WHODUNIT?

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Mystery of the Month

Kudos to Texas mystery writer Rick Riordan for the darkly satisfying new Tres Navarre novel, Mission Road. Private investigator Navarre plies his trade in Austin, Texas. Like most of us, he has grown older and settled down a bit over the course of the past several years. He has taken up with a young Chinese-American woman, and they seem to have fashioned a pleasant and workable living arrangement. So it is something of a surprise when Navarre's boyhood friend, Ralph Arguello, shows up on his doorstep, bleeding profusely. It seems that Arguello was about to be fingered by his policewoman wife for a murder that had taken place some 20 years beforehand. To make things worse, someone has shot Arguello's wife (he swears he didn't do it), and she is hanging on by a thread in the intensive care unit. The cops think Arguello was responsible. Arguello enlists Navarre's help in searching for the current-day killer and resolving the major inconsistencies surrounding the decades-old case. As the dragnet closes in, the tension becomes palpable; there is really nowhere for the beleaguered duo to turn, except to Navarre's competent girlfriend, who stage-manages brilliantly from the sidelines.

Riordan uses the plot device of the flashback, cutting between the present and the mid-1980s, to excellent effect. Although the reader will have a pretty good idea of the identities of the bad guys (and/or women) fairly early on, Mission Road doles out its surprises sparingly, saving the best one for the final page (no kidding!). Riordan, whose first book for young readers is reviewed in this issue, is a triple-crown award winner (the Shamus, the Edgar and the Anthony, the three most prestigious awards in mystery circles), one of only a handful of contemporary authors accorded all three honors. With books like Mission Road to his credit, it is easy to see why.


Crouch opens door to chilling sequel

Perhaps the finest mystery debut of 2004 was Blake Crouch's Desert Places, in which thriller writer Andrew Thomas struggled to extricate himself from the intricate frame job engineered by his exceptionally un-fraternal fraternal twin brother, Orson, and Orson's psychopathic sidekick, Luther Kite. In the end, Andrew was able to escape Orson's clutches, though he's destined for a life on the run as a prime suspect in a series of killings he had no part in. Fast-forward seven years: Andrew lives in Haines Junction, in Canada's remote Yukon. His life is about to be disrupted beyond imagination: Luther has begun systematically killing Andrew's friends and acquaintances, hoping to draw the fugitive out of hiding for a final bloody confrontation. This, then, is the setup for a sequel, the clever and lightning-paced Locked Doors. It would be tempting to view Andrew Thomas as a modern riff on Richard Kimble, the falsely accused wife-slayer from The Fugitive. In fact, the differences far outweigh the similarities. Andrew is the unwitting victim of a major conspiracy, and entertains little or no hope of proving his innocence—there is no "one-armed man" to pursue in hopes of unearthing the truth. Finally, unlike Kimble, Andrew is pitted against an enemy of epic proportions, the revenge-driven Luther. Blake Crouch has penned a sequel that will keep you reading long past your bedtime.


Science is key in a promising new series

Kay Scarpetta, move over! There is a new kid in the forensics lab, and she is a sharp cookie indeed. Her name is Evelyn James, and she is the brainchild of freshman author Elizabeth Becka, herself a forensic specialist with the Cape Coral, Florida, police department. The first installment of what we hope will be a long and successful series is titled Trace Evidence. Set in Cleveland in the dead of winter, Trace Evidence opens with the discovery of a murdered girl, found by construction workers at the bottom of a bridge piling, her feet encased in concrete, her body preserved immaculately by the icy waters. Events take a turn for the (even more) horrific when a second body turns up, this time a young woman brutally strangled with a length of chain. Her bare feet show traces of dried concrete, a disturbing similarity to the bridge girl from the day before. When the body is turned over, Evelyn James lets out an involuntary gasp; the murdered girl is the daughter of the mayor of Cleveland, a man with whom Evelyn has a long and convoluted history. Though some crimes may be solved in the field, by virtue of dogged detective work, this one will have to be unraveled on the medical examiner's table, where the small miracles of science rule. Evelyn James is a congenial single mom (of a somewhat sullen and dramatic teenage daughter), unattached but not militantly so; in short, the sort of person you'd be happy to count among your friends. The minor characters are finely drawn, and the plot is original and briskly paced—truly a first-rate debut.


Inside the mind of a killer

Arguably the best way to research a novel is to get into the head of the protagonist, to see what he sees, to feel what he feels. This can be a bit problematical when the protagonist is a cold-blooded murderer . . . unless, of course, the writer decides to see for himself what it would be like to actually kill someone. Before arriving at this fateful decision, author Michael Schiftmann had received plenty of critical praise, but little attention from the buying public. Nowadays, he rides the crest of a sales wave; his audience eats up his stories of a sociopathic but oddly likable serial murderer. It is difficult to say which Schiftmann likes more, the money and prestige that accompany his success, or the ongoing research that propels his novels, for Michael Schiftmann has discovered that he truly enjoys killing. By Blood Written, the latest in a long line of mysteries from Nashville writer Steven Womack, is a slick and diabolical insider's look into the life of a successful author with a fatal flaw. You may remember Womack for his series featuring easygoing private investigator Harry James Denton. Throw away all notions of comparison—this stand-alone thriller is compelling evidence of Womack's growth as a writer and a cracking good read!


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