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just after the 10:00 news. People from the Odyssey will be on about once a
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Recent Favorites The Cold Moon by Jeffrey Deaver
More than in previous Lincoln Rhyme books, this case is the gradual unfolding of the layers of a puzzle. Each layer is revealed in a rather nonchalant way, but sets you off on a totally new direction in trying to understand what this book is really about. The Cold Moon is Deaver at his most brilliant and devious. A few years ago, he wrote a book called The Vanished Man, which was explicitly about a magician who uses the tricks of the magician’s trade to kill his victims and evade police. I have often thought that Deaver was a wannabe magician. His books are full of the kind of tricks that leave you breathless. In this regard, The Cold Moon is perhaps his trickiest book yet. You’ll want to go back, and check certain earlier parts of the book to make sure you read it right. Deaver changes course more times than you would think possible, and ends up with a riveting, shocking finale that satisfies as well as promises another book. The Last Assassin by Barry Eisler
Crime Beat by Michael Connelly
Michael started his career as a crime writer first with the Florida Sun-Sentinal and then for the LA Times. His new book, Crime Beat: A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers, is a compilation of many of his writings while working for those papers. This is really an extraordinary collection, displaying Connelly's ability to observe and listen, and to relate the story of the crime and its impact in powerful and absorbing ways. He starts the book with an essay on his moment - the moment that shaped his life–a chance event when he was a teenager. He had a job as a night dishwasher and late one night he was driving home and he sees a man running. He watches for a while, and sees him take a bundle from under his arm and stuff it into some bushes and then disappear into a local bar. Connelly gets out of his car, finds the bundle, unwraps it and finds a gun. The he calls his father, and soon he is part of a robbery/homicide investigation and he was hooked. From there, the book is divided into three sections, one focusing on the cops he knew, one on the killers and one on some extraordinary cases. In each one, we see the story of the crime become the story of the people involved. It’s written in journalistic style– they don’t have the big chases, or satisfying endings. They are stories of real crime, real killers and real cops, stories and people that inspired some of his truly remarkable novels and characters such as Harry Bosch. If you’ve read Connelly, and find yourself waiting for the next Connelly book, I think you’ll be fascinated by this collection. If you never read him, you’re missing the best in the business. Crime Beat is a slice of America told by one of the best novelists around. In Plain Sight by CJ Box
In Plain Sight, Box’s 6th Picket book, opens with the disappearance of a local matriarch, Opal Scarlett, an influential farm owner, whose three sons are found trying to kill each other, fighting about who will get the estate. At the same time that this is playing out, a killer named JW Keeley is on his way to Twelve Step– where Joe lives–to seek revenge for what he thinks is Joe’s part in the death of Keeley’s wife and daughter. Keeley is a pure psychopath who leaves a wake of bodies in his travels to Wyoming, and the showdown that you know is going to come between him and Joe is only one of the driving forces behind this wonderful book. Unlike many heroes of the genre, Joe Picket does not suffer from alcoholism and does not have the kind of demons that drive other characters. He’s a nice guy, with a nice family, and has an ethical streak a mile wide that sometimes leaves him friendless in high places. So he’s always arguing with his boss, getting on the wrong side of the powerbrokers, and in this book, is beginning to lose faith in the job he loves. Box’s depiction of the evils of bureaucracy, even in this beautiful and lightly populated land, is fascinating, and all too believable, since so often, vast amounts of money and power are at stake. In the end, and I’m not giving too much away here, he even manages to get fired from his post. As the search for Opal progresses, as her sons disintegrate, and as JW Keeley gets closer and closer, the novel unfolds with relentless suspense. Joe and his family are people we really care about, set against real evil, in a land of stunning beauty. This book is a winner, as is this whole series. The Hard Way by Lee Child
In this book, Reacher becomes involved with the kidnapping of Kate Lane and her daughter. Kate is the beautiful trophy wife of Edward Lane, a wealthy ex-special ops officer, surrounded by his former team. This is not the first of his wives to be kidnapped. Five years ago, Lane’s first wife was kidnapped and murdered, and Lane is determined this time to fight back. Reacher, ex- military cop convinces Lane that he has the skills to find Kate through his brand of detective work, which Lane and his crew are generally unskilled at. So Reacher joins the team, but soon finds Lauren Pauling, the sister of Lanes first wife, who is convinced that Lane himself had her sister killed. This a Jack Reacher novel that not only has the trademark suspense, it also has an investigation that is as good a police procedural as they come. And the climax is about the most exciting and intense showdown as Lee Child has ever written. There are a ton of thriller writers out there now, but few absorb you in the way that Lee does. He writes with a combination of explosive action and thoughtful analysis to get you into the minds and hearts of the villains, victims and heroes. Jack Reacher is a kind of fictional beacon for a troubled world - a port in a storm. The kind of guy you want on your side, or at least not on their side. This is as entertaining as this genre gets, a perfect read for anyone who likes his or her thrillers to be a cut above the rest. End of Story by Peter Abraham
So she starts poking around the case, visiting the crime scene and interviewing the principal players, collecting evidence of his innocence, even as we, the readers, get the strong, eerie feeling that she is naively walking into a storm of trouble. And even though we know the storm is coming, it still surprising and intense when it comes. As in many of Abraham’s books, the suspense is not only what happens, but more in how it’s going to unfold - this is the real genius of Peter’s books. It’s the heart of psychological suspense. End of Story has wonderfully drawn characters and sense of place, shifting between New York City, where Peter lives, to the hills of upstate New York, and is a thriller that has compassion, humor, modern culture, and the kind of suspense that keeps you glued to the pages right to the end. The Bookwoman’s Last Fling by John Dunning
The Bookwoman’s Last Fling is the fifth book in the Janeway series, and really shows off Dunning’s skills and range of expertise. Janeway is asked to appraise a private library in Idaho, and finds a collection of first edition juvenile fiction that has value beyond words. Books dating back to the early 19th century, all in pristine condition. First printings of books like Wizard of Oz, Huckleberry Finn, and Winnie the Pooh. All perfect. Except that some were missing, and replaced with relatively cheap imitations. And the missing ones weren’t necessarily the most valuable. The books had been owned by the Candace Geiger, wife of HR Geiger, a noted horse owner and trainer. Candace had died twenty earlier, her death being ruled an accident. But now, Janeway is asked not only to track down the missing volumes, but to look into Candace’s death, to determine whether it was really an accident. Along the way, another body turns up, and Janeway himself is almost killed. His search takes him from Idaho to the racetracks of northern California, where he gets work as a horse walker in order to get close to the people who knew Candace and HR. So in this book, most of the backdrop is the horse world. It turns out that Dunning was also a horseman in the 1960's, and so there is authentic detail on life at the tracks, and what it’s really like to work on training teams. But it’s the plot and characters that drive this book. As always with Janeway books, Dunning doesn’t depend on violence or action to get you hooked. His plots are intelligent and convincing, and his characters are warm and sympathetic, and in this book, even the bad guy is a very sympathetic and sad character, even though you don’t find out who that is until the very end unless you’re very clever. This is crime fiction at its most interesting and engaging.
The Devil Of Nanking by Mo Hayder
The Devil of Nanking is a literary thriller, based heavily on the historical record. but it also much more than a thriller. It is a remarkable story, told in beautifully literary prose, primarily of two people, Grey, a young English woman obsessed with studying the tragedy at Nanking, and an old Chinese professor, a survivor of Nanking now living in Tokyo, who may hold the key to helping her finish her research, but who at first wants nothing at all to do with her. The real object of her obsession, and the real reasons the old man is so secretive and rejecting are slowly revealed throughout the book in ways that are as startling and wrenching as any book I’ve read in years. The book is told in alternating chapters of real time, and the slowly unfolding diary of the professor. Other stories within this remarkable book include that of a young American who is obsessed with Grey, and an old member of the Japanese Yakuza, organized crime, who whose continued health seems dependent on a mysterious elixir. As all these stories come crashing together, you are left with a haunting, excruciatingly powerful and suspenseful book that explores some very important questions of human nature. This is an absolutely fabulous, unforgettable book. It is due in paperback in June. The Fallen by T. Jefferson Parker
His new book, The Fallen is another wonderful story that explores obsession and loss and concentrates on one primary character, Robbie Brownlaw, a San Diego cop with a strange and compelling oddity. When people speak to him, he sees their voices, more accurately their emotions, as colored shapes: Blue for sincerity, yellow for love, red for deception. This is called synesthesia - when the senses get mixed up, and he acquired it after he was pushed from a 6th story hotel window by a guy he was trying to arrest. Before crashing to the pavement, he hits the hotel awning, and it breaks his fall just enough to allow him to survive. He’s called the miracle cop, and quickly promoted to the elite homicide squad. Meanwhile, he doesn’t tell anyone except his wife about his new power, which acts as a crude, personal lie detector. The crime in this book involves the murder of Garrett Asplundh - the lead investigator for the San Diego Ethics Authority Enforcement Unit - a unit charged with investigating corruption in high places, and a job that could have made him many enemies. As Robbie delves into the case, he learns that Garrett was recently divorced following the tragic drowning death of his young daughter, and was obsessed with her loss and with reconciling with his wife. Robbie, meanwhile, also has a major distraction--his wife has just left him, after he realized that he wasn’t seeing those yellow squares coming out of her mouth when they talked. While the synesthesia is fascinating, but does not by any means take over the story. This is a book primarily about the lives of a cop and a victim. And as the cop assembles the facts and pieces of the victim’s life, he discovers the truths about his own life as well. The story is told with a wonderful literary sensitivity - it is not a particularly violent book, but rather one which tells psychologically painful tales. In that way, it is absorbing, heartfelt, suspenseful, and memorable. Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith
The book takes place in 1892 in Montana. Two cowboy brothers, Gustav and Otto Arlingmeyer, known as Old Red and Big Red, respectively, are sitting around the campfire and Big Red, the better educated of the pair, is reading aloud the Holmes story called Red-Headed League, published in Harper's. Old Red is captivated by the methods that Holmes uses in his investigations, and he sees himself following in the great detectives footsteps. And soon he gets the chance after they land a job at the VR Ranch, where, shortly after they arrive, they find a body that was caught in a cattle stampede. Big Red assumes it's an accident, but Old Red is not so sure, and starts applying Holmesian methods of ‘detectiving’ as Big Red likes to say.. Soon, after the British owners of the farm arrive, another body turns up in the outhouse, an apparent suicide until Old Red points to the clues suggesting otherwise. And it's up to Old Red, with Big Red at his side, much like Watson, to solve the crime. Hockensmith has produced a truly charming, funny, and engaging story that is pure western, with the British thrown in, complete with great names: Old Red and Big Red are joined by Tall John, Pinky Harris, Swivel Eye Smyth, Crazymouth Nick and Anytime McCoy, great scenery, terrific language and dialogue, a wonderfully clever puzzle and a surprise solution that you just won't see coming. This is really a delightful, surprising treat that has something for everyone. Slipping Into Darkness by Peter Blauner
The book opens with an exhumation of a
murder victim 20 years after the crime. We learn that DNA from that
crime is somehow connected to DNA of a current murder, but not too
much is revealed. Then the book jumps back to 1983, and the investigation of the original crime. Julian Vega, a 17 year old kid is the prime suspect, pursued by the lead cop, Francis Loughlin, who is sure of his guilt. Julian seems like an innocent kid, infatuated by the 27 year old doctor who was the victim, and is completely overwhelmed by the investigation. He is eventually convicted despite his insisting on his innocence. In 2003, he is released after a finding that he had incompetent counsel. Hardened by prison life, he is still fighting to prove his innocence. Francis is infuriated by Julian's release, and is still trying to prove his guilt for a new trial. But shortly after Julian's release, there is another, similar murder re-igniting suspicion's about Julian's involvement with the crimes. The thing that has the cops baffled is that the DNA belonging to the first victim shows up on the second victim. As Julian struggles to reclaim his name and his life, Francis is hell bent on proving him guilty again for his new trial, and of the new murder, and struggling with his own demons about the methods he used to send Julian away in the first place. This is compassionate and brilliantly told story of dark secrets and the struggle for redemption. It has relentless suspense, with a puzzle that will baffle even the most experienced of crime fiction readers, beautiful, literary writing, and character portraits that sometimes enrage you and other times break your heart. It's a book that won't be soon forgotten. Blindfold Game by Dana Stabenow
The Blindfold Game is Dana’s first stand alone thriller, and it is one which certainly catapults her to the top of the genre. The Blindfold Game starts with a terrorist attack in a busy marketplace in Thailand in which over 100 people are killed. After blowing up a busy marketplace in Thailand, Smith and Mr Jones, initiate a plan to set of a much deadlier bomb in Alaska. The CIA gets wind of the plot, and set things in motion to intervene before the disaster. Meanwhile, the USS Coastguard cutter Sojourner Truth is patrolling the Maritime Boundary line in the northern Pacific ocean, watching mostly for fishing boats strolling into American waters. When they come under attack, the captain is killed and second in command Sara Lange is forced to take the helm. And eventually, it’s the Sara and the Sojourner Truth, who will face the terrorists in the high seas off the Alaskan coast. This is really the kind of no-holds-barred thriller that keeps you glued to your chair until the bitter end. Stabenow’s ability to evoke a high seas battle in heavy storms and bitter cold is really unparalleled. As is her depiction of courage and evil opposing one another with unspeakably high stakes.. Stabenow once again gives us fully developed characters whose motivations are fascinating and complex. She gives us terrorists who don’t fit the mold of the one dimensional, ubiquitous ‘terrorist’ that we hear about on a daily basis. And she also throws in heavy doses political intrigue and exposes the danger of the current tendency to obsess on AlKaida while ignoring potential threats from other parts of the world. In short, this is a plausible thriller, which is as entertaining as it is thrilling. Stabenow has really outdone herself.
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (nominated for the 2006 Edgar Award for Best Novel)
At the heart of The Lincoln Lawyer is Mickey Haller an LA defense attorney covering all of Los Angeles County conducting much of his business from his car. He is a very good attorney, whose yellow pages ad has the motto, "reasonable doubt for a reasonable price" and who truly believes what his father taught him: The scariest client is an innocent client. Because in Mickey's world, truth is elusive and almost irrelevant- and that's the way he likes it. That’s why he is haunted by one case which he probably mishandled, that of Jesus Menendez, who is now serving a long sentence for a crime he probably didn't commit, because Mickey, not believing he could be innocent, get him to take a plea.. When Mickey gets the case of Louis Roulet, a wealthy real estate broker, accused of assault and attempted rape, all he knows is that he has very high paying client. Haller and his investigator start digging, but they soon uncover a very dark side to Roulet's life that may in fact touch on the Menendez case. The first half of this book involves us in Mickey's defense of Roulet, while the second half reveals two simultaneous cases, Roulet’s and Mendendez, which have opposing goals and very high stakes, forcing Haller into a balancing act which, with luck, would cost him only his practice. Michael Connelly shines a new light on the legal thriller, adding his unique brand of authenticity, gut wrenching suspense, moral quagmires and highly defined, complex characters. One of the best books of the year. Fiddlers by Ed McBain
It’s been said that Ed McBain virtually invented the American police procedural with his book called Cop Hater in 1956. Crime fiction at the time mostly centered on individualist PIs from such authors Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. But with Cop Hater, McBain invented a form which has been copied but some would say never matched. The form included an ensemble cast of characters, multiple story lines, realistic investigative techniques, tough, cynical, yet sympathetic cops speaking dialogue straight off the mean streets of a big city. The series lasted 50 years, through more than 50 books. And although the cops didn’t age quite that much, they their families grew and developed and expanded. In fact, McBain’s books distinguished themselves because they read like novels about cops as much as they did mysteries or procedurals. In Fiddlers, the cops are faced with four murders taking place over a very short period of time by the same killer. The challenge to the cops is that the victims are so different - a blind violinist, elderly priest, a sales rep killed in her kitchen, and an old woman walking her dog, - all killed with the same gun. Not the typical serial murder picture. But oddly, when the reader gets to see and know the killer, he turns out not to be the monster you might expect. This is a fascinating book knowing that it’s McBains last. It forces you ask discomforting questions of yourself without offering any particular answer. The cops also have little resolution of the particular issues they are dealing with - from a rebellious teen to a lover’s quarrel, leaving us with the questions of ‘what’s going to happen next," only to realize later that it’s only fiction - he just made it up. They’re not real. But of course, for a lot of us, they are real, and they will be missed. First Drop by Zoe Sharp
This is a no-holds-barred action packed novel with grit, humor, and a character that you really want to root for. Charlie Fox is, in Lee Child’s words, a genuine brawler, -an equal opportunity killer, a match for his character, Jack Reacher. This is a great addition to the thriller genre, and Charlie Fox will hold her own against any of the men who dominate the field. Oblivion by Peter Abrahams
So in the first part of the book - Nick is ahead of you - the reader - because he really is a good PI. But in the next part, you are ahead of him - because you know what happened - who the client is etc, but he doesn’t. Eventually, the case becomes entangled with the Reasoner case - Nick’s famous case - at that point, it feels like you’re working side by side with him, making the discoveries at the same time he does. And while all this is going on, we are with characters that are real and human and sympathetic and funny. As in most of Peter’s books, there is not a lot of violence - and there is a slow, Hitchcockian buildup of suspense to a riveting finale that keeps you locked in your chair. Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams
Now I say for the young reader - but like Harry Potter and lots of books for that age bracket, many adults enjoy these books as well. Down the Rabbit Hole is in this category. It’s the first book in what he calls the Echo Falls Mystery Series, and features a young 12-year-old heroine - Ingrid Levin-Hill. She is a devotee of Sherlock Holmes, an aspiring actress trying for a part in a local community production of Alice in Wonderland, a somewhat unenthusiastic athlete and a less enthusiastic math student. The book opens with her visiting the orthodontist, and deciding to walk home. But she gets lost and winds up at the home of a local character the kids call Cracked-Up Katie. She accidentally leaves her red cleats at Katie's house, but the next day, when the sees the newspaper, she reads that Katie was murdered. She manages to get back into the house to retrieve her cleats, and this sets her on a course of looking into the details of how and why Katie was murdered. There is excitement, suspense and lots of humor - with Ingrid getting all the best lines. We see a relationship building with both her father and her 15 yr old brother, we see a budding relationship begin to grow between Ingrid and the son of the police chief, and we see Ingrid really begin to learn about her town - both the geography and history - which will lead to a nailing biting conclusion. This is a really good story that blurs the distinctions between adult and juvenile - Ingrid is as charming and irrestable as any amateur PI in the genre. The Closers by Michael Connelly
In The Closers, Harry Bosch - his series character is back on the force after a two year retirement. He is assigned to a unit just made for a man of his skills - cold cases - or as the department would rather say - Open Unsolved cases. The case he is assigned with his old partner Kiz Rider involves the death of a high school girl 17 yrs earlier. There a newly discovered DNA match to blood found on the murder gun, giving the case new life. In the course of the investigation, they encounter bureaucratic roadblocks, which would be cliches in the hands of a lesser writer, but with Connelly they are alive and totally believable. Bosch also encounters a family torn apart by the girls death, still struggling 17 years later, and Connelly explores their desperation with compassion and insight. There is almost no violence in this book. In that way, Connelly seems to be going back to his roots - this is pure investigative procedure and character exploration set down in a way that instantly draws you in. Many writers in the past few years have tackled the challenges of old crimes, but few have so effectively made their books about the human toll of the crime and the interactions between the criminals, victims and investigators. The Closers has got to be one of the best Bosch books Michael has written, made all the more powerful by the lack of violence and the attention to the fine details which lead to solution. Whenever I go to the mystery convention - the Bouchercon - there is always a buzz about Connelly’s new book - how no one can really understand how these books keep on getting better and better. - The buzz is real and well deserved. I’m going in September and expect to hear it again. Dead Run by PJ Tracy
Now the Monkeewrench team is back. They have developed software that can help find serial killers, and they travel throughout the country helping police with seemingly impossible cases. In this book, detective Sharon Mueller, a character from the original book, asks Grace and Annie, two of the team members, to travel to Green Bay Wisconsin to help in such a case, but on the way, they stumble into a small town called Four Corners, and a terrorist plot by a right wing militia group. So while they have now fallen off the radar - Four Corners is out of service for cellular, and no phones are working, the rest of the team, and cops from Green Bay and Minneapolis are looking for Grace Annie and Sharon, the women are working to avert the immanent terrorism and save their own skins. This is a straight ahead - no holds barred, immensely entertaining series and this, the third book is certainly on par with the first two. It is a showcase for what thrillers are supposed to be about - a suspense that keeps you guessing and nailed to your seat to the bitter end; characters who you care about who make you shiver or laugh or sometimes shiver and laugh at the same time, and an imaginative, compelling plot that is a story you want to know about. I love these books. I don’t know how they do it - writing from the mid west and the west coast together, but they do. And once you’ve entered their world, you won’t be able to get enough. Suspect by Michael Robotham
Early in the book Joe is asked by a detective Ruiz to consult on a murder of a young nurse, Catherine McBride. It turns out that Joe knew Catherine as a patient years before and that Catherine had once filed sexual harassment charges against him - facts that Joe keeps from Ruiz. As these and other deceptions come to light, Joe becomes the prime suspect in the killing. Meanwhile, Joe is treating a very disturbed patient named Bobby and for a variety of reasons, Joe suspects that Bobby may have been involved in the crime, a suspicion that Ruiz believes is merely Joe’s attempt at covering up his own culpability. Eventually, Joe is forced to become the detective himself and stop the killer from taking more victims, including himself and his family. This is a masterful first novel. Robotham gives us fully developed characters right from the opening chapter, when Joe coaxes a patient down from a window ledge where he is threatening suicide. But we also meet Joe’s wife, Joe’s patient named Bobby, Detective Ruiz, and they are all expertly developed and fully believable. The book has a multilayered plot with unrelenting suspense and an ending that you simply won’t see coming. I think it’s rare for a first book to be written with such insight and assuredness. This book has both, and then some. The Forgotten Man by Robert Crais
Until now, we didn’t know too much of Elvis’ background, but at the outset of this book, a seemingly homeless man is found shot, and his dying words are that he is Elvis’ father. Cole is called to the scene, but he had never met his own father, and doesn’t recognize the dead man so he immediately sets out to gather evidence on the man’s identity, and through flashbacks we get some very illuminating glimpses into Cole’s early years. This series has been called a character driven series, and it’s easy to see why. Along with Elvis, who has dubbed himself the World’s Greatest Detective, there’s his partner, Joe Pike, definitely the scariest good guy in the genre and now there is Carol Starkey, the heroine of Crais’ Demolition Angel - one of my all-time favorite thrillers – who continues to make appearances in the Cole books. There is also a host of supporting characters, all of whom have the kind of depth and nuance that make this series stand out. But let’s not forget plot - because Crais is also a master of pacing and suspense, and in this book, like his others, he delivers a knock-out punch at the end that leaves you breathless. In this book, while Cole is trying to find out about the dead man and what, if any relationship he has to him, and the cops are trying to solve his murder, the dead man’s partner, a real psychopath, has come to believe that Cole was responsible for the man’s death and is determined to exact revenge. The book is told through multiple points of view, and has a relentless drive, along with the great dialogue that is Crais’ signature. But it also explores redemption and forgiveness in a way that makes it more than a mystery - this is great writing - great fiction. Drama City by George Pelecanos
The first is Lorenzo Brown - an ex con - who served 8 yrs for narcotics violations and who decided to get his life straight, began working in animal shelters and worked his way up the chain to become a street investigator for the Humane Society - investigating reports of illegal and inhumane animal treatment. Lorenzo is really a good guy - nice to the neighborhood children, trying to clean up the streets, trying to start a relationship with a young single mother he has recently met. Then there is Rachel Lopez, Lorenzo’s parole officer, who by day checks up on her clients making it clear that she intends to keep them in line, and by night gets drunk and goes home with strangers she picks up in bars. Pelecanos’ books are often stories of people getting caught in a cyclone of inevitability - where one act of stupidity or violence will lead to one reaction after another and eventually fully engulf his characters in tragic ways. The spark here is a misunderstanding between two drug kingpins - one of them an old friend of Lorenzo’s. The incident escalates into a series of killings and threatens to drag Lorenzo down to his old ways, and to catch Rachel unaware in the middle of the violence. There is no one better than George Pelecanos is painting a picture of mean streets in one of America's toughest cities. But along with the bleakness is a always a ray of light in his books. Even in his darkest books you know that George loves Washington DC. This is his city and his characters have the ability to rise above the violence. So while you sometimes feel like crying with and for his characters, at other times you’re cheering - because they are beating the odds. And that’s what Drama City does so effectively - he pits his characters against unrelentingly high odds, and lets them make their own way.
In a stunning opening scene, small time gambler Ricky Smith is in his hotel room at the Riverboat Casino. A fire engulfs the hotel, and Ricky who has no other means of escape, takes a swan dive from his balcony, into the swimming pool many floors below. Miraculously he survives, and, feeling lucky, walks dripping wet into the casino across the street, borrows 20.00 and parlays it into 200,000 - beginning a winning streak to just doesn’t quit. Lottery, horses, big stakes poker, town fair raffles - the works - he can’t lose.The casino is convinced that Ricky is cheating, and Tony is called in to figure it out. Tony is 63 years old, a new grandfather, and to a large extent is feeling his age. He needs the help of his son Gerry, who has been pretty much a ne’re-do-well, but seems to have converted now that he has a new child at home. While Gerry goes to New Orleans to find out how and why one of the country’s best poker players lost a few hundred thousand to Ricky, Tony goes to Ricky’s home town to get to the bottom of his phenomenal streak. I don’t believe any other writer in the genre has taken on this territory - casino cheating – with such energy and acuity. The stories Swain tells of scams are nothing short of amazing, but the books go far beyond this premise. Tony is a great character, a down-to-earth kind of guy who is genuinely worried about his son and his ability to be a provider for his new child. But he is also determined to uncover Bobby’s trick, which appears all but impossible to unravel This is pure entertainment, combining fascinating and eye-opening tales of cheating with suspense and characters that you won’t soon forget. At the very least this series should be read by any crime fiction fan who has ever wondered about how he could beat the house. Strange Affair by Peter Robinson
Robinson, who lives in Canada, was born and raised in Yorkshire England, and places his series there. At one time or another, his series has won practically every award out there in the US, England France, and other countries as well, and they are really well-deserved. Robinson puts together just the right mixture of compelling plot, complex, human characters, sense of place and pure suspense. But it’s really the character of Alan Banks that keeps readers coming back, book after book, to this series. Banks is a good detective, and over the course of the series he has become more introspective and melancholy. He’s strongly affected by things that happen in his personal life and on the job. In that sense, he's more like a real person, not a superhuman thinking machine or one-man vengeance society, and the books have the feeling of being about his life first, and the crime second. The title of his newest book, Strange Affair, is the title of a song by Richard Thompson, a British singer-songwriter. The book opens with Banks hearing a rendition of the song being sung in a local pub. Music is part of his life, and in every book, we’re treated to commentary on whatever he’s been listening to. The book is about two crimes, each being investigated independently. One is the disappearance of Banks’ brother Roy, which Banks handles himself, although unofficially, as he is really supposed to be on vacation. The involvement of Roy allows for glimpses into Banks’ personal life that we haven’t seen before. Gary, who had never appeared in the books, and was barely even mentioned, is a very successful, but shady London businessman who has been on the edge of trouble with the law for a long time. The other crime is the murder of a young woman and it is being handled by Bank’s colleague and former lover Annie Cabbot. The strange thing about this crime is that the victim is found with a piece of paper with Banks’ name and address. So while Banks is officially on holiday, but looking into his brother’s disappearance, Annie is looking for Banks to get clues to the murder she is investigating. The cases come together and turn out to revolve around human trafficking and it’s human toll. The suspense and sense of tragedy mounts to a feverish pitch, as Banks must deal with his own loss. Any fan of crime fiction should put this series at the top of the list.
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Lincoln
Rhyme, the brilliant NYC paraplegic criminologist, and Amelia Sachs, the
detective who acts as his eyes, ears and limbs, match wits with a serial killer
who is called the Watchmaker - a name he earned because he leaves ticking clocks
next to his victims. 
Eisler
has created one of the most memorable characters in the modern thriller genre:
John Rain, assassin for hire (if the cause is right). And he’s recently
learned he has a baby son in New York. But his enemies, who are very bad men,
are searching for him, and the baby and his mother are in danger. John must
protect the innocents, deal with the bad guys, and figure out a way to get out
of the business. The result is a riveting, multi-layered thriller with all the
Eisler trademarks - intelligent plotting, complex characters, exotic locales and
an authenticity that places the John Rain series at the top of the genre.
Michael
Connelly is at the very top of the list of crime writers working today. He has
re-defined the modern police procedural to make them sharp portraits of American
life, capturing the details of investigations and turning them into wonderfully
compelling stories about victims, criminals, cops, and families.
One
of the reasons people read fiction is to get a view of people and places in the
world where they haven’t yet been, or don’t expect to go anytime soon. CJ
Box gives us the mountain territory of Wyoming. His books, featuring wildlife
fish and game warden Joe Pickett, are among the most entertaining in the genre,
not only for the characters and riveting plots, but the feeling we get of the
wide open space and the pure majesty of the land.
I
have been talking about Lee Child’s books for many years now, and each of his
ten books is unique for it’s locale, structure, and driving plot. The thing
that ties Child’s books together is the hero, Jack Reacher, the pure American
hero, whose unambiguous personal philosophy guides him though the action of his
stories.
I think
Peter Abraham is one of the real masters of psychological suspense. His
latest book, End of Story, is about Ivy Seidel, a young struggling
writer, working part-time as a bartender, looking for her big break. Her
manuscripts have been rejected, and she decides to take a job teaching writing
at an upstate New York prison. Her class includes an array of serious lowlifes,
who really fascinate her on some deep primal level, but one of the students,
Vance Harrow, displays an amazingly creative writing talent that she finds
totally seductive. So much so that Ivy finds it impossible to believe that he is
guilty of the robbery murder at a local casino, which he already confessed to.
After all, she reasons, if he’s such a good writer, how bad a guy could he be.
John
Dunning became known in crime fiction in the early 1990's, with the publication
of Booked to Die, featuring an ex cop, Cliff Janeway, who was forced out of the
Denver Police Dep’t, and became an antiquarian book dealer (but never really
stopped wanting to be a cop). Along with a wonderful mysteries, the Janeway
series offers the reader a glimpse into the world of book collecting - and a
fascinating world it is. Dunning himself is a book dealer himself, and the
Janeway series brought book collecting alive in a way that few writers had done.
This
is Mo Hayder’s third book, and is dedicated to Iris Chang, the young writer
who wrote The Rape of Nanking in 2002, the most revealing study ever
written on the genocide attack on Nanking China by the Japanese army in 1937.
Upwards of 400,000 people may have been killed, raped and tortured, and yet
precious little was known about the event, because so few would talk about it.
T
Jefferson Parker has consistently written some of the best and most compelling
books in this genre, certainly with some of the most sympathetic characters and
heroes. A few years ago, he won the Edgar with his book Silent Joe, and
last year, he won again for California Girl.
For
a change of pace, this first novel by Steve Hockensmith will find fans from
readers of Sherlock Holmes, westerns, and traditional mysteries. As you know, A
Conan Doyle has inspired countless stories by modern authors featuring his
famous detective Sherlock Holmes and his biographer John Watson. These are
called Holmes pastiches, and they are a measure of how influential the original
52 stories and 4 novels were on future generations of writers. The Holmes
pastiche really took off with the publication in the 1970's of the Seven Percent
Solution by Nick Meyer and there appears to be no letup in sight. But I think
Hockensmith's new book is one of the most unique takes on the idea of the Holmes
pastiche, because Holmes doesn't actually appear in the book. Rather the idea of
Sherlock Holmes takes center stage.
Peter
Blauner has been on the scene for many years, having won the Edgar
award for best first novel for his book called Slow Motion Riot
in the mid 90's. Since then his books have all been stand alone novels
of great power and suspense, but I think that his new book, Slipping
into Darkness, is his best.
Dana
Stabenow writes from Alaska and is best know for her series featuring
ex-investigator Kate Shugak. The series is now about 14 books, and has
an incredibly dedicated following because of its intelligent plots,
wonderful characters, and most of all, this majestic landscape of
Alaska
The
Lincoln Lawyer, by Michael Connelly was at the top of the my list of
recommended books last fall. It's a riveting book for anyone who has
ever enjoyed a legal thriller, or anyone who has ever watched Law and
Order and wondered how defense attorneys fall asleep at night.
Ed
McBain died earlier this year, and Fiddlers is his final Novel
of the 87th Precinct.
First
Drop is Zoe Sharps debut novel in the U.S. Charlie Fox, her
heroine is tough, smart, and fearless. She is a former British Army
soldier and has just joined a protection agency as a bodyguard. But
her first assignment turns out to be a bratty teenager, the son of a
computer programmer specializing in accounting and data manipulation.
There’s an attempt on the kid’s life, but when Charlie tries to
make contact with her employer, she finds that he, the father, and
everyone else involved in the case has vanished.
Peter
Abrahams has been around a long time - this is his 14th
book I think. He doesn’t write series books, but rather suspense
novels each one of which is unique and surprising and has a subtle
brand of psychological suspense that has become his trademark. His
latest book is call Oblivion, and it features a private eye named Nick
Petrov, best known for finding missing children - he is so famous,
that a made-for-tv movie starring Armand Assante and Kim Delaney was
made about his most famous case - one called the Reasoner Case. At the
opening of this books, Nick is approached by Liza Rummell who asks him
to locate her missing daughter. Nick is a good PI with an eye for
noticing things, and early in his investigation he notices among other
things, that he has a headache that won’t do away, he is remembering
strange things from his past, and that he occasionally has a
heightened sense of smell. But he persists in the search for the girl,
and just as he finds her, just as he is bringing her to the hospital,
he has a stroke. He wakes up in the hospital room and the previous two
weeks are gone from his memory - so when he goes home he finds a check
from Liza, but can’t remember why he has it. He can’t decipher his
own notes - in short he has to reconstruct the missing time.
What
I didn’t know when I read Oblivion was that Peter has another new
book, written for the young reader - called Down the Rabbit Hole.
Connelly
continues to be one of the most consistent, smartest, and genuinely
gifted crime writers in the business.
A
few years ago, the mother-daughter writing team of Traci and PJ
Lambrecht introduced the Monkeewrench gang in a book called,
appropriately, Monkeewrench. The characters, plot and dialogue in
Monkeewrench made it one of the freshest, most original books of the
year.
This
first novel by Michael Robotham, an Australian writer, is a remarkable
accomplishment. Joe O’Loughlin is a London based psychologist who is
mostly happy with his life and family, but he has been recently
diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and is trying to hide it from
most of the outside world. He has other secrets, too, and it’s these
secrets that contribute to getting him into a world of trouble.
The
Elvis Cole series is certainly one of the best in crime fiction. Crais
I think is the reigning master of the wise-guy, tough PI, but his
series goes far beyond the cliches of the genre, and each successive
book explores new territory.
George
Pelecanos is one of my favorite writers. Anyone who likes reading
exceptionally smart, literate, compelling urban thrillers should run-
not walk- to their nearest independent bookstore to get a copy of the
latest Pelecanos, and, if you haven’t read him - the paperbacks of
his earlier works. The setting, as for all of his books, is the darker
side of Washington DC - the city with one of the highest - if not the
highest - crime rate in the country. But Pelecanos finds wonderfully
sympathetic and believable characters amid the despair. His series
books are about Derek Strange, an ex cop who turned PI and now in his
50s, and although Derek is briefly alluded to in Drama City, this is a
stand alone, whose main characters are not quite cops but folks
charged with keeping order around the city.
This
is a fabulous book, the fifth in the Tony Valentine series by Jim
Swain. Jim himself is a national authority on gambling and casino
cheating, and his series character, Tony Valentine, is the head of a
business called Grift Sense, - he is a consultant to casinos
throughout the world on casino cheating problems.
Peter
Robinson has been around a long time, - Strange Affair is his 15th
novel featuring British detective Alan Banks.