WHODUNIT?

REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY

News of the weird

Leading off Whodunit? this month is a book that is not strictly a whodunit: Michael Marshall's devilishly clever The Intruders. It starts out normally enough: Jack Whalen, a best-selling author, faces writer's block after the success of his first book. He is an ex-cop, a man who left the force under a cloud: no conviction, but clearly no exoneration either. Nowadays he stares out the window and chain-smokes, awaiting the glimmer of an idea for his next book. Then, out of the blue, he receives a call from an old friend, someone he hasn't seen since high school. The man offers just enough information to drag Jack out of his self-imposed retirement to investigate strange goings-on with regard to a billionaire's will. So far, well within the boundaries of a whodunit, right? Then things get weird, and weirder still, with far-out tales of body-snatchers and mind control; what's a pragmatic ex-cop to believe? For fans of Stephen King as well as those of, say, Robert Crais, The Intruders is a tautly crafted page-turner of the first order.


Disturbing disappearances

Ake Edwardson, three-time winner of the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers Award, is back with number 12 in the Erik Winter police procedural series, Frozen Tracks. Someone has been systematically beating students nearly to death in normally quiet Gothenburg. The gruesome twist is that the weapon appears to be a branding iron of the sort outlawed in the European Union for years. The students, to a one, claim not to know who might wish them ill, but their stories ring false to Winter. Meanwhile, a series of similarly themed child abductions has been baffling the police. The kids have returned home unharmed, but with successively stranger stories of their temporary disappearances. Clearly the perpetrator is ramping up for a full-on kidnapping or worse. In short order, these two investigations will dovetail with disturbing and surprising results for all involved. Fans of Henning Mankell and Karin Fossum (as well as Ian Rankin and Donna Leon) will find a great new friend in Edwardson.


Best-selling British author Mark Billingham (Sleepyhead, The Burning Girl) returns with Buried, a chilling police procedural of a kidnapping investigation that goes horribly awry when family members play fast and loose with the truth, ostensibly in order to protect themselves. This "circling of the wagons" is perhaps understandable, but Detective Inspector Tom Thorne will have none of it. Widely regarded in-house as a loose cannon, Thorne is nonetheless the go-to guy when results are necessary in a hurry—he will break any and all of the rules to find out what he needs to know, even if the interviewee is a socialite with friends in high places. Stirring up ghosts has unintended consequences for Thorne's team, though: A new clue reopens a hate-crime investigation that had been put on the back burner for lack of leads. All of a sudden, two investigations run in tandem, centered on an exclusive private school and some of its darker elements. Tautly crafted and suspenseful, with a clever resolution: Buried has it all.


Mystery of the month

If you are one of those readers who pages ahead to see what's gonna happen, do NOT do that with Karin Slaughter's latest tour-de-police-force, Beyond Reach. Seriously, the ending is such a surprise it left me momentarily speechless (and anyone who knows me can tell you what a rarity that is). Protagonists Sara Linton, the Grant County, Georgia, coroner, and her husband, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, team up for their sixth adventure. Their on-again, off-again marriage is distinctly on-again, as the two pair up to help a fellow police officer suspected in the arson death of a woman in backwoods Georgia. The two are in fine form, by turns acerbic and nurturing, long-suffering yet ultimately supportive. From a medical-examiner procedural aspect, Slaughter's novels are as gripping as anything from Kathy Reichs or the early Patricia Cornwell, and when she gets into the intricacies of relationships she hits the ball right out of the park. Additionally, there's enough gruesome medical detail to make genre junkies line up for the next installment. Just remember: no peeking!


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