The Black Box, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown;$27.99)

Why would Anneke Jesperson, a Danish photojournalist, wade into the L.A riots following the Rodney King verdict? With the body count rising by the hour, Detective Harry Bosch, who made the report of Jesperson’s execution-style murder in an alley in South Central, didn’t have the luxury of finding out. He had no sooner bagged a shell casing at the scene, when he and his partner were called to the next murder. No coroner, no CSI—just another victim.

But 20 years later, Bosch is still curious. Now a member of LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Case unit, Bosch specifically asked to be assigned to the case. The murder book is sketchy, at best. A few calls came in over the years inquiring about the status of the case, but no one had even taken the time to go through the victim’s knapsack or other belongings. With the anniversary of the riots looming, the head of the unit wants to prove that the LAPD is still actively working all unsolved murders from those terrible days.

Bosch starts with the only evidence he’s got: the shell casing. He traces it to several other crimes, and tries to follow it back to who might have had it at the time of the riots. He also focuses on Jesperson’s belongings, to attempt to understand what brought her first to the US, and then to LA. 

In Connelly’s skillful hands, what could have been a routine police procedural becomes a multi-layered, engrossing read. On the Mt. Rushmore of current great American mystery writers, Connelly’s face would be front and center. 

                                                                  

Phantom, by Jo Nesbø (Knopf; $25.95)

I am perplexed by the explosive popularity of Scandinavian murder mysteries. Don’t get me wrong: they are, for the most part, good reads. But my question is more along the lines of “Why Scandinavia?”  Why not Eastern Europe? South America?  Obviously, it’s not a language issue, since publishers of books from those countries could pay to have books translated to English or other languages just as they must for their Swedish and Norwegian authors. And I recognize, of course, that many countries are currently struggling with life and death issues that make writing mysteries frivolous and irrelevant. Trust me: I’m not superficial enough to be questioning why there aren’t mysteries coming out of, say, Somalia or Haiti.  But I am curious as we don’t see mysteries about the Mexican drug trade, corrupt Russian oligarchs, Eastern European spies, or similar topics written by authors in those countries.

In the mystery world, Norway boasts two superstars: Karin Fossum and Jo Nesbø. Phantom, Nesbø’s latest Harry Hole mystery, shows just why he makes the list. Hole, the Oslo police officer last seen in The Leopard, thought he’d never come back to Oslo from Hong Kong. But that plan changed in an instant when Oleg, the 19-year-old son of Harry’s former lover, was arrested for the murder of Gusto Hanssen. Harry had helped to raise Oleg and, although he’s lost touch with the boy, knows without a doubt that he was not capable of murder. The police aren’t inclined to investigate what they believe is the open-and-shut case of one drug dealer killing another.

As Harry retraces Oleg’s steps, he learns of the terrible toll that a new drug, called “violin,” has taken on the seedy side of Oslo. Once they try it, users will stop at nothing to get more. Adding to Harry’s anguish over Oleg’s arrest is the older man’s guilt at having deserted Oleg and his mother.

Phantom is a multi-layered, well-plotted mystery filled with compelling characters and a setting bleak from both weather and hopelessness.

Mad River, by John Sandford (Putnam; $27.95)

The calls to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension came in fast and furiously. Agnes O’Leary—shot dead during a robbery. Emmet Williams, gunned down as he got in his car. An older couple, the Welshes, shot to death in the kitchen of their home. Murders never happen in Shinder, located in remote western Minnesota, so odds were, the four were somehow connected. Lucas Davenport, head of BCA, directed investigator Virgil Flowers to get himself to Shinder and figure out what was going on.

Jimmy Sharp, Tom McCall, and Becky Welsh had themselves a goal: steal the diamonds that former Shinder High School homecoming court member Marsha O’Leary wore to her 35^th high school reunion. Becky saw the bling when she served Mrs. O’Leary some sheet cake. Becky, the “hottest girl to ever come from Shinder,” only wanted the stones; she and Tom were horrified when Jimmy pulled his gun and capped Marsha’s adult daughter, Agnes. When their getaway car wouldn’t start, they also shot Emmett Williams and stole his car. After that, it was easy: they went around town killing anyone they pleased: those they thought might have money, their parents—really, anyone, for any excuse.

Virgil Flowers works with the locals to try to get to the bottom of the Charles Starkweather/Caril Ann Fugate-esque crime spree. Each new victim made a bizarre sort of sense, but the initial shooting of Agnes O’Leary didn’t fit the pattern. Virgil focuses on that killing as a way of understanding the rest, while the sociopathic trio evades the cops and the bodies keep stacking up. The addition of a cop to the list puts the spree in a whole new category. It’s all Virgil can do to try to take the killers alive before the locals eliminate any chance of him learning what set them off in the first place.

John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers mysteries are just as good as his Lucas Davenport series always was. His books are immensely readable and they never disappoint. This one is terrific.

The Hiding Place, by David Bell (NAL;$15.00)

The murder was the biggest thing to ever happen in sleepy little Dove Point, Ohio. Little Justin Manning disappeared while his 7-year-old sister, Janet, was supposed to be watching him in the local park. When his body was discovered in a shallow grave, the police charged Dante Rodgers with his murder, based to a large extent on the information that Janet and her playmate, Michael Bower, provided about what they had seen on that fateful day.

Now, the 25^th anniversary of Justin’s death is looming, and a local reporter is onto the story. Too many questions remain about the killing.  The reporter speculates that Dante Rodgers, who has always maintained his innocence, was charged and convicted primarily because he was black. Janet’s father remains withdrawn and angry, and is incapable of maintaining a normal relationship with Janet or her 15-year-old daughter, Ashleigh. Even Michael Bower, who has returned to Dove Point, wants to know what Janet really saw that day in the park. But she can no longer distinguish between what she remembers and what she heard from others.  

When a man shows up at the Mannings’ house claiming to have knowledge about what actually happened to Justin, Janet hopes that he can help answer the remaining questions.  The truth, when it is finally revealed, is more horrific than she ever could have imagined.

David Bell’s The Hiding Place was disappointing. I figured the mystery out early on, by recognizing clues that Bell made far too obvious. I kept waiting for a twist or two to justify the too-early reveal, but none came. So the ending, instead of producing the desired, “Holy cow!” of a reaction, instead made me resent having taken the time to read past the point where all had already been made clear.

Trust Your Eyes, by Linwood Barclay (New American Library; $25.95)

Thomas Kilbride’s schizophrenia causes delusions in which the CIA, FBI, and President Clinton speak with him—without benefit of any communication devices—asking for his help. Convinced that a cataclysmic, world-wide computer virus is about to wipe out all electronic maps, Thomas stares for hours at a program called Whirl360 that shows street-level views of every street in every city in every country. With a savant’s ability to recall everything he has seen, Thomas has committed each map to memory against the day when he is called upon to help his country re-create what has been lost.

Thomas’s brother, Ray, arrives in Promise Falls, New York, to attend the funeral of their father, who was killed in a riding mower accident. Ray indulges Thomas with his map hobby, until one day when Thomas points out something he’s seen in an upstairs window of a New York City apartment building: a face with a plastic bag stretched tightly over it. Thomas is convinced that a crime has been committed. Ray makes a few calls but gets nowhere, particularly when he explains that his schizophrenic brother is behind the questions. Finally he travels to New York to find the building and ask a few questions.

Thus sets in motion a huge cat-and-mouse game that threatens to take down one of the biggest names in New York state politics. The stakes are serious enough that those involved will stop at nothing to keep their secrets from being exposed.

I loved this book. I thought the premise was brilliant, particularly for those of us who have spent any time looking at Google Earth or any other street-level mapping program. I’ve often wondered, when I look at programs like that, whether the people in the view knew they were being filmed, and wondered what would happen if the camera caught a crime being committed. My only complaint about the book was that Barclay includes a secondary plot regarding child abuse. It’s unnecessary and dilutes the power of his main narrative. But in a story this good, having too many plots is really a petty criticism. This was a great read.

My Once-a-Year Break from Mysteries

Mystery lovers: sorry if you've returned to this blog lately and been disappointed with the lack of new reviews. I promise they'll start again very soon.

Here's my excuse: Once a year, I try to read a non-mystery, just because I feel like I ought to.  This year's choice is Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. It's the story of Henry VIII's dumping his first wife in order to marry Anne Boleyn. I'm finding it really slow going. Mantel uses far too many pronouns, when a proper noun or two would make her story clearer. Her text is so dense that I find it hard to wade through. Often, she'll have a long paragraph about the weather or scenery, and end with a sentence that is crucial to the plot. Mystery writers know how to showcase those important sentences so that we rarely miss them.

I feel very self-righteous for reading it, and that's worth a lot!  But it's slow going, and is keeping me from blogging. I generally knock off a mystery in about three days, while Mantel's historical novel has taken me over two weeks. What this annual exercise always shows me is how much I love mysteries. I never tire of them.

But I'm almost done, and then it's back to the good stuff! Thanks for sticking with me. I'll be back soon.

The Exceptions, by David Cristofano (Grand Central Publishing; $24.99)

The Bovaro family’s mantra is no loose ends. One of the most powerful mob families in New York, they know that much of their influence comes from their enemies knowing that the family will ultimately get their revenge, no matter how long it takes.

When the McCartney family of Montclair, New Jersey, decided to go out for an early breakfast, they had no idea that it would change their life. Mom, Dad, and pretty little Melody entered Vincent’s restaurant in New York’s Little Italy just in time to see Tony Bovaro slit the throat of Jimmy “the Rat” Fratello. The McCartneys drove off, but not before 10-year-old John Bovaro caught sight of their license plate number. John was captivated by the little girl, so when the cops came, he asked them if they knew whether the girl was alright. That tipped the cops that there were witnesses; they found the McCartneys and put them in the witness protection program. Mom and Dad testified at the trial, the case was thrown out, and killing the McCartneys—all three of them—became the Bovaro family mission.

Fast forward some 20 years. John Bovaro—now Jonathan—has gone almost respectable. He owns a trendy New York restaurant, although his family uses the place to launder money. Assigned by his family the task of killing Melody McCartney, he has a Justice Department employee with a gambling addiction on his payroll, providing Melody’s current identity and address in exchange for debts being covered. Jonathan hunts Melody down wherever she is, telling his family he’s planning to do the hit, while telling himself that he’s protecting her.

And here’s where the book got creepy.  Under the guise of some weird unrequited love for Melody, Jonathan became her stalker. He decided he would become “Man in Produce Section and Stranger on Cell Phone and Jogger in Park” in order to keep an eye on her. He finally makes contact and lets her know how long he’s been watching her—decades, at this point. It wasn’t the tragic Mob version of the Capulets and Montagues that I think Christofano wanted to portray. Instead, this was just sick. Had I been Melody, I would have run as fast as I could the other way, although admittedly, her options were limited. But I really, really didn’t like Jonathan. His behavior gave me the jim-jams even when he was trying to seem normal and heartbroken.

The Exceptions just didn’t do it for me.

A Wanted Man, by Lee Child (Delacorte Press; $28.00)

Jack Reacher is an unlikely hero. As he describes himself, he’s a “No-account, unemployed and homeless veteran. . . with no stable relationships.” He hitchhikes across the country and, even in this day and age, still manages to get rides. But the rides always end badly, with Reacher having to shoot bad guys and foil crime in whatever locale he finds himself.

In A Wanted Man, Reacher is still—as in Child’s most recent books—trying to get himself to Virginia. He’s fallen for a woman he’s spoken to on the phone, and wants to meet her in person to see if there’s the chance of romance. But, as always, his plans are detoured when his ride doesn’t quite work out. This time, he’s picked up by two guys and a woman, and the woman tries to signal to Reacher that something is amiss. The reader knows that earlier that evening, three guys had walked into a bunker but only two walked out. But where the woman came from, who the dead guy was, and why the FBI, CIA, and State Department are all involved in what looks to be a local crime is the crux of the story.

I really like Reacher, though I’ve read so many of Child’s mysteries that his character’s idiosyncrasies make me roll my eyes. For one thing, Reacher only owns the clothes on his back, since he has no luggage. So when they get dirty (three days on a shirt) he merely buys more. He budgets between $20-$25 a day, which he feels is “cheaper than living somewhere, and easier than washing and ironing and folding and packing.  That was for damn sure.” But where does he get his money? And if he carries it with him (he doesn’t seem like a credit card kind of a guy), how does he not get rolled by the occasional bad guy who picks him up?

Oh—I forgot. He’s Jack Reacher. Who would dare?

He also has an internal clock that should be in a museum. My mother has pointed out that he always knows what time it is, despite not wearing a wristwatch. In this book, he sets “the clock in his head for two hours” to force himself to wake up though he hasn’t slept for at least 24 hours.

But the little tic that I like the most is Reacher’s emphatic, “That was for damn sure” whenever he mentally agrees with himself.  (I included one of these lines in the quote in the third paragraph.) I once heard Lee Child speak at a book festival, and someone pointed out that he writes that line in his books frequently. The fan asked Child if he uses it so often because he uses it himself. As I recall (I wasn’t taking notes, and this was several years ago), Child said that it was more of a writer’s device to transition between scenes or action. I had never noticed the line prior to hearing the question, but once it was pointed out, I notice it whenever I read one of his books.  

Lee Child’s Jack Reacher stories are improbable, similar, and totally enjoyable. That’s for damn sure. 

Gone, by Randy Wayne White (Putnam; $25.95)

 I’ve always enjoyed Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford mysteries. I’m a sucker for mysteries set in Florida, and his were among the best. So I was excited to learn that he had started a new series, focusing this time on a young fishing guide/sleuth named Hannah Smith.

The series debut, Gone, made me laugh out loud—and it wasn’t meant to be funny.  Not because of flaws in any of the important elements. Smith was clever, brave and likeable. The plot was fine: a fabulously wealthy young woman has disappeared, perhaps in the company of a sadistic boyfriend, and Hannah is asked to find her and bring her home.  And the setting is great: it’s hard to go wrong when you set a mystery in the the steamy, fetid atmosphere of Florida.  

No, what’s wrong with Gone is that it was written from a woman’s perspective by a man obsessed with breasts.   

Seriously. 

The first time I noticed it was when Hannah, wanting to perk herself up, dresses up and checks herself out in the mirror. She delights in looking at herself as she "spills out of her favorite 34D bra.” The sight gets makes her get “teary-eyed and smile, because she, in her own mind, is about as shapely as an ironing board balancing two peas.” 

I have yet to meet the woman who gets teary-eyed at the sight of herself “spilling out” of a bra. The sight might well bring a man to tears—as a woman, I wouldn’t presume to know. But to a woman? “Spilling out” just means it’s time to buy a bigger bra.

Several pages later, a gay friend says to her, “’I’ve never opened a Playboy magazine in my life, but, I swear, Hannah, even I love your tits.’”

A bit later, she interviews an older woman who had been victimized by the guy who may be responsible for the young woman’s disappearance. She sees “what might have been a Chantelle bra, raspberry lace and glitter, draped over a velvet divan.”  The older woman, who starts out being hostile, eventually warms to Hannah, pressing a grocery bag on the younger woman as a gift; inside is the very same bra. “The fact that Mrs. Whitney and I wore the same bra size—34D—had helped, too. It created a sisterly feeling that is often the reward when women share private matters they wouldn’t entrust to a man.”

Oh, where to start with this one. First, older women don’t usually leave their bras out where guests can see them. Second, they never—you can take this one to the bank—present a used, unwashed bra to another woman as a gift. Third, the “fact” that the witness and Hannah wore the same bra size would be unknown to either woman, as women—and this may come as a surprise to men reading this--don’t exchange that information upon meeting each other.  And fourth, sharing the same bra size would not create a “sisterly feeling.”  I’m still laughing about this one. The only scenario in which I could imagine women bonding over sharing the same bra size is if they met in a plastic surgeon’s waiting room prior to augmentation.

(Much, much later, Hannah finds herself in danger and distracts the bad guy by unbuttoning her third button, “enough for him to see me spilling out of Mrs. Whitney’s 34 D Chantelle bra.” I’m hoping she at least laundered Mrs Whitney’s bra before wearing it. But again—spilling out? Clearly, they don’t wear the same bra size: 34 D may have fit Mrs. Whitney, but Hannah needs to go in for a fitting.) 

But wait: there’s more! A lawyer changes into a satin blouse which reveals “her bouncing breasts when she walked.” Another character has “grapefruit-sized implants.” The list goes on and on.

Randy Wayne White needs to forsake this experiment and go back to writing from a guy’s point of view. He can still include nonsense like this, if he thinks it would help move his plot along. For instance, he could describe Doc Ford getting “teary-eyed” as he looks at himself in a mirror, “spilling out” of an athletic supporter that’s too small. Or interviewing a witness, where he sees dirty boxers thrown over the back of a couch—only to find that the witness made him a gift of that same pair of dirty boxers. All the while sharing that brotherly bond that comes when two guys wear the same size underwear. 

Unbelievable.

Randy Wayne White: living up to his first name.

This Bright River, by Patrick Somerville (Reagan Arthur; Little, Brown; $24.99)

Patrick Somerville sure can write. So well, in fact, that I didn’t even mind—or notice, for that matter—that nothing much happened in the 450-page This Bright River until the last 100 pages. Actually, just as I was starting to wonder how I would review the book in a mystery and thriller blog, a bad guy finally appeared.

Upon his release from prison, Ben Hanson moves to his late uncle’s house in St. Helens, Wisconsin. There he tries to woo Lauren Sheehan, a woman he’d known in high school.  Ben has a past, obviously, and Lauren does as well. Ben’s history is more obvious; drug problems led to the arson that landed him in jail. But Lauren has seen her share of violence, as well, and it makes wooing her a difficult task indeed.

 Living in his old hometown makes Ben curious about his family. Years earlier, Ben’s cousin froze to death in the wilds of Wisconsin.  The family has always been troubled about the circumstances of that death. In remembering conversations, searching through files, and visiting the places of his youth, Ben finally uncovers secrets that his family would have preferred he not know.  

  I hate when people tell me their dreams, and I particularly hate when authors include dreams in novels.  Other people’s dreams are boring, and when they go on for pages, they are excruciating.  This book includes quite a few, and they are the one flaw in an otherwise spellbinding story.  I skipped them in protest, and found that I could still follow the action with no trouble. Somerville’s descriptions are lyrical, and his characters were compelling.  This is a beautifully written story.

Creole Belle, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster; $27.99)

It’s been a long time since I read one of James Lee Burke’s novels starring Iberia Sheriff’s Deputy Dave Robicheaux.  Creole Belle reminded me why I had quit. His setting is beautiful, his characters memorable, and his writing elegant. But his plots, to put it quite bluntly, are a mess.  I have always felt that if he could limit himself to fewer story lines, his books would be so much stronger. This latest is no different: he’s got a contract killer, a long lost daughter, a Nazi war criminal, evil oil company execs, extortionists trying to collect on an old debt, an immoral televangelist, a sadistic artist, a cruel albino (who someone tries to stuff into a tanning bed), a Creole singer who may or may not be just a morphine dream, Vietnam memories, a nanny-cam used for nefarious purposes—the list goes on and on.

No one sees Creole singer Tee Jolie Melton when she visits Dave Robicheaux, in the hospital where he’s recovering from being shot. In fact, no one even believes that she was there at all.  But now she’s missing, along with her younger sister.  Clete Purcel, stalwart sidekick that he is, agrees to help Dave look into her disappearance. Meanwhile—and this is where it all started to get confusing —some mopes visit Clete and tell him he still owes money on a debt he paid off years before. The marker was found in an old safe. Then someone shoots the mopes, and the shooter might be the Clete’s long-lost daughter. The mopes are somehow connected to a sadistic artist, the son (and perhaps grandson) of a Holocaust victim who uses a hateful word to describe Jews.  As the plot meanders down each new twist, it becomes harder and harder to remember what the book is actually about.

Underneath the fictional plot and myriad side plots is a true crime novel: the rape and pillage of the state of Louisiana by oil companies who don’t care about the environment, the people, or the way of life, but who have the support of the people who pay the stiffest price.  “Let’s face it,” Burke writes. “It’s hard to sell the virtues of poverty to people who have nothing to eat. In Louisiana, which has the highest rate of illiteracy in the union . . .few people worry about the downside of casinos, drive-through daiquiri windows, tobacco depots, and environmental degradation washing away the southern rim of the state. . .working class people display bumper stickers that read GLOBAL WARMING IS BULLSHIT.

The characters are familiar and charming as ever, although Dave Robicheaux’s praise of his lawyer/novelist daughter, Alafair, comes on a little strong, particularly for anyone who knows that Alafair Burke, Burke’s real-life daughter, is a lawyer/novelist. As always, Clete is my favorite character.  In this latest book, the lonely Clete falls in lust—twice.  This is an amazing accomplishment for a man who, when one of the women shows up at his house, describes himself by saying, “I’m an awkward guy. I have a way of messing up things. I’ve got a bad track record with relationships . . . I’m over the hill. I break the springs in bathroom scales. My doc says there’s enough cholesterol in my system to clog a storm drain.  .  .I’ve got a sheet longer than most perps’. I capped a federal informant. There are some government guys who’ve got it in for me because I fought on the leftist side in El Salvador.’” (Why do I hear Joe E. Brown saying, “Well, nobody’s perfect!”?!)

When the smoke has cleared and the body count totaled, what’s left is Burke’s tribute to a way of life that no longer exists, one that was leveled by Katrina and poisoned by the BP spill.

           

Broken Harbor, by Tana French (Viking; $27.95)

Patrick and Jenny Spain were the perfect couple. High school sweethearts, they had eyes only for each other. They married, had two perfect kids, and decided it was time to jump on the real estate band wagon. They paid too much for a house being built in Brianstown, a housing development on the Irish Sea. It was far from family and friends, but they figured they could turn it around in a few years.

Then came the recession. Pat lost his job, the builder took off, Brianstown became a ghost town. And then things went from terrible to devastating.

When Jenny’s sister found the bodies, the super assigned the case to Detective Mike Kennedy and rookie Richie Curran. Brianstown holds special meaning for Mike Kennedy. When he was young, his family used to vacation there, back when it was called Broken Harbor. But the Kennedys never returned after the summer his mother died.

Kennedy and Curran are puzzled by the Spain’s house. Despite the two kids, it is pristine, with nothing out of place. But someone—or something—has knocked holes in the walls, there are baby monitors everywhere, and there is a huge, lethal trap in the attic capable of ensnaring a bear.

In no time, the detectives catch a guy who quickly admits to killing Pat and the two kids, and critically wounding Jenny. But there’s something not quite right about his confession. The detectives continue investigating, trying to tie up the loose ends. What they learn is the sad story of a family’s dreams ripped apart by forces they never saw coming.

Tana French’s Broken Harbor is a tense, well-plotted police procedural.  The characters are memorable--each is struggling with loneliness, disappointment, and all the other emotions that come with realizing that life hasn’t worked out according to plan. This is a great summer read.

Lake Country, by Sean Doolittle (Bantam Books; $15.00)

Boy, I like Sean Doolittle. This guy is terrific. His latest, Lake Country, resulted in two back-to-back nearly sleepless nights for me. Reading the book before bed got me so tense that although I forced myself to turn out the light, I was too wound up to sleep.

So here’s the plot: a young woman is hit head-on by a wealthy architect who fell asleep at the wheel. The woman’s brother is serving in Iraq; two Marines, Darryl Potter and Mike Barlowe, accompany him to headquarters where he gets the news that his sister has died. As the brother prepares to leave for the funeral, his truck is hit by an IED and he’s killed.  

Potter and Barlowe eventually leave the military, but their adjustment to civilian life is rocky at best. Potter has had the most trouble: instigating bar fights, drinking himself unconscious, and working sporadically as a collector for a bookie. As they sit in their favorite bar watching a TV. news reporter talk about the fifth anniversary of the death of their buddy’s sister, Potter rails against the injustice of the architect’s light sentence. Secretly, he hatches a plan to even the score.

The next day, some goons show up at Potter and Barlowe’s apartment, looking for Potter and the $11,000 he stole from a restaurant. Barlowe goes back the bar where they’d been the night before and learns that the bartender innocently gave Potter permission to use his lake house. When the same TV reporter from the night before reports that the architect’s 20-year-old daughter is missing, Barlowe realizes his friend is spiraling out of control. He sets out to rescue the girl by finding Potter, with the the goons, cops, and TV reporter hot on his trail. 

 

Doolittle draws memorable, complex characters, all of whom have been beaten down by life.  Even better than his characters, however, is his superb plotting. My description of the plot doesn’t do it justice—it flows with a terrific combination of unexpected twists and bleak inevitability.  I can’t say enough about this author: I like every book of his that’s I’ve read. Lake Country is one of best books I’ve read in long, long time. 

Jack 1939, by Francine Mathews (Riverhead Books; $26.95)

I will be the first to admit that I frequently judge a book by its cover. Sure, I’ll read something with a plain cover, as long as it’s by an author I already like. But I’m a bit of a sucker for great creative cover art. So it was no surprise that I was drawn in by the cover of Francine Mathew’s Jack 1939.  The cover photograph, of a very young JFK in a fedora, with the Eiffel Tower over his right shoulder, was one of the best covers I’ve seen in a long while.

The plot of the book is simple: Hitler wants to buy the 1940 US presidential election in order to put an isolationist in the White House.  FDR needs to know who is running Hitler’s financial network and how the money—some $150 million so far—is

being brought in. He asks Harvard student Jack Kennedy, about to travel to Europe to research his senior thesis, to serve as his eyes and ears in Europe. JFK’s cover is enhanced due to the widely-known enmity between FDR and Joe Kennedy, the US ambassador to England and an avowed isolationist himself.

The book has all the trappings of a great spy thriller: cruel Nazis, disappearing ink, beautiful women, rich boys in formal wear, and Europe on the brink of war. The characters are, of course, familiar, since most are historical figures. Those that aren’t however, are also familiar, due to Mathews’ reliance on clichés. (Femme fatale who just might be a German spy; ugly German assassin.)  

Mathews’ depiction of JFK, however, is novel. Here he is nearly incapacitated by a debilitating illness that renders him gaunt and weak.  And he’s not the rake we have come to know; instead, he loses his heart easily and frequently. He seems to have no political aspirations of his own, while despising his father’s amoral ambition. Most fun of all, we see the famous Kennedy family members in a very human light, such as Rose as a cold social climber and Teddy as an annoying younger brother.

In the author’s notes, Mathews discusses her research and says that she put her JFK character in various countries and meeting with actual figures (such as George Kennan) at the same time that the real JFK visited those places and people. I can’t begin to know how much of the story is real and how much is fiction. In the end, it doesn’t really matter: the book is an exciting thriller in any case.

In her notes, Mathews said that she was drawn to write the story when she saw a photo of a 22-year-old JFK juggling while at Harvard. If a photo is enough to persuade her to write a whole novel this fun, I think I was justified for reading it based solely on the cover!   

Niceville, by Carsten Stroud (Knopf; $26.95)

Something is definitely not nice in Niceville. Ten-year-old Rainey Teague disappeared while walking home from school one day. It’s not the first missing persons case the town has known. In fact, the town has a stranger-abduction rate more than five times that of the rest of the country. Two per year since 1928, to be exact.

Rainey’s disappearance is only one of many, many ugly occurrences in the pretty little town. The local bank gets robbed, and a sniper picks off each of the cops chasing the escape car.  Along with the bank’s $2.5 million, the robbers swiped a top-secret piece of equipment previously stolen from a local Raytheon subsidiary. A prominent citizen films his adolescent daughters in the shower.   And mirrors and windows reflect something evil.

The sleepy southern town was built against Tallulah’s Wall, a forbidding-looking cliff that serves as the northern border. Locals think that the town’s problems might stem from Crater Sink, an ominous, bottomless sinkhole at the top of the wall. Readers realize early on—far, far earlier than the characters do, that the true source of the problem is time travel gone seriously awry.

Carsten Stroud is an amazing talent.  His writing is elegant, his setting fabulously ominous, and his characters refreshingly unique.  He describes one couple as being “as frigidly unappealing as banana-flavored Popsicles.”  About Tin Town, Niceville’s slum, Stroud said, “the main industry ruling the place was a lethal combination of grinding hard times, blood-simple gunsels, pointless death, and blue ruin.” (I’m not sure what “blue ruin” is, but I liked the phrase.) Despite his skill—or rather, because of it—I ultimately found Niceville infuriating.  The problem? The plot is a hot mess. There are too many story lines, and Stroud does not bother to weave them together.  Characters are thrown in the mix in a way that implies they’ll somehow impact the plot; too often, they have no effect at all. When one character takes action to destroy another, Stroud writes, “the fact that he was, in effect, about to commit a kind of suicide was not clear to him at the time.”  Set-ups of that sort deserve resolution equal to the drama of the language; the fact that the character was alive and well at the end of the book left me scratching my head.  The supernatural aspect of the plot is not compelling and the climax of that story line incomprehensible. Stroud is careless and sloppy.  In the mystery world, those are capital crimes.

I couldn’t put this book down, but when it was done, I wanted to stomp it into dust.  It’s a great read with an outstandingly unsatisfying ending.

Criminal, by Karin Slaughter (Delacorte Press; $27.00)

1975:  What happened to Kitty, Lucy and Mary?  The three young women have disappeared, and Jane Delray, a fellow hooker, wants the police to find out. Soon Jane herself is dead, allegedly a suicide. No one seems to care about any of the missing girls. Not only were they in the life, they were also drug addicts, and their families had given them up long before.

But Atlanta Police Department detectives Amanda Wagner and her partner, Evelyn Mitchell, care. In the face of what today seems like unfathomable prejudice and outright hatred from their fellow cops, the two women doggedly pursue the case.  Despite being ordered to stop by those in a position to scuttle their careers, they don't give up until they've proved they're ever bit as competent as their male counterparts.

Present day:  Amanda Wagner is now a supervisor at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. A 19-year-old student at Georgia Tech has gone missing. GBI agent Will Trent recognizes that the missing girl is a dead ringer for his mother, murdered by his father around the time of Will’s birth.  When Will learns that his father is out on parole, he knows that the monster has picked up where he left off. But this time, it’s personal, and Will—and Amanda—will do anything they can to save other girls.

Karin Slaughter always writes good thrillers, and this one is no exception.  The unexpected twists and turns far outweigh the instances where the reader beats the investigators in figuring things out. 

Ransom River, by Meg Gardiner (Dutton; $25.95)

After the horrific accident that nearly cost her her life, Rory Mackenzie hoped to leave Ransom River, California, forever. But then the non-profit she worked for lost its funding and she had to return to the states, where a summons for jury duty awaited her.

The trial should have been somewhat routine: two cops, having an affair, were fooling around at one of their houses when they were surprised by an intruder. The female cop fired her weapon, killing the 16-year-old burglar. The dead kid turned out to be the son of Ransom River’s most notorious criminals.

But the trial turns anything but routine when two masked gunman manage to bypass the courthouse security system, burst into the courtroom, and take four hostages. The choice of hostage appears to be random—until they specifically choose Rory.  When the incident comes to a bloody end, the cops don’t believe Rory when she professes not to understand why the gunmen wanted her. If she is to clear her name, Rory must learn what the gunmen thought she knew.

She’s aided in her search by an old friend: Seth Colder, former cop, former fiancé. Seth was the reason Rory left Ransom River, and he’s the last person she wants to go to for help. Seth knows the town’s secrets, and he suspects there is corruption among the police. But he doesn't know the Mackenzie family's secrets, and how intricately those secrets are connected to an unsolved robbery committed years earlier.

Best known for her Jo Beckett and Evan Delaney mystery series, Meg Gardiner’s Ransom River shows she can handle a stand-alone mystery as well. This was a compelling summer read.

I'm Back!

Sorry to all of you mystery fans who have looked in vain for new reviews. Life—and my day job—got the better of me, and it’s been hard for me to get back into reviewing. (Truth be told, it’s been nice just to enjoy reading mysteries for a while, without having to critique what I was reading!)

But I’ll try to blog more regularly again, now that I’ve enjoyed a bit of a hiatus. Thanks for sticking with me, and watch this space for more reviews.