WHODUNIT?

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Sizzling suspense offerings

This month offers quite a mixed bag of suspense novels, a little something for just about everyone: an exceptional British police procedural with a wicked twist; a gritty tale of deception and betrayal on the mean streets of New York; a Santa Fe thriller featuring a trio of delusional protagonists; and the final installment of a well-loved series set in 1990s Jerusalem.

Veteran uber-gritmeister Andrew Vachss returns this month with Mask Market, a new novel featuring the mono-monikered Burke. If there are any mystery aficionados out there who are unfamiliar with Vachss' iconic antihero, let it be said that Burke is the baddest black-hat-wearing latter-day urban warrior in the Greater New York area, and nobody in his right mind would cross him. Except that someone has not only crossed him, but has also set him up for a major fall, and Burke must find out who, and fast. The usual suspects are on hand to help him out: Max the Silent, a giant of a man whose lack of speech is more than made up for by the speed of his lethal limbs; Mama, the Chinese restaurateur who doubles as a criminal mastermind; brainy Prof, whose rhyming slang sets a hip urban counterpoint to Burke's clipped prose; and Mole, who can be counted on to provide the latest and greatest in surveillance gimmickry, always a valuable asset when operating at the edges of the law. Burke drives a hot-rodded Plymouth Roadrunner, the legendary '60s muscle car that fueled a generation of adolescent speed dreams. In short, he personifies the dark side of cool, a battle-scarred hero of near-epic proportions, a law unto himself and a force to be reckoned with.


Back on the force

In Darkness & Light, British novelist John Harvey, author of the Frank Elder police procedural series, brings the veteran cop out of retirement (yet again, and somewhat reluctantly on Elder's part) to solve the case of a middle-aged woman who has gone missing after a succession of Internet-arranged dates, some with surfers of dubious integrity. Retired from the Nottingham police force, desolate over the breakup of his 20-year marriage and the brutal rape of his teenage daughter, Elder seeks out a quiet country life in Cornwall, but it is not in the cards. Darkness & Light (number three in the "&" series, after 2004's Flesh & Blood and 2005's Ash & Bone) finds our hero a little more world-weary, perhaps, but undiminished in skill and intuition despite his bucolic furlough. Quickly he realizes that this case bears marked similarities to an unsolved murder from some years before. Of course, many of the witnesses have dispersed in the interim, and the ones who are still around can't be trusted to remember things accurately. Elder will partner with Detective Inspector Maureen Prior, with whom he shares a strangely intimate relationship, both on personal and professional fronts. There is exquisite tension at every turn, and the resolution is both unexpected and clever. My prediction: Fans of Ian Rankin and/or Val McDermid will find a new best friend in John Harvey.


A trio of tormented misfits

Jeff Abbott, whose 2005 hardcover debut, Panic, was a hit with critics (yours truly included) and the public alike, is back with a startlingly original thriller, Fear. The three protagonists each suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and each is exceptionally strange in his or her own way. Miles Kendrick, a former mob informant, is in the witness protection program, a distinction he shares (unwillingly) with his imaginary dead friend, Andy. Celeste Brent, winner of a "Survivor"-like reality show, was on top of the world until a crazed fan tortured and killed her husband, leaving Celeste with a Pandora's box of neuroses just waiting to be unsealed. Nathan Ruiz, a veteran of the (as yet) undeclared war in Iraq, was the only survivor of a friendly-fire incident for which he may have had some responsibility. Together, this trio must forge an uneasy alliance against a group of unscrupulous researchers who are trying to make a killing (literally) in the prescription drug market. The plot is somewhat convoluted, but the action is nonstop, and the dialogue is crisp and believable (particularly the conversations between Miles and his imaginary friend). If there is a criticism to be leveled against Fear, it is that the plot requires one to accept as facts things that are not implicitly plausible. That said, the same criticism could be made with respect to The Da Vinci Code, and we all know that didn't slow down its sales one iota.


MYSTERY OF THE MONTH

In May 2005, the suspense field lost one of its finest contributors, Israeli author Batya Gur, who died at age 57 after a protracted illness. Her intricate novels featuring Jerusalem police superintendent Michael Ohayon were (and are) exceptionally popular in her home country and in Europe as well. Long a critic of the Israeli government and its policies regarding "the Territories" (i.e., Palestine), Gur was an outspoken voice of moderation in troubled times. This shows up in her books, most recently Murder in Jerusalem.

Ostensibly a tale of murder on the set of an Israeli news program, Gur's latest, and likely last, work serves as a parable about the excesses of government, and the intricate balance between reporting the news and being part of the news. When film set designer Tirzah Rubin is crushed by a falling marble pillar, everyone agrees it's a tragedy, but most believe it to be an accident. One naysayer is Matty Cohen, who witnessed what he thinks may have been a confrontation between Tirzah and an unknown second party, just minutes before her untimely death. Things heat up when Matty keels over dead during interrogation; the cause of death is an overdose of his heart medicine, four times the recommended amount. Accident or murder? Either way, it is enough to raise a question or two in the mind of Michael Ohayon. Police investigation or not, however, the news must be reported, and Ohayon finds himself increasingly shuffled to the sidelines as the reportage of the events of tumultuous times takes precedence over any one death. Methodically, Ohayon and his team of investigators sift through clues and testimony, little realizing that Tirzah Rubin's death was but the tip of the iceberg, the tiny visible part of a conspiracy that could shake the core of Israeli society and government. Those in the know say that Gur's stories were based on fact, the characters thinly disguised versions of real people; according to Wikipedia, for many readers, part of the fun of reading her books is to try to match her characters with the real people who may have inspired them. Whatever the case, Gur's novels were insightful, thought provoking and eminently readable. Sleep ye well, Batya Gur.


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