WHODUNIT?

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Around the world in four new books

It's International Mystery Month here at BookPage. It didn't start out that that way, but when we discovered three excellent mysteries set in far-flung foreign locations, it seemed only natural to scour the shelves for a fourth to round out this month's column. The locales vary widely: one story unfolds in the vast urban sprawl of Tokyo, another in Rio's bustling beach community of Copacabana. A third takes place in Andalusia's fabled city of Granada, and the last on Sweden's remote Gulf of Bothnia.

Tokyo police detective Chikako Ishizu, protagonist of Miyuki Miyabe's best-selling Shadow Family, returns for an encore performance in Crossfire, this time forced to re-evaluate her skeptical position on paranormal behavior. It seems that Junko Aoki, a pretty young Japanese woman, has a strange talent: she can start fires simply by exerting intense concentration. It is a gift she uses to exact vigilante justice in cases where the conventional legal system failed. Both Ishizu and Aoki seek justice for criminals, but their methods are distinctly at odds with one another, as are their usual outcomes. As the bodies begin to pile up, the police are not the only ones to take notice: a growing vigilante group in Tokyo would dearly love to add Aoki's talents to their arsenal. Best described as a mystery-meets-supernatural novel, but definitely leaning more toward the mystery side, Crossfire will be a big hit with fans of Stephen King and John Connolly alike.


A reluctant cop on the beat in Brazil

When I reviewed Luis Alfredo Garcia-Roza's A Window in Copacabana in January 2005, I wrote (some might say "gushed") that the book was "tropical noir at its best, lush with exotic background and sophisticated in dialogue and plot." Now, Garcia-Roza is back with another tale featuring the likable and literate Chief Inspector Espinosa, Pursuit. If given free rein, Espinosa would much prefer to own an upscale used book shop, but he continues nonetheless to employ his vast powers of deduction and intuition in solving some of Rio's most puzzling murders. Espinosa is enjoying his December vacation (the height of Brazilian summer), when he receives a call from a noted psychologist. It seems the psychologist's daughter has disappeared with one of his patients, a young man who is none too stable. The psychologist is convinced that his daughter has been kidnapped, but the police are unwilling to intervene without more evidence. A few days later, the girl returns unharmed, insisting it was all a misunderstanding (but she is not entirely believable). Shortly thereafter, her erstwhile captor turns up dead. It will be but the first in a chain of killings, all linked to the psychologist and/or his former patient. Pursuit is not a conventional police procedural; rather, it is a dreamy tropical tale reminiscent of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency stories, with a dash of Gabriel García Márquez to add a bit of darkness.


Who's got the will?

I had not read any of Rebecca Pawel's earlier work, so I approached her latest, The Summer Snow, with no preconceived notions except one: that the book was set in present-day Spain. Then a dozen pages or so into the book, mention was made of a recent historical event, one that I clearly recalled having learned about in my 10th-grade world history class (which, let it be said, was not so recent). Hmmm! It turns out that The Summer Snow takes place in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Paranoia, particularly with regard to the "Red Menace" of communism, runs rampant through the Spanish aristocracy, nowhere more strongly than in Granada. Cantankerous elderly heiress Dona Rosalia de Ordonez finds reason to call the police weekly, making rather a nuisance of herself, complaining that she is the victim of some communist plot or another, convinced that she is about to be murdered. The police listen dutifully, but take her stories with a grain of salt . . . that is, until she turns up dead. The plot thickens when it is discovered that her will has disappeared; she had changed it recently (and dramatically), and clearly there is ample motive for any one of several people to have dispatched the old harpy. The Summer Snow is Pawel's fourth novel featuring Guardia lieutenant Carlos Tejada Alonso y Le—n. Her first, Death of a Nationalist, won the coveted Edgar Award for best debut mystery novel in 2004.


MYSTERY OF THE MONTH

Kudos to Swedish author Hakan Nesser for winning the Tip of the Ice Pick Award this month (and likely for the year, should we do a yearly award). Nesser's name looked familiar to me when I first saw the advance reader's copy of Borkmann's Point, but I couldn't quite remember why. After a bit of cogitation, I remembered that a German friend, a fellow mystery aficionado, had mentioned liking Nesser quite a lot. At the time, no English translations were to be found. My German (not to mention my Swedish!) being basically nonexistent, I shelved the notion of reading Nesser, and was thus happily surprised to find his first work translated into English. In the author's home country, Borkmann's Point received the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy Prize for best novel in 1994. Finally, a dozen years later, Nesser appears poised to receive the fame (and, with any luck, fortune) that comes with a U.S. bestseller. As the book opens, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren ("VV" to his subordinates, although they would never call him that to his face) is enjoying the final days of a coastal vacation. His holiday is interrupted by a call from his boss requesting that he cut short his time off to investigate an ax murder in a nearby resort town. Ax murders are big news even in the jaded, crime-ridden US of A, but in this remote corner of Sweden, there is no precedent . . . well, one precedent, because this is the second murder utilizing the same weapon in the space of two months. Nesser's pacing is superb, akin to the best from Ian Rankin or Ruth Rendell. Van Veeteren is, as cops go, a Renaissance man: he savors a well roasted leg of lamb, the complexity of a 1971 St. Emilion, and the finer points of the Nimzo-Indian defense in a good game of chess. Twists and turns abound, and the outcome will be a surprise even to seasoned mystery readers. Hakan Nesser is a household name throughout Europe. If the fates are kind to us, Borkmann's Point will be a major success here in the U.S., and then Nesser's other novels will be translated into English as well. I, for one, can't wait!


© 2006 ProMotion, inc.
www@bookpage.com