Missing in Manhattan

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Kudos to Jim Fusilli for his fourth novel featuring Big Apple writer-turned-detective Terry Orr, Hard, Hard City. In the first of the series, Closing Time, Orr struggled with the death of his wife and toddler son, who fell or were pushed in front of a high-speed subway train. Left with a comfortable monetary legacy and a teenage daughter, Orr has become a freelance private investigator, taking on occasional cases that pique his interest. In Hard, Hard City, Orr investigates the disappearance of a young design student, a sensitive lad with an overbearing and abusive father. Said father is a wealthy white-collar crook; he will tolerate no investigation that might expose any of his underhanded dealings. He gets this message across in an unmistakable manner: he runs Orr's tiny rental car (with Orr in it) off the side of an embankment, leaving him for dead. Killing the protagonist is never good for a popular series, though. Orr manages to pry himself from the wreckage with a) multiple contusions and lacerations, and b) a steely resolve to find the boy and exact justice (revenge?) upon the father. Orr is an introspective and complex character, and the supporting cast is well-drawn and diverse. The descriptions of post-9/11 Manhattan are spot-on, and the plotting is intense and briskly paced. You'll want to read Fusilli's earlier books as well, both for continuity's sake, and because they are all brilliantly crafted.


Past crimes come to light

Bucolic Brattleboro, Vermont, is the setting for Archer Mayor's latest, Surrogate Thief. A present-day domestic violence case escalates into a shooting with unexpected ramifications: shells from the gun match bullets used in a murder some 30 years ago. The crime was never solved, in part because the investigating officer, Joe Gunther, was also dealing with the terminal illness of his beloved wife. Now Gunther works for the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, with a larger budget and sophisticated tools at his disposal, not to mention a burning desire for closure of the case that has nagged at the edges of his mind for the better part of his professional career. Strictly speaking, the new case is not in Gunther's jurisdiction, and the old case has long since been shelved; nonetheless, like the proverbial dog with a bone, Gunther determines to establish the connection between the two. Mayor displays an insider's knowledge of forensics, having been a faculty member at the Seminar on Forensic Sciences, as well as assistant medical examiner for the state of Vermont. His characters are well fleshed-out and multifaceted, and his narrative is thoughtful and refined. Did I mention that Mayor is also prolific? If my count is correct, Surrogate Thief is the 14th Joe Gunther novel in about as many years. Read one, and you'll want to devour the entire series.


Mystery of the month

The November Tip of the Ice Pick award goes to veteran English author Ruth Rendell for her latest thriller, The Rottweiler. When the first murder victim is discovered with a prominent bite mark on her neck, the London tabloids christen the killer "The Rottweiler." It is something of a misnomer actually, as subsequent investigation reveals that the mark had occurred courtesy of the victim's boyfriend, but the appellation is too deliciously chilling for the tabloids to abandon simply because of a messy contradictory fact. One by one, young women are picked off by an obsessive serial killer. In each case, he strangles them and makes off with a small token: a pair of earrings here, a trinket there. When the purloined personal items begin to show up in a Marylebone antique shop, the police suspect the residents of the building: Inez, the owner, addicted to videos of her late husband's popular TV suspense show; Will, the intellectually challenged but heartbreakingly handsome house painter; Ludmila, the dramatic Russian(?) woman "of a certain age," whose accent disappears and reappears without warning; Jeremy, who asserts the existence of a girlfriend no one ever sees; and Zeinab, the drop-dead gorgeous Middle Eastern girl with more suitors than fingers. All are more than a bit quirky, but is one of them a serial killer? Rendell delivers a clever and fast-paced mystery guaranteed to delight new readers and longtime fans alike.


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