WHODUNIT?

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

A judge under fire

Perennial favorite Tami Hoag returns with Prior Bad Acts, a chilling tale of murder and mayhem in the Twin Cities. When a liberal female judge disallows evidence of a defendant's prior criminal record in a high-profile murder trial, a conviction seems a long shot at best. Everyone knows that the guy did it, but the direct evidence is a bit thin, and the prosecutor is left twisting in the wind. Minneapolis cops Nikki Liska and Sam Novak are assigned to the case after an attempt is made on the judge's life, probably as a result of the recent controversial ruling. The list of suspects is long: the aggrieved husband and father of the victims; the sullen son, left to hold the remainder of his family together in the aftermath of the unspeakable; and let's not forget the judge's husband, a failed filmmaker with a closet full of secrets and an unexplained $25,000 expense shortly before the attack. As is usually the case with Tami Hoag novels, there is no shortage of surprises, red herrings and multidimensional villains on both sides of the law. The writing is crisp, the dialogue filled with banter, and the plot advances steadily toward a very unexpected denouement. Novak and Liska were introduced in 1999's Ashes to Ashes; both have grown considerably in the intervening years, evolving into complex individual characters, all the while playing off one another better than most contemporary crime-solving duos.


Skeletons in the family closet

Dark Harbor, Maine, an exclusive village on the island of Isleboro in Penobscot Bay, holds memories for Stone Barrington, not all of them fond—the summer after his senior year of high school, his parents shipped him off to stay with his mother's relatives. Here, for the first time, Stone met his cousins: Dick, amiable and destined to become a seldom seen but well-liked friend; and Caleb, spoiled rotten and a bully to boot, with little prospect for improvement. Barrington has moved on to a career as a successful lawyer, and only rarely thinks about his less than idyllic days on the Maine coast. Then, twice in the space of a day, he receives word from the frozen north: the first, a message from his cousin Dick, requesting Barrington's legal services as executor of his estate; the second, scant hours later, notification that Dick has killed his wife and daughter, then taken his own life. Nothing is as it seems, however; it turns out that Dick, a career State Department functionary, was in reality a highly placed CIA administrator/operative. As you might imagine, the chances of his death being a suicide plummet to near zero. Dark Harbor is, by my count, the 11th in Stuart Woods' popular Stone Barrington series. Well-liked by reviewers and the reading public alike, the Barrington novels continue to impress, with likable characters, fast pacing and original storylines.


An addictive noir novel

Sara Gran was an unknown quantity to me prior to reading her latest novel, Dope, a tale of intrigue and murder set in 1950s New York. I did a bit of a background search, unearthing unequivocally complimentary reviews of Gran's previous novel, Come Closer. Twenty pages into Dope, I knew what all the buzz had been about. Grudgingly, I put the book down after 80 pages or so (and well after midnight), and started in on it again first thing the following morning, finishing it shortly after breakfast. Dope's protagonist, Josephine "Joe" Flannigan, is a former heroin addict, straight for about two years. She makes her living with con games and shoplifting, by most standards a step up from her former careers of doping and prostitution. A wealthy Westchester couple hires Joe to find their socialite daughter Nadine, now a "dope fiend" on the streets of Greenwich Village. Who better, after all, to find a doper than a reformed user? Shortly after Joe launches her investigation, Nadine's boyfriend/pimp turns up dead. Joe explains the situation to the police, but when they seek corroboration from her employers, no such people can be found. No parents, no Nadine, nada, leaving Joe as the number one suspect in the shooting. Dope is a clever and superbly written noir piece, reminiscent of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. The ending is a major surprise; I reread the last 20 pages just to savor it one more time!


MYSTERY OF THE MONTH

The opening of Nicotine Kiss, this month's Tip of the Ice Pick Award winner and the latest installment in Loren D. Estleman's popular Amos Walker series, finds the world-weary detective on the ground outside a rural Michigan roadhouse, bleeding from a bullet wound to his leg. If not for the quick thinking and quicker driving of Walker's acquaintance Jeff Starzek, a cigarette smuggler by trade, Walker would be but one more sad statistic of America's fascination with firearms. Starzek puts himself at some risk in helping Walker make it to the emergency room; on the lam from the law, he really can't afford any contact with the authorities. Shortly after delivering Walker to the hospital, he makes good his getaway, a nondescript lifesaver that nobody can quite remember or describe.

A month or so later, Walker receives a call from Starzek's sister; it seems that Starzek has gone missing, and the sister is at her wits' end. Walker is in no shape to pursue a case—he can barely walk after his brush with death. Still, he owes his savior a large favor, so he agrees to look into the disappearance. One by one, clues materialize, linking Starzek to counterfeiting and terrorism. Walker can easily believe that Starzek could be involved with counterfeiting, but terrorism seems unlikely to the point of absurdity. His digging will take him to the wrong side of the tracks, not to mention the wrong side of the law, and his efforts will be watched with interest by local and federal authorities, including the dreaded Department of Homeland Security.

Estleman tackles the subjects of terrorism, intrusive government and fundamentalist religion with insight and wit, and gives his readers a lot to think about in these uneasy days of the new world order. The Walker novels are always a treat, and Nicotine Kiss is no exception. This hardboiled detective is a 21st-century Philip Marlowe, a classic in the making.


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