WHODUNIT?

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

Taking readers to the cleaner

We'll start off this month with a debut novel, Brett Battles' tension-laden tale of espionage and betrayal, The Cleaner. In his clandestine line of endeavor, Jonathan Quinn is known to a select few as a "cleaner." He surreptitiously enters a crime scene after the fact and removes any indication that a crime has taken place, or rearranges evidence to point to an alternative "truth." Wetwork, the spilling of blood in the line of duty, is not typical of his duties, although sometimes it cannot be helped. Quinn works for a secretive quasi-governmental agency (known only as "The Office"), although clearly his work is not entirely above board. He is enjoying the balmy tranquility of Maui when he is summoned to Colorado to investigate a case of suspected arson/murder. Things turn sour quickly, as Quinn discovers a second dead body, that of an Office operative. He immediately seeks guidance, but everyone seems to have gone to ground, leaving Quinn twisting in the wind. In short order, he finds out why: A massacre has taken place, decimating the home office and leaving Quinn in the unenviable position of being the prime remaining target of the perps. The Cleaner is full to the brim with clever plot twists, with a final bolt from the blue that will catch even the veteran thriller aficionado unawares.


Jump in the water

Longtime favorite Ruth Rendell is back with a clever psychological suspense thriller, The Water's Lovely. As was the case with the novels of her esteemed predecessor Agatha Christie, Rendell's latest work is laden with quirky characters: Ismay and Heather, a pair of sisters who share a decades-old secret; a retired police inspector with a fetish for India; a spinsterish con woman in search of a big payoff among the old folks in her neighborhood; a philandering boyfriend attracted to waifish blondes; a couple of barking-loony mothers—oh yeah, and a dead guy in the bathtub. It's difficult to know just who to root for. Ismay seems OK, on the surface, at least, but she is obsessed with Andrew, who is equally besotted with elfin blondes, of which Ismay is one, but not his only one. Heather may have drowned her stepfather in the tub back when she was 13; whether or not she did, the event continues to have a profound effect on her. Edmund, Heather's boyfriend, is something of a mama's boy, still living at home at age 35; his mother is a raving hypochondriac and a bit of a bully as well. Marion will do anything to avoid an honest day's work, as will her brother Fowler, who dives the Dumpsters of London's better neighborhoods on a regular basis. In short order, these disparate individuals will find their lives intertwined in a sticky web of blackmail, betrayal and murder. Rendell is a three-time winner of the prestigious Edgar Award. When you read The Water's Lovely you will see why.


Secret agent woman

In a previous life, British author Stella Rimington was the head of MI5—that fabled organization's first female director general, in fact. She retired in 1996, and embarked upon a career of writing, first with her autobiography, Open Secret (2001), then with her debut novel, the gripping page-turner At Risk (2005). This month Rimington returns with a chilling post-9/11 novel of terrorism and espionage, Secret Asset. The title refers to an operative in the pay of one organization who infiltrates a second organization, usually that of a competitor or enemy. On his deathbed, Irish Republican Army legend Sean Keaney discloses a chilling secret: The IRA has placed a "secret asset" deep within the ranks of MI5. Intelligence officer Liz Carlyle is tasked with exposing the mole, if indeed he or she exists, and to do it quickly enough to head off a suspected terrorist attack. Meanwhile, in a nondescript neighborhood bookstore, a group of disaffected young men of Middle Eastern extraction eagerly anticipate their next meeting with the radical imam who fans the embers of their fanaticism into a raging brushfire. What is the connection, if any, between these two splinter groups? It will take all of Liz Carlyle's considerable talents to connect the dots and foil the perpetrators before they can carry out their suicidal (and homicidal) plan. As with Rimington's first novel, Secret Asset is a plot-driven and action-packed read, virtually unputdownable once started.


Mystery of the month

The Tip of the Ice Pick, BookPage's much-coveted award for best mystery of the month, goes to Nick Stone for his debut novel Mr. Clarinet. This is a book for which the common superlatives, "gripping," "riveting," "gritty" and "dark," are simply inadequate. From the first chapter, Mr. Clarinet spins the reader on a whirlwind tour of both the underbelly of the Third World and the basest depths of the human soul. Set primarily in Haiti, the book follows detective Max Mingus as he searches for a young kidnap victim, Charlie Carver. In the two years since Charlie's abduction, the trail has grown ice cold. Ransom demands were never made, and there were no witnesses, at least nobody who was willing to come forward. Mingus is world-weary enough to know that there is little chance of recovering the boy alive, but his fee is not contingent upon that; the boy's distraught parents have offered Mingus a seven-figure bonus either to return their son to them or to find conclusive evidence of his death. Mingus quickly learns that he is not the first to embark upon this task: His predecessors have all met gruesome, horror-movie ends. Undeterred, he plunges forward with the tenacity of a man who has nothing left to lose. With the help of comely native Chantale Duplaix, Mingus scours the countryside of Haiti in search of clues. What he finds instead is a heady concoction of voodoo, devil worship, violence and murder. But all of those pale alongside the compelling presence of Mr. Clarinet, the unseen thief of children, said to be an undead spirit, a corrupt pied piper from the dark side. Like John Burdett's groundbreaking Bangkok 8, Mr. Clarinet propels the reader through a fantasia of the bizarre and exotic, racing toward an unsettling and quite unexpected denouement. On the cover of the ARC (advance reader's copy) below the title is the notation: The First Max Mingus Thriller. I will be first in line for the second!


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