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WHODUNIT?
REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY
Taxi driver and private investigator Carlotta Carlyle is back for the 12th time in Linda Barnes' latest Boston suspense novel, Lie Down With the Devil. As the story opens, Carlyle is recovering both from a short-term hangover and a longer-term bout of borderline depression, the aftermath of an emotional and deadly trip to Colombia. She doesn't really want to take on a new client, but Jessica Franklin is nothing if not persistent, and she's in a bit of a hurry as well. In two weeks, she is getting married, and she suspects her husband-to-be of infidelity; in short, she wants Carlyle to spy on him to see if her fears are grounded in reality. This is a client Carlyle can relate to, as the situation with her own boyfriend is strained, to say the least, so she agrees to take the case. Shortly thereafter, Jessica Franklin turns up again, this time in the county morgue. Oh, and she's not really Jessica Franklin, but Julie Farmer, a pivotal figure in a Cape Cod Indian casino battle, who may have been tied up with Carlyle's mob-connected boyfriend, who has conveniently skipped the country. Got all that? So, with the cops breathing down her neck, Carlyle must find out who killed her client, and why, and how it all might relate to her absentee lover. All the action and suspense you expect from a Linda Barnes book are here in spades, with an emotional denouement you probably won't see coming.
By Linda Barnes Minotaur, $24.95 320 pages, ISBN 9780312332891 
More Scandinavian suspense
Tornetrask, northern Sweden: the ice on the lake was more than a meter thick, perfect for portable ice fishing lodges known as "arks." Leif Pudas, after a successful day of fishing (and several beers), felt the call of nature and left the cozy comfort of his ark dressed only in pants and hastily pulled-on boots; he planned to be outside less than a minute. It was an error in judgment he would live to regret, as a strong gust of wind caught the door and sent the ark skittering away from him across the ice into the Swedish winter night. Half naked, in the bitter cold, Leif could expect to live a scant few minutes if he was not able to get back indoors. He made his way quickly to a nearby ark and forced the door open. At the thin edge of frostbite, he was desperate to get warm, and he grabbed the first blanket he could lay his hands on. What he found underneath was unspeakable: a thoroughly frozen woman, the mute victim of foul play. Grimly, he stoked the stove, and they slowly thawed out together until he was warm enough to go for help. So begins Asa Larsson's The Black Path a chilling (sorry, couldn't help it) tale of obsession and murder in the far north. Some of the finest novels of suspense nowadays are coming from Scandinavia, and Larsson has done nothing to let the region down. If you like Karin Fossum, Henning Mankell, et al., you're going to love Asa Larsson.P.S.: kudos to Marlaine Delargy, who did a bang-up job of translation.
By Asa Larsson Delta, $12 400 pages, ISBN 9780385341011
We've all played the "what if we won the lottery?" game; some of us might go for a McMansion and a Maybach, others might embark on a sailboat cruise. For DINK (dual income, no kids) couple Tom and Anna Reed, protagonists of Marcus Sakey's Good People, a lottery win would finance the in-vitro fertilization program they fervently hope will bring them a child. Problem is, their "lottery win" is $400,000 in ill-gotten gains, courtesy of their downstairs tenant, who has accidentally overdosed. It turns out that the $400K is not the only contraband in the possession of the dead boy: he also has a briefcase full of designer drugs, stolen from a none-too-friendly dealer to the stars. Needless to say, said dealer wants his drugs back, and some other seriously bad guys want the money, and both groups figure that Tom and Anna have what they seek. Which they do. And they don't want to give it back. This sets the stage for the high-intensity, high-stakes end game that could cost Tom and Anna Reed the existence that they have come to take for granted: their heavily mortgaged Chicago duplex, their high-profile professional careers, their marriage and their dreams. Not to mention their lives. In Good People, Sakey has crafted another fine stand-alone thriller, packed with action, suspense and clever adversaries on both sides of the law.
By Marcus Sakey Dutton, $24.95 336 pages, ISBN 9780525950844
A small handful of mystery writers stand head and shoulders above the crowd (Walter Mosley, Dennis Lehane and Ken Bruen jump to mind, to name a few), and George Pelecanos is among them. His hyper-realistic novels of Washington, D.C., are eagerly awaited by his legions of fans, yours truly included. His latest, The Turnaround, earns this month's Tip of the Ice Pick award. The novel spans 30-plus years, from the ragged end of the hippie era to the equally ragged end of the Bush era. In the summer of 1972, three white kids took an afternoon drive into a black neighborhood to taunt some of the locals. The scene grew ugly when their escape route turned out to be a cul-de-sac, and they had to return to face the wrath of the three young black men they had so recently dissed. The ensuing contretemps left one dead, one disfigured, and cost two of the six half a lifetime in jail. Fast-forward 35 years, and one has become a successful restaurateur who donates time and food to the veteran's program at Walter Reed; one is a physical therapist for damaged returning soldiers; one is a high-powered lawyer; one is a blackmailer looking to exact some long-savored revenge. And one guards a secret that could wreak havoc in all of their lives. All are shaped by the conflicts that seem to have defined the U.S. for most of our lifetimes: the inequality of treatment of the races; the Iraq war and its repercussions; the erosion of the urban family; the pervasive political undertone that reaches into the homes of every D.C. resident. You can call Pelecanos a mystery writer, and that's true as far as it goes, but it would perhaps be more accurate to view him as a latter-day Steinbeck or Saroyan, a social historian who just happens to work in the suspense genre. Whatever the case, The Turnaround is one of Pelecanos' finest to date, and that, folks, is saying a lot!
By George Pelecanos Little, Brown, $24.99 304 pages, ISBN 9780316156479 |
Beantown suspense from Linda Barnes
Ill-gotten gains
Mystery of the month