A helter-skelter ride

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

A December night in coastal Northern California: Dr. Carroll Monks prepares to settle in for the evening in front of the wood stove with a glass of Irish whiskey. There is a knock at the door; a young woman, a stranger, stands on the threshold. It seems that she has had a flat tire, and Monks offers his limited mechanical assistance. It is an offer he will come to regret—scant minutes later he will be abducted by a band of methamphetamine-fueled terrorists, one of whom, straining all belief, is Monks' estranged son. Monks is taken to a remote paramilitary camp, where the reason for his kidnapping becomes immediately clear: the son of the psychotic leader is deathly ill. Yet hospital treatment is expressly forbidden, and without the lifesaving equipment of an emergency room, the child has little chance of survival. Monks stages a slick escape, spiriting the child away under cover of a snowstorm, never imagining the retribution that will be visited upon him, his town and his family. Revolution No. 9 is the fourth installment in the Carroll Monks series by Montana author Neil McMahon. Eerily recalling the Beatles' lyrical connection to the Manson family a generation before, the book takes a harsh look at the divisive realities of contemporary America: the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, the erosion of the middle class, the unequal dispensing of justice. (The recipe for revolution: take three scoops of social inequity, stir in one charismatic wacko, let mixture ferment before bringing to a boil.)


South-American noir

Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza's latest, A Window in Copacabana, finds intrepid Rio de Janeiro police inspector Espinosa hunting a purported serial killer who targets cops and their families. Espinosa, however, doesn't believe it for a moment: "There's no serial killer. Our murderer isn't choosing the victims, just carrying out the orders. Serial killers are American. We don't have those in our culture." His second-in-command looks on dubiously. "Crime is also culture," concludes Espinosa philosophically. He sets up a secret task force, reporting to him alone, made up of his most trusted associates. If Espinosa is correct, the killings are directed from somewhere within the police department. In short order the investigation points to corruption at high levels; indeed, all of the deceased cops lived well beyond their means, but otherwise the connections are tenuous at best. The dogged Espinosa meets his match in the somewhat obsessive wife of a well-placed government official, an eyewitness to the most recent killing. A Window in Copacabana is tropical noir at its best, lush with exotic backdrop and sophisticated in dialogue and plot.


Mystery of the month

The January Tip of the Ice Pick Award goes to Robert Wilson for The Vanished Hands, the follow-up to his best-selling thriller, The Blind Man of Seville. Inspector Javier Falcon, chief homicide investigator of Seville, Spain, is called to the scene of a suspicious death, likely a suicide. The victim has apparently chosen a particularly painful route to death, chugging an entire bottle of drain cleaner, rather than using the neater (not to mention speedier) 9mm handgun in his dresser drawer. His young wife lies smothered to death in her bed. The unusual circumstances of the deaths raise eyebrows among the investigators as they begin canvassing the neighborhood for clues. In rapid succession, two more high-profile "suicides" take place. Mix in a few threats from shady Russian mafiosos, an allusion or two to the events of 9/11, and some sordid psychological shenanigans, and the whole story quickly becomes quite convoluted. Falcon must sort through the red herrings to determine just what drove these seemingly unrelated victims to suicide, if indeed they were suicides and not cleverly engineered murders. Wilson plots his tales deliberately, patiently peeling back layer after layer until the truth (or something vaguely resembling the truth) is exposed. His eye for detail is critical, his descriptions insightful and ever so slightly Chandleresque: "She was tall and slender with a full bust, an unstarved bottom and the innate ability to give dull men extravagant imaginations." The Vanished Hands is a book to be read slowly and savored, like a fine Spanish rioja; that said, it is next to impossible to put down.


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