CRIME FILE: Michael Painter reviews this weeks collection of crime fiction.
In the bleak landscape of the Cambridgeshire Fens, a man is marooned in a lonely farmhouse. The area is flooded, the tidewaters creeping up and up, as the man, Philip Dryden, a local journalist, awaits the arrival of a murderer.
This is how The Water Clock begins, but almost immediately we are in flashback mode, as the narrative moves backward to tell the tale of how Dryden has ended up in such a predicament. Some days earlier, a car had been winched from the frozen River Lark with a man's mutilated body, encased in a solid block of ice, inside. Then, high on Ely Cathedral a second body is found, a decaying corpse that may have been there for all of 30 years. The two bodies are linked to a tragedy dating back to 1966 and, in pursuing the story, our protagonist resurrects a mystery in his own life when someone rescued him from a watery grave, but left his wife to die.
Kelly writes very well - his evocation of the Fen country is particularly effective. This is, in fact, a superior thriller, and stands up well to comparisons with Dorothy L. Sayers's The Nine Tailors. High praise, indeed.
Another offering from an Irish crime writer, this one is by serving Garda John Galvin, whose first effort, Bog Warriors, was well received. Much more traditional in content than the works of some recent practitioners, the plot here deals with a serial killer who is murdering only felons: a released wife killer is poisoned, a drug-dealer is incinerated, a rapist has his head blown off when his mobile phone explodes, and a paedophile is strangled. No mystery as to the assassin's identity; he's a hired killer named James Landers, who was formerly a highly trained SAS member.
But who is paying him to knock off his victims? Endeavouring to find the answer are Fox and McGrath of the Dublin Metropolitan Crime Squad, a likely pair who might bend the rules themselves at times. As one would expect from a member of the force, the groundwork of the investigation is given in some detail and, I would presume, is authentic. A nice read then, and one that holds the interest right to the end.
As Brookside shares the same address as New Island Books, I presume there is some connection. Whatever, it is a new imprint with a very entertaining first offering in the crime fiction field. Compared on the cover to Colin Bateman, O'Connor does share that Northern writer's manic propensity for weird, off-the-wall set pieces, snappy dialogue, and street-wise knowingness where the sad, bad and beautiful are concerned. His protagonist is middle-aged ex-newshound Bill Barlow, whose deepest desire is to retire to the West of Ireland to write a bestseller. However, this wish is thwarted when he visits his private eye son, Gerry, in New York, and gets caught up in a sting to extort money and influence from a crooked US senator. The result is a madcap romp involving the Mafia, son Gerry's luscious girlfriend, Sophia, a waifish pickpocket named Lucy, a drunken priest, a fastidious black gangster and others too numerous to mention. Fast-paced and very funny, its follow-up will be eagerly awaited.
Mankell is Swedish, born in Stockholm in 1948. He has written nine novels featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander of the Ystad police department; Sidetracked won the Macallan Gold Dagger award for best crime novel of the year 2001. His books are superior police procedurals, the foreign locale adding a particular spice to what are densely plotted and highly inventive narratives. In the present one, Wallander, plagued by ill health, is investigating the murder of a close colleague, and also the mysterious killings of three young friends who had been celebrating Midsummer's Eve. Digging more deeply than he would have liked into his friend's past, he comes across disturbing secrets that link up the brutal deaths, and that lead him to the belief that the killer is intent on committing more murders. Mankell writes at a leisurely pace, so his readers must be in for the long ride, rather than the fast kill. However, these are very tasty works of crime fiction, the deliberate progress of the narrative helping to bring out the awfulness that sometimes can lie concealed beneath the façade of everyday life. It would not be insulting either to compare Mankell with the master, Georges Simenon.
This is Jenny Siler's third crime novel, the first two, Easy Money and Iced, having already made quite a splash. Firstly, the quality of her writing is more than above average - her characters are true to life and her dialogue believable. In addition, her plotting is sinuous, turning and twisting in often quite surprising directions. The result just has to be a taut, exciting and, in what can be at times a rather jaded genre, original read.
In Shot, the action is played out against the majestic scenery of Colorado, as two women and their journalist friend flee from a hit man, hired by an all-powerful clique protected by government influence. The women are an odd couple: Lucy, whose scientist husband has stumbled on a deadly secret and has subsequently been murdered, and Darcy, a female burglar; while the reporter, Kevin Burns, is an old schoolmate of the murdered man and a former lover of Lucy's. The pace is fast and furious, as the threesome, in their various ways, race against time to uncover the secret of a government-sponsored biological weapons programme and bring it into the public domain. Recommended.
This time we're in the hands of a professional, a tried and true author of crime fiction with a long string of successful and best-selling novels behind her.
The scene shifts from Palm Beach to the Florida swamps, while the outwardly glamorous world of show jumping acts as the background for much of the narrative. Elena Estes is an ex-cop down on her luck, living in Florida and feeling sorry for herself. One day she is approached by 12-year-old Molly Seabright, who tells her that her stepsister Erin has disappeared. No one except Molly seems bothered, and she wants Estes to find out what happened.
The investigation leads our heroine to a reappraisal of herself and her situation, and, of course, to a solution of the how and why of Erin's supposed abduction. A bit padded at over 400 pages, perhaps, but a good read nonetheless.
The Water Clock. By Jim Kelly. Michael Joseph, £9.99. The Mercury Man. By John Galvin. Town House Paperback, €8.99
In the Way of the Family. By Bill O'Connor. Brookside Paperback, €8.99
One Step Behind. By Henning Mankell, translated by Ebba Seberberg. The Harvill Press, £16.99 Shot. By Jenny Siler. Orion Trade Paperback, £9.99
Dark Horse. By Tami Hoag. Ori. £10.99
Michael Painter is a writer and critic