The Search, by Nora Roberts (Putnam; $26.95) and Whiplash, by Catherine Coulter (Putnam; $26.95)

I decided to review these two romantic mysteries together, since if you like one you'll like both. (And conversely, if you think one is too sappy, stay away from the other.)

Let's start with Nora Roberts, since she is, of course, the genre queen. Fiona Bristow has made a wonderful life for herself on Orcas Island, in the Pacific Northwest. She trains dogs for a living and, with her own three labs, volunteers on search-and-rescue missions. But life wasn't always so idyllic. Several years back, she was attacked by a serial killer who already had a long track record of killing his victims. Fiona managed to escape, and the killer was captured. Although he's behind bars, the killings have resumed. Someone, it seems, has picked up where the killer left off. Soon it becomes clear that Fiona is the unfinished business, and the new killer wants to finish what his mentor started.

Meanwhile, a handsome stranger has moved to the island. Brooding artist Simon Doyle has an incorrigible puppy that needs training fast. Imagine the reader's surprise when Simon and Fiona fall in love! Who would have ever guessed? (Well, I did, actually. But I've been doing this kind of work for a while!)

There's a reason why Nora Roberts is so wildly popular--she can somehow make a hackneyed theme seem fresh. (Boy meets girl, then conflict drives them apart, then they live happily ever after.) Pick up any of her books and you won't be disappointed; this one is particularly down-to-earth and exciting.

Catherine Coulter's latest wasn't quite as satisfying. Ballet teacher/sleuth Erin Pulasky's latest assignment is to obtain evidence that a drug company has deliberately caused a shortage of their cheaper medicine in order to force cancer patients to take a more expensive (i.e. lucrative) drug. She breaks in to steal documents and makes a clean getaway. In an amazing coincidence, a company official is murdered at roughly the same time and location. The police figure that whoever broke in must have either murdered the guy or seen who did it.

And here's where it gets sort of silly. One of Erin's ballet students has a father who is an FBI agent. He asks Erin, whom he hardly knows, to babysit his daughter for several days while he's out working the case of the murdered drug exec. He then compounds the problem by inviting the other agents on the case over to her house, where they proceed to discuss the case in front of her. One of the agents even invites her along when she's interviewing a witness. Although the mystery itself was sound, the absurdity of the agents' behavior ruined the book for me.

End-of-Summer Wrap-Up

Sorry for all you mystery fans who have wondered where I've been. No, I've not been kidnapped: I was actually on vacation for a while. And yes, even on vacation, I still read mysteries! Because what's the alternative? Non-fiction? Like that's gonna happen!

In my next several blogs, I'll review the books I've read while I was gone. In the meantime, my stack of books to read has grown higher, and some of the books are getting a little ripe. So I'm going to clear out the stack with these short blurbs about the books that look the most interesting.

Crossfire, by Dick Francis and Felix Francis (Putnam; $26.95):  Former jockey Dick Francis, who died earlier this year at the age of 89, left behind a legacy of wonderful mysteries set in the world of horse racing. His latest, written with his son, focuses on a soldier injured in Afghanistan. When Captain Tom Forsyth returns to England to help out on his mother's horse farm, he soon learns that his mother is being blackmailed. While learning to walk with a prosthesis, he must figure out which of his abrasive mother's many enemies are behind the threats before the focus switches to him.

Cure, by Robin Cook (Putnam; $26.95): NYC medical examiner Laurie Montgomery's first case after taking leave to deal with her son's serious illness puts her between organized crime and two nascent biotech firms.

Ice Cold, by Tess Gerritsen (Ballantine Books; $26): Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli learns that medical examiner Maura Isles and some friends have met a terrible fate when their SUV became stranded on a remote Wyoming mountain near the freaky town of Kingdom Come. Spoiler alert: since Rizzoli & Isles is now a series on TNT, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Isles may actually be okay.

Procession of the Dead, by Darren Shan (Grand Central Publishing; $19.99): YA novelist Shan, whose books fly off the shelves at the middle school library where I work, branched out into adult fiction with this strange little book. Capac Raimi can't remember anything from the time before he came to the City, a brutal, lawless place run by the ruthless Cardinal. As the Cardinal's protege, Capac becomes more and more bloodthirsty himself, while trying to understand why friends disappear as if they've never existed. I'm not one for this alternative universe, fantasy stuff, but as such books go, it was a decent summer read, but definitely not for kids.

Live to Tell, by Lisa Gardner (Bantam; $26): Three women facing dark secrets from their past must face threats that hit close to home.

Frankenstein: Lost Souls, by Dean Koontz (Bantam; $27):  Victor Leben, the creature formerly known as Frankenstein, is on a quest to populate a brave new world of superhumans using stem cells, silicon circuitry, and nanotechnology.

The Cobra, by Frederick Forsyth (Putnam; $26.95): Paul Devereaux, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism division teams up with Army hero Cal Dexter to beat the cocaine industry using any means possible.

In Harm's Way, by Ridley Pearson (Putnam; $25.95):  Something's up in Sun Valley, Idaho, and sheriff Walt Fleming's not at all sure what's going on. A violent former football player has been seen in the area. A woman he's fond of might have killed a guy, or maybe the killer was a damaged young woman whom everyone in the community wants to protect. Some rich playboys are causing trouble, and a marauding bear is loose, as well. Fleming's chances of untangling the mess become easier when Seattle homicide detective Lou Boldt comes to town to help.

Six Graves to Munich, by Mario Puzo, writing as Mario Cleri (New American Library; $14):  As a captured intelligence officer in World War II, Michael Rogan and his family were subjected to indescribable horror. Now he wants to find and punish those responsible. Puzo wrote this book in 1967, two years before The Godfather, but the book quickly went out of print. According to the press packet, the book was "found by Puzo's longtime Polish publisher, Albatros, and is coming back into print." One wonders why it took so long for the publisher to "find" the book and capitalize upon Puzo's success. It must have been really, really lost.

The Other Side of the Door, by Nicci French (Minotaur Books; $25.99): When a friend is murdered, a music teacher who had hoped to spend the summer making music with friends finds a little more drama than she'd expected.

Star Island, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf; $26.95)

I think I must have the summertime blues.  I just haven't found much to love about the season's new books. Case in point is Carl Hiaasen's latest.  Normally, I find Hiaasen to be laugh-out-loud fun. This time, I just found his characters to be tiresome.

The problem might be his subject matter. Is there anything more boring than a no-talent pop-culture figure's journey of self-destruction? The train wreck here is 22-year-old Cherry Pye (nee Cheryl Bunterman), who is trying hard to rekindle the success she found at age 15 with her breakout album "Touch Me Like You Mean It" on Jailbait Records. Unfortunately, Cherry (who insists that she now wants to be called Cherish) has spiraled into a sordid frenzy for alcohol and any drug she can lay her hands on. This behavior, naturally, would drive away the tweens who currently love her, so her peeps have hired a look-alike actress, Ann Delusia, to serve as her double whenever the real Cherry Pye is too messed up to be seen in public.

When a desperate paparazzo named Bang Abbott kidnaps Ann--thinking it's Cherry--the pop star's parasitic people face a dilemma. After all, it wasn't even Cherry who was kidnapped. Bang ups the ante by threatening to release some compromising pictures of Ann posing as Cherry, and it's fun to watch everyone try to turn the situation to their own avaricious advantage.

The mayhem is increased by the re-introduction of some favorite characters from previous books. Skink, the former governor of Florida who makes routine appearances in Hiaasen's books, meets Ann and falls into paternal love with her, going so far as to clean up his act and put on a Hermes shirt and a suit by Ermenegilo Zegna. Chemo, the walking dermatology-disaster from Skin Tight who, after his arm was bitten off by a barracuda, had it replaced by a weed whacker, serves as Cherry's bodyguard.  I suspect the overly-botoxed publicists who underwent surgery to become identical twins may have made an appearance in a previous book as well.

As with many of Hiaasen's books, the normal, honorable character--in this case, Ann--is truly heroic, able to double-cross the greedy low-lifes that add the color. But the story has, as its root, Cherry Pye's destruction from her addiction to pills and alcohol. Call me a prude, but I find the real-life behavior of Brittany, Lindsay and Paris to be pathetic and tragic, rather than funny.  Hiaasen's books usually focus on retribution descending on those who are destroying the Everglades. That is a subject I can care about a lot more than I care about flash-in-the-pan rock stars killing themselves with drugs while their dysfunctional parents and hangers-on look the other way. 

Dead Line, by Stella Rimington (Knopf; $25.95)

Stella Rimington's latest shows that she's no flash in the pan. The former head of Britain's MI5 turned to writing when she retired. Her suspenseful plots are made all the more realistic by her insider's knowledge of spycraft.

With her boss out of commission nursing his dying wife, MI5 agent Liz Carlyle is charged with the daunting task of thwarting a plot by Syrian malcontents intent on disrupting a peace conference at a Scottish golf resort. The stakes are all the higher when it is announced that both the British prime minister and the US president will attend. As if she didn't already have her hands full, a former colleague asks Liz to investigate a charming guy who is paying unusual attention to the colleague's naive and wealthy mother-in-law.  This nail-biter has it all: spy vs. spy, gold-diggers preying on lonely women, and foreign agents snaring their quarry in an old fashioned "honey trap." This is Rimington's fourth spy thriller, and it's a doozy--as good, if not better, than her previous three.

In the Name of Honor, by Richard North Patterson (Henry Holt; $26)

It's about time! After several misfires, Richard North Patterson has written a book that equals or betters anything he's written before. In the Name of Honor has it all: fascinating, unpredictable characters; gripping courtroom drama; and a crackerjack twist that adds complexity and moral conflict to what was already a multi-layered plot.

Here's the back story. Captain Paul Terry of the Army's JAG Corps is two months from starting a lucrative new job with a civilian law firm when he's assigned to be defense counsel on a sticky case: an Army lieutenant accused of shooting his former commanding officer. The relationships are very confusing, so stay with me here: We've got two Army families, the McCarrans and the Gallaghers. The dads are best friends at West Point, but only Anthony McCarran comes back from Viet Nam alive. His wife dies young. So the Gallaghers and McCarrans are, for all intents and purposes, one family. Okay, fast forward. Anthony McCarran is now a general, in line to be named chairman of the joint chiefs. Brian McCarran has followed the family tradition of joining the Army, while his sister Meg is a civilian attorney. Their quasi-sister, Kate Gallagher, is married to Captain Joe D'Abruzzo, who is also'coincidentally (and conveniently for the plot) Brian's commanding officer in Iraq. McCarran and D'Abruzzo return to the states, and each is a changed man. D'Abruzzo has become violent and beats Kate Gallagher, even to the extent of holding a gun to her head. She asks Brian McCarran for help. He removes the gun from the D'Abruzzo house. D'Abruzzo realizes the gun is missing, goes to Brian McCarran's apartment, looks like he's going to attack, and Brian McCarran shoots him dead.   

And that's when the story begins. Captain Terry is charged with trying to get Brian McCarran off. Self-defense is a tough sell, since D'Abruzzo was shot in the back. Terry suspects that something happened in Iraq that changed both McCarran and D'Abruzzo and might have influenced the shooting. McCarran won't talk about his experiences, nor is he particularly forthcoming about other details that Terry needs to know in order to properly defend him. Working closely with Meg McCarran, Terry probes deeper and deeper until he finally realizes that the family secrets and shifting dynamics of the intertwined McCarran and Gallagher families form a force larger than he can surmount. 

The story is told primarily through dialogue and courtroom testimony, and the real-time revelations add to the suspense. In some of his previous books, Patterson has spent as much time on the soap box as on the plot. There's none of that in this book: it's just a terrific, perfectly crafted courtroom thriller.

The Lion, by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central Publishing; $27.99)

Some of Nelson DeMille's books are so great that I despair when I read the last page; others are so annoying that I rue the day I opened them. The Gold Coast is an example of the former, while its sequel, The Gate House, is a prime example of the latter.

His latest just manages to skirt the line. John Corey, his recurring character, can't resist being the juvenile cut-up he was when I first encountered him in Plum Island (perhaps my favorite of DeMille's books).  Fortunately, the plot is almost good enough that one can skip Corey's sophomoric one-liners and still enjoy the story.

Former NYPD detective Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, both work for the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force, a joint operation between the two agencies. They met when they partnered up in The Lion's Game, in which they chased Libyan terrorist Asad Khalil in his murderous trail across the country.  Khalil's plan was to kill the pilots responsible for the bombs that took out his family many years ago. He disappeared before he finished, but Corey always knew he'd be back.

It is soon evident that Corey and Mayfield are at the top of Khalil's to-do list. But they are not alone. Khalil does not let human emotions get in the way of his jihad. Soon bodies begin turning up, many of which belonged to fellow Muslims who Khalil killed after they helped him with the logistics of his latest terrorist activities. Corey and Mayfield believe that those in the Middle East who financed Khalil's personal vengeance would only do so if he agreed to also commit a 9/11 type atrocity. The question is whether the agents can find the killer before he's able to pull off a horrifying event. The NYPD and FBI want to capture and question the killer, but Corey just wants to kill him.

The plot is very tense, but suffers when a main character takes an unnecessary risk that the reader knows will be disastrous. (You know how you laugh at the stupidity of the teenage babysitter in a slasher film who goes into the basement to investigate a noise? I laughed at this character's similar stupidity. It's that unbelievable.)  Ultimately, the book made me angry. I'm a major fan of DeMille, but my loyalty is waning. He is so incredibly talented, and his early books were so enjoyable, that it's a tragic waste that he's ruined his later books by his characters' off-putting immaturity.  One only hopes that someday he'll realize how much better his books would be without the quips.

The Passage, by Justin Cronin (Ballantine Books; $27)

What must it feel like to receive a contract for $3.75 million for three books, only one of which you’ve written, plus an additional $1.75 million for the film rights? According to Publisher’s Weekly, that’s the enviable position of Justin Cronin, English professor at Rice University, whose The Passage, its publisher hopes, may be the blockbuster novel of the summer. 

I must confess that knowing that the publisher paid an advance this huge biased me against the book from the get-go. Particularly since the book is about vampires. After all, I have vowed to never read, much less review, another vampire book.

But the vampires in this book are different. No urbane, sexy, dreamy-eyed undead here: instead, these vampires—called “virals”—are killing machines, soulless beings that resulted from a science experiment gone horribly wrong.

The start of the book was confusing, but the set up is this: four terminal cancer patients on an ecotour in the jungle contract a mystery virus that cures them. The scientists studying them learned that something in the virus had reset their thymus glands. Physically, they were as fit as teenagers. Although the patients eventually died, the main scientist figures this virus promises to be the ultimate prize: a way to cure everything. But before it can be put into general use, he needs to test it on human subjects. So of course he turns to killers on death row. (Okay, is there ANY doubt that this will end badly?!) Just to mix things up, he also selects a 6-year-old abandoned girl named Amy. The subjects are kept in a Colorado lab. Where, naturally, something goes horribly, terribly wrong—and the infected subjects escape, wreaking havoc throughout the land.

Flash forward umpteen years. The original subjects infected people, who infected others, and now some 42 million virals roam the earth. (In the good news, however, apparently that "staying young" part of the virus actually worked, since they only die if they’re shot or skewered in a specific spot on their chests.) The few remaining humans live in a highly organized colony. They keep out the virals by burning floodlights all night, since the virals can’t take the light. But in a really neat twist, the batteries are starting to run out and they need to find more. The members of the colony, located in the country that used to be known as California, don’t know if there are other human colonies elsewhere, or if they can reach an outpost to find what they need without being slaughtered when the sun goes down. 

But remember Amy? She shows up at the colony and there’s something. . .not quite right about her. For instance, there’s a radio transmitter embedded in her neck that broadcasts a signal that indicates that she needs to go to Colorado. So a band of survivors decide to walk there. They pass through Las Vegas, hit the casinos (actually, they do, in a very visual scene quite obviously written for its cinematic appeal) and hunker down wherever they find a safe spot.  And some 770 pages later, the book ends with a bang.

But now, the true test. Was it worth the incredible sum that  the publisher paid? Yes and no. The core story is pretty imaginative. The post-apocalyptic society thing was very creative, chilling, and believable. However, Cronin takes far too long to set up each stage of the story—sometimes over a hundred pages or so. Far too many sections are written without a word of dialogue or action, and it just gets boring. The voyage to Colorado and back to California, in particular, drag on about as long as it would have taken to bike the route. Had the book been 350 pages long? It would have been terrific.

Storm Prey, by John Sandford (Putnam; $27.95)

Those of you who have read my column for the past 20 years know that John Sandford is one of my most favorite authors. I can't remember ever reading a bad Prey book. It's possible that some are better than others; however, because each of them is so much better than 95 percent of the mysteries being published, they all shine. His latest is no exception: in fact, one fellow Sandford fan told me she thinks it is his best yet, and I'm not about to argue with her.

Three of the most hapless crooks you've ever met rob a hospital pharmacy with the help of a cocaine-addicted doctor. The pharmacy worker goes for his cell phone, and one of the bad guys kicks him. Unfortunately, the older guy takes Coumadin, a blood thinner, and by the time he gets to the ER, he's a goner. He managed to scratch one of the thieves so the cops can use the skin (i.e.DNA) found under his fingernails to identify the guy he scratched. 

Normally, the robbery would be a case for the Minneapolis cops. But a surgeon at the hospital got a look at the bad guys as they drove out of the parking lot after pulling the job. The surgeon, Weather Karkinnen, as Sandford fans know, is married to Lucas Davenport of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which means that Lucas and his merry band take over the case. Weather is part of a team of surgeons working to separate conjoined twins. Lucas makes sure she's protected, usually by Virgil Flowers, who has lately starred in his own Sandford series.

Kicking the pharmacist was only the first of many stupid mistakes the robbers make, each of which gets them deeper in trouble. "'The whole problem was, we're stupid people,'" one of the bad guys tells Lucas. "'That's what caused all this trouble. . .We sure as shit weren't smart enough to pull off a big-time robbery. . . I'm stupid. I know that. Everybody knows that.'"

As always, Sandford blends perfect plotting with memorable characters and enough cop banter to make me crack a smile more than once. The only thing I dislike about reading one of his Prey mysteries is that they go by too fast, and I have to wait a whole year for the next. So is Storm Prey the best of the best? It may well be.

The Whole World, by Emily Winslow (Random House; $25)

So these two American college students, Polly and Liv, meet up at Cambridge. Both have family issues: Polly is just starting to recover from the ghastly incident that landed her father in jail. Liv's father, meanwhile, lost his $4 million fortune when the dot-com bubble burst and she can't quite afford the place. She takes a job sorting old photos for Professor Gretchen Paul, who is writing a biography of her novelist mother, but is going blind.

Both Polly and Liv fall for Nick, a graduate student in paleobiology. "He's so cute!" Liv shrieks. "Do you think he likes me?" Actually, he chooses Polly, but when he kisses her, she throws up. Not, apparently, from his lack of kissing skill, but because being with him reminds her of her family tragedy. Nick, the cad, nurses his hurt ego by hooking up with Liv instead, but then is obvious about wanting to have nothing more to do with her.

Then Nick disappears.

So who did it? Polly's mother, who shows up in Cambridge and starts stalking her daughter's friends, warning them of Polly's past? Liv, who flies into a jealous rage when she learns on the news that Nick had been with Polly before their tryst?

Or is the actual mystery in this book not related to Nick at all?

Winslow's writing is fine, and she manages to sustain a level of hysteria that makes The Whole World read as if it were written by a Brit, rather than by an American living in Cambridge, which she currently is. My main complaint is that the mystery started down one path and then verged onto another. The misdirection made it seem like Winslow had started one mystery and then changed her mind. The book would have been stronger had she kept to one or the other. That being said, she shows great promise as a writer.

Stieg Larsson's Trilogy

I am happy to report that I am finally done with Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who trilogy. (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest; Knopf.) I reviewed Dragon Tattoo in 2008, and said at the time, "The story has everything: a great setting, very human characters, and a plot that becomes more intriguing with every turn of the page." I actually was surprised that the book became such a runaway best seller. It was a solid mystery, but nothing about it seemed destined to move it to the stratosphere.

But I saw the movie earlier this year, and really liked it. There were details in the movie that I hadn't remembered from the first book, so I decided to read the next book to see if those details were explained. Once I was done, I figured I may as well finish the trilogy. This review focuses on the second and third books.

Dragon Tattoo was a tidy little classic "locked room" mystery (though the "room" was actually a remote Swedish island cut off by a closed bridge.) Played with Fire and Hornet's Nest are actually one overly long political thriller separated into two books. Unfortunately, the quality of Larsson's writing decreases with each book. By the time I was about half way through Hornet's Nest, I had to force myself to concentrate. The books moved too slowly, and were filled with long passages that did nothing to further the plot. I defy anyone to find sentences like this interesting: "He got into his Volvo and drove towards the city but turned off to go across Stora Essingen and Grondal into Sodermalm. He drove down Hornsgatan and across to Bellmansgatan via Brannkyrkagatan. He turned left onto Tavastgatan at the Bishop's Arms pub and parked at the corner." And it's not the Swedish street names: substitute Rockville Pike or Main Street and the passage is just as boring. 

The two books concentrate on computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, the young woman referred to in the titles of the three books. (Spoiler alert: if you haven't read either of the first two books, you should probably skip the rest of this paragraph.) Mikael Blomkvist's magazine is about to run an expose on a sex trafficking scandal involving some highly placed Swedish officials when someone murders the reporters working on the story. Lisbeth's fingerprints are on the gun, which belongs to the perverted creep of a lawyer who had been appointed as her guardian years ago. The lawyer is also dead, and all signs point to Salander as a triple murderer.  There are lots of story lines, but the main one is that the Swedish security police have been committing some heinous crimes in their attempts to protect a really sicko Russian defector. The defector turns out to have played a role in Salander's past.

With better editing, the books could have been stronger. The final third of Hornet's Nest is actually quite compelling, but it takes too long to get there.  It is also absurdly over the top when it comes to violence. Once character is shot in the brain but makes a full recovery, and another tries to commit suicide by shooting himself in the face, but does not die. One character is impervious to pain, and when his feet are nailed to a floor with a nail gun, his biggest problem is losing his balance. The violence, particularly that which is perpetrated by men against women, is pretty gratuitous.

It seems that most everyone I know is reading one of Larsson's books right now. Of all the books I've ever reviewed, I think there may have only been one that I knew, absolutely knew, would be a blockbuster, and that was Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. Certainly, if anyone had ever asked me if I thought The Girl Who series would be crazy popular I would have said it was doubtful. Too bad Larsson died before he could see how the rest of the world (everyone besides me, that is!)  is enjoying his books.

Summer Reading--Suggestions, Anyone?

So one of my fans posted his list of his planned summer reading and asked me what was on my list. (Click on the "comments" link under the posting for Strip to read his posting.)

I just finished The Girl who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson, and I'm planning to read The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I have to say that I don't totally love this series--I think it would have been stronger with better editing, and I'm not sure why the series is as popular as it is. I'm not even sure why I'm continuing to read the trilogy, except that I hate leaving things half done. I plan to blog about the series when I've finished Hornet's Nest.I actually find the drama surrounding Stieg Larsson to be as interesting as the books themselves.

The other mysteries stacked up on my "possible reads" shelf include:

The Big Bang, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $25).  Mike Hammer and the lovely Velda take on the NYC drug trade. Outlined by Spillane in the 60s and finished by Max Allan Collins, one of the most versatile and talented writers to come down the pike. 


So Cold the River, by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown; $24.99). A filmmaker visiting begins having hallucinations that pull him into the evil history of a small town.

The Taken, by Inger Ash Wolfe (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $25). Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef's latest case, a body in a tourist-area lake, focuses on the dangers of obsessive love.

The Whisperers, by John Connolly (Atria Books; $26): Private detective Charlie Parker investigates a band of former soldiers involved in a nefarious smuggling operation.

Damaged, by Alex Kava (Doubleday; $24.95): FBI profiler Maggie O'Dell's latest hunt for a killer puts her in the path of a hurricane.

Blood Oath, by Christopher Farnsworth (Putnam; $24.95). Although I have sworn not to read any vampire or zombie stories, now that they are so annoyingly, unimaginatively ubiquitous, I may relent on this one, since it's a political thriller about the president's vampire.

Strip, by Thomas Perry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $26)

 A bar owner in Chicago witnesses a hit ordered by an OC boss. The feds relocate him, rename him Joe Carver, sell his bar and house, and send him a fat check for the proceeds. Joe moves to LA and tries to meet women by flashing some of the cash.

Meanwhile, a masked gunman robs strip club magnate Manco Kapak of his clubs' profits as he was making a night deposit.  He instructs his employees to learn if anyone has been seen holding an unusual amount of money. In no time, the word comes back that Joe Carver must be the guy.  Kapak orders a hit on Carver to signal to others not to mess with him.

The actual robber, however, was Jefferson Davis Falkins, a low-life, lying loser. When the Kapak money runs out, Jeff decides to hit him again. He brags to a woman named Carrie what he's planning. Carrie begs to go along, playing to his vanity ("I always needed a really hot, stupid guy, but never knew it until tonight.") Too bad for Jeff, Carrie turns out to be a danger addict. ("Thank you so much," she says after the robbery. "This is the best night of my whole life!")  Soon Falkins realizes that instead of being the woman of his dreams, Carrie is actually insane and that he's in way over his head.

The latest robbery, of course, inflames Kapak's rage against Joe Carver. Carver tries to prove he's not the robber, but when that doesn't work, decides to extract some payback from Kapak for making his life miserable. Kapak also has his hands full dealing with a flashy drug dealer who uses the strip clubs to launder funds. And on top of everything, the cop on the case is a bigamist facing college tuition for the oldest child in each of his (unsuspecting) families.

I loved this book. The characters were engaging and the clever dialogue kept the story hopping. Perry's convoluted plot held together well, and he tied up all the loose ends. I hate comparing authors, because doing so implies a lack of originality on the part of the author being described. But I will say this: if you enjoy Elmore Leonard's books, you'll enjoy Strip, because Perry writes with a similar dry wit and subtlety. This was terrific.