A killer with surgical precision

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

A shimmering black SUV pulls up to the corner. A hooker steps in, grateful for a few moments respite from the St. Paul rain. The handsome john drives to secluded Lilydale Park, on the banks of the Mississippi. When he strikes her the first time, harder than she has ever been hit, she realizes that she has made a deadly error in judgment, and she begins to scream. "Go ahead," he says. "Who will hear you?" The last words she will hear in this life are the menacingly whispered ". . . the fly shall marry the bumblebee."

The investigator assigned to the slaying is homicide detective Paris Murphy. The case holds more than just professional interest for Murphy, as she knew and liked the victim. Teamed up with veteran investigator Gabriel Nash, Murphy delves into the crime. A suspect is identified early on, but it is a touchy situation, since he is a respected surgeon and a member of one of the Twin Cities' most prestigious families. Murphy must proceed with great care in building her case, or risk that it will all come tumbling down around her, perhaps taking her career along with it. Going undercover, she befriends the doctor, in hopes of entrapping him. The plan backfires when Murphy's picture shows up in the local newspaper in an article about the ongoing investigation. Now Murphy is both hunter and prey, and her adversary is clever, twisted and ruthless. Clean Cut is Theresa Monsour's first novel, but she is by no means an overnight sensation. She has been a reporter and staff writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press for more than 20 years. Her sense of place is uncanny, and her characters are well-drawn and believable. In Clean Cut, Monsour launches her mystery-writing career with a winner and one that bodes well for a long series.


Drive Time

Longtime favorite Andrew Vachss' The Getaway Man is a sterling example of modern noir, and a bit of a departure from the hard-boiled Burke novels (Down in the Zero, Dead and Gone) for which he is best known. The story is told by Eddie, a somewhat slow-witted, if always earnest young man with an ardor for driving. When he stole the orange Camaro that got him his first serious jail time, he had no intention of selling it or chopping it for parts; it was all about the driving. Now, several years down the road, Eddie has acquired the reputation of being fast, smooth and loyal to a fault—a standup guy. Eddie has hooked up with a career criminal named J.C., a man with a plan: the Retirement Score, the one huge job that every con dreams of. What could possibly go wrong? Oh yeah . . . a floozy, a real piece of work named Vonda. There are double crosses within double crosses, and I guarantee you won't figure out what's going on until the last couple of pages. The Getaway Man reads like a classic '50s crime novel; fans of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson will be delighted to take Vachss' latest out for a spin.


Mystery of the Month

February's Tip of the Ice Pick Award goes to veteran storyteller Nevada Barr for her standout Flashback. In the latest Anna Pigeon adventure, the stalwart park ranger tends to business at Ft. Jefferson in Dry Tortugas National Park, a small island outpost some 70 miles off Key West. In voluntary exile for a few months while she ponders a marriage proposal, Anna quickly finds herself going stir crazy in the remote idyll. Concerned about Anna's sanity, her sister Molly sends her a stash of old letters written by a distant relative shortly after the Civil War. It seems that Anna's great-great-aunt had spent time at Ft. Jefferson some 130 years prior, as the wife of the commandant. At the time, the fort had been a Union jail, home to the conspirators in the Abraham Lincoln assassination. A chapter by chapter counterpoint compares and contrasts living conditions then and now, and spins an interesting "what if?" regarding Lincoln's untimely demise. There is a contemporary crime (naturally), one complex enough to have carried the story singlehandedly, but it is the interplay between present and past that makes this novel so compelling. There are any number of competently written, fast-paced mystery novels out there; every now and then, one comes along that transcends the genre (among them, Sharyn McCrumb's She Walks These Hills and Ken Bruen's The Guards). Flashback is one of these rare novels.


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