BY my count, Black & Blue (Orion, £16.99 in UK) is Ian Rankin's ninth DI John Rebus novel and, for half of its length, it is as good as anything he has written. It is probably the most ambitious work in the series, a long, rambling odyssey that follows Rebus from his usual stamping ground of Glasgow to Edinburgh, to Aberdeen, and then on to the oil fields in the North Sea in his search for the serial killer known as Johnny Bible.
Boozy, surly and selfdestructive, Rebus has his own problems in the department, where he is being investigated for colluding in a frame up of the original Bible John, who killed women back in the Sixties and whom the present psychopath is imitating. Unfortunately, Rankin brings in too many plot strands, becomes hopelessly embroiled in them, and has to employ a Patricia Cornwell gimmick of wheeling on a new character right at the end to unveil his killer. At almost four hundred pages, the book is much too long, but with its adipose tissue slathered off it would have been excellent of its type. Rankin is much too good a crime writer to become bogged down in issues, so let us hope that in his next case Rebus returns as lean, mean and laconic as he used to be.
In The Killer's Game (Macmillan, £16.99 in UK), Jay R. Bonansinga makes use of the hoary old chestnut of the misdiagnosis which leaves a man thinking he has only days to live. In this case, the apparently doomed guy is ace hit man Joe Flood, a good Catholic who does not believe in suicide. So, in order speedily to shuffle off this mortal coil, he puts a contract out on himself six million dollars to the colleague who can terminate him with extreme prejudice. Of course, he now finds that the doctors have made a mistake, but it is too late to revoke the hit and he has to go on the run.
What follows is a series of action set ups and escapes in the best comic book traditions, with Joe being helped by the love of a good woman and enough firepower to start a small war. Enjoyable enough on a rather simplistic level, rather like the "Tummy Nummers" our hero drinks, made up of one part Bailey's to three parts Maalox.
Gregory Hall's A Cement of Blood (Michael Joseph, £16.99 in UK) is another big book that goes on a bit too long. Leisurely over the first three hundred pages - which deal with ancient family quarrels, wrongful inheritance and sinister deeds - it suddenly breaks into a gallop as the lawyer heroine, Sarah Hartley, seems to realise that she is in danger of losing everything is she doesn't unmask a murderer and cause right to conquer over evil. Mr Hall writes well, his setting of a small country town and the interlinked wickedness it can breed being very well done. I enjoyed the book, but the unevenness of pace served, at times, to irritate.
What a Patricia Cornwell novel without Dr Kay Scarpetta? Word of honour; not a sign of the lady in Hornet's Nest (Little, Brown, £16.99 in UK), but never fear, it's not only sheep that can be cloned, and in Deputy Chief of Police Virginia West we have an almost exact Doppelganger for the redoubtable forensic scientist. The plot revolves around the murders of out of town businessmen, and how West copes with the investigation, a nosy reporter, bureaucracy, her nicotine intake and her sexuality. Cornwell can do no wrong, it seems, and this offering will soon jump to the top of the bestseller lists. No accounting for taste.
Minette Walters is another crime writing lady whose popularity puzzles me. In The Echo (Macmillan, £16.99 in UK), she offers another of her turgid and slapdash creations, impregnated with dark doings, bizarre behaviour, over the top purple prose, and a plot line that is as convoluted as a ram's horn. It kicks off with the discovery of the body of an emaciated man in the garage of a rich and beautiful woman, whose own husband has been reported missing. A journalist comes to nose about, gets involved with mysterious Mrs Powell - why does the sickly scent of roses linger in her parlour in December? - a runaway lad called Terry is introduced, more baroque happenings occur, and the book descends into a mish mash of artifice and unlikely coincidence. Not for me, but there are thousands, nay, millions, who will love it.
In Jack and Jill (HarperCollins, £16.99 in UK), James Patterson gives us a third helping of his black Washington police detective, Alex Cross. Once again he is on the trail of a serial killer - this time the slaughterer of high profile politicians. Mr Patterson writes a slam bang type of prose that whacks along at a terrific pace, very seldom stops for reflection or explication, and blasts the reader with the percussion of a nightmare with noise. Not for maiden aunts or those of a sensitive disposition.
Jeffery Denver has come up with an interesting sleuth in his The Bone Collector (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 in UK). He is Lincoln Rhyme, a forensic criminologist, who, injured in an accident, has become a quadraplegic, able only to move his head and shoulders and one finger. Depressed and contemplating suicide he receives a call from a policeman he used to work with, asking for help in a serial kidnapper case. At first loath to become involved, Rhyme slowly gets obsessed with the sociopath known as The Bone Collector. Marooned in his New York apartment - a la Nero Wolfe - our hero uses a young police woman as his emissary to activate the schemes he comes up with to unmask the killer. The tension here is generated by Rhyme's sorting through the clues in order to prevent further crimes, and I must say Mr Denver has made a very good fist of scarding the pants off his readers. One to be read during daylight hours, and most definitely not in a taxi.
Finally to Bartholomew Gill and his The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf (Macmillan, £16.99 in UK). This is the twelfth Chief Superintendent Peter McGarr mystery, all set in an Ireland that only the tourist can know. Complete with misty green fields, quaint speech, Quiet Man characters and a sugary, olde worlde charm, the books exhibit an old fashioned tilt that sticks in the craw. In this one, McGarr is sent to Clare Island to investigate weird goings on, some disappearances and a death. The past intrudes on the present, debts are repaid, and a dying fall is achieved. Blandness is the chief quality here.