dimensional and their language is always true.

Through the length of this delightful and dark and often explicit novel, Mack Wray discovers dimensions to himself he never realized he possessed. You may not laugh out loud, but you'll experience many a satisfying chuckle.

© 2002-10 by Carl Brookins, Ellen Hart and William Kent Krueger.
Permission is hereby granted for reproduction of any material contained in this web site for purposes of publicity and promotion related to the sale of our books and/or appearances by members of the Minnesota Crime Wave.

Find bookstores carrying our mysteries by clicking on the IndieBound logo.