A lawless hero on the prowl

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Reading a new Andrew Vachss novel, particularly one featuring his sinister (and unlicensed) PI, Burke, is an experience not unlike turning over a rock: you know instinctively that you're likely to find a frightening or repellent slice of life, but you just have to have a look anyway. In this regard, Vachss' latest, Down Here, does not disappoint. A longtime friend/foe appears in the form of Wolfe, a former sex crimes prosecutor who has taken her crusade private. Burke shares her fervor about sexual predators, but none of her scruples when it comes to dealing with them. Now Wolfe has been accused of attempted murder, and the victim is a serial rapist she had once prosecuted. Despite her protests, Burke decides to investigate on Wolfe's behalf, and the more he sniffs around, the more the situation stinks to high heaven. As is the case with the 14 Burke novels that precede it, Down Here is tautly written, relentlessly depressing about the human condition, yet ultimately triumphant. Burke is the uncrowned king of the lawless good guys, and Down Here will advance his legend among mystery aficionados the world over.


Playing with fire

Half mystery, half psychological (bordering on supernatural) thriller, Iris Johansen's Firestorm is an explosive thriller chock-a-block with espionage, weapons of mass destruction, a raging psychopath or two, and a pair of psychic arson investigators. For Kerry Murphy, arson investigation is a natural profession. As a child, she barely escaped from the burning building in which her mother lost her life. For Brad Silver, flames have an equally destructive connotation: his brother, a noted U.S. senator, was murdered in a deliberately set automobile fire. Silver knows the identity of the murderer, and he needs the help of the unsuspecting Kerry Murphy to bring the man to justice (let it be noted that we are not talking about court-style justice here, rather Old Testament justice). Silver has an ace up his sleeve: he possesses the gift of imposing suggestions into another's mind, and he intends to use that to his advantage with Kerry. Trouble is, neither Kerry nor the reader entirely trusts Silver's motivations, and there the roller coaster ride begins. The psychic abilities of the protagonists may appear far-fetched to some, but the pace is electrifying, and the interaction of the characters is intriguing (do you have any idea how appealing it would have been to use the adjective "combustible" here?). Firestorm is a book that proves difficult to put down; you always want to read "just one more chapter," even as the book draws to a close.


Mystery of the month

The March Tip of the Ice Pick Award goes to Philip Margolin for the clever and diabolical Sleeping Beauty. As the book opens, author Miles Van Meter rides the crest of a bestseller, a true crime book about the serial killer who put his sister into an apparently irreversible coma and killed several people in Miles' circle of acquaintances. He is about to give a reading to a cadre of fans who have come out for his book tour. In flashback, a chilling tale of multiple murders unfolds: Ashley Spencer, a high school soccer star, awakens in the middle of the night to find her sleepover buddy being brutally beaten by a masked intruder. Ashley is bound with duct tape and apparently slated to be next, when the killer decides to take a break from his carnage for a snack. In this brief interlude, Ashley's mortally wounded father crawls into her room and succeeds in freeing her mere seconds before the killer ascends the stairs to finish his work. Within months, Ashley loses her mother to a killer as well, but this time there is a witness. Outside a campus boathouse, a horrified Ashley watches in terror as a man with a knife crouches over a pair of bloodstained forms, those of her dead mother and of Miles' comatose sister Casey. With Ashley's help, the murderer is caught, but he escapes custody in a flash of brazen, yet utterly believable, derring-do. Now, six years later, Miles recounts the updated version of the tale that made his name a household word. But everything is not as it seems, and before he is done, there will be revelations that will rock his world, and give a decent-sized jolt to the reader as well. Sleeping Beauty is a must for suspense fans; red herrings abound, and the twists are as convoluted as the whorls of a killer's fingerprints.


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