CrimeFile: Vincent Banville on the latest offerings from James Lee Burke, Ruth Rendell and Michael Dibdi
A new Dave Robicheaux novel is always something to be warmly received, and this present one is up to the usual high standard. As regular James Lee Burke readers will know, Robicheaux plies his trade as a policeman in Louisiana, in the small town of New Iberia. An ex-alcoholic with a murky past, in Last Car To Elysian Fields we find him mourning the recent death of his wife, Bootsie, and living in rented accommodation after the burning down of his house. Embittered and wishing to take out his pain on someone, he confronts the man he believes gave a beating to his friend, the priest Fr Jimmy Dolan. This serves as a jumping-off point into another tale of dark deeds in the past coming back to haunt survivors in the present, especially the rich LeJeune family, the patriarch Castille, and his beautiful daughter, Theodosha, with whom Robicheaux once had a passing fling. A couple of the usual suspects are present yet again: the bull-in-the-china-shop Clete Purcel and Helen Soileau, Robicheaux's old partner and now the new sheriff, but the adopted daughter, Alafair, has gone off to university to write a crime novel of her own. There is also another in a long line of memorable villains, this time the homicidal Max Coll, a hitman with a conscience, who once worked for the IRA! Burke writes a strong, vivid prose that situates his characters accurately in the sun-and-rain-spattered lushness of the bayou country of Louisiana, an apt setting for the tangled lives they lead. Last Car to Elysian Fields is vintage James Lee Burke - what more can one say?
Ah, another commonplace tale of mystery and deceit from Ruth Rendell, the Agatha Christie of the modern age. Not, unfortunately, a Chief Inspector Wexford novel, but rather one of her psychological analyses of the lives of little people living what on the surface appear to be mundane existences, but underneath which peculiar motives seethe and roil. In The Rottweiler, fiftysomething Inez Ferry has an antique shop in Marylebone and rents out the rooms above the store. Girls are being strangled in the area, the bite mark on the neck of the first victim leading to the sobriquet of "The Rottweiler" being appended to the killer. Before long, it becomes apparent that one of Inez's lodgers may be the murderer, and not too far into the book our author releases our suspense by giving the game away. After that it's a question of bringing the culprit to justice, being given a peek into the rather boring lives of a group of people with strange names - Jeremy Quick, Det. Inspector Crippen, Ludmila and Fred Perfect, Morton Phibling, a man called Osnabrook - and standing back to absorb the applause of the adoring readers. I've never been a fan of Rendell's non-Wexford works - my fault, probably, not hers - but millions out there prove me wrong. Enjoy.
The latest offering from Michael Dibdin, the thinking man's thriller writer, begins: "An oily fog had mystified the streets, sheathing the facades to either side, estranging familiar landmarks and coating the windows with a skein of liquid seemingly denser than water." Not something that Mickey Spillane would have written, or even John Grisham.
In Medusa, we are back in Italy, with this author's usual protagonist, the Rome-based policeman Aurelio Zen. A three-decades-old corpse is discovered in an abandoned military tunnel in the Italian Alps, a wealthy Venezuelan businessman is blown up outside the gates of his house, a bookshop owner in Milan has to go into hiding, the army and the police are at loggerheads, and only Zen can trace connections, smooth over a possible vast political scandal and keep his new girlfriend happy and contented. The Italian locations are skilfully blended into the story; likewise large tracts of recent Italian history and chicanery. Medusa boasts sophisticated writing at its best, rising above merely being bracketed in the crime genre.
First off, I have to ask, can any crime writer have a more appropriate name than Slaughter? And to make things even more apt, her heroine, Sara Linton, is a medical examiner in the small town of Heartsdale in the County of Grant in the State of Georgia. It always amazes me how these small towns throw up so much crime. A Faint Cold Fear sees a possible suicide victim found, a young man who appears to have thrown himself off a bridge. It soon turns out that there's dirty work afoot, especially when Sara's heavily pregnant sister, Tess, is assaulted and nearly done to death. The local police chief is Sara's ex-husband, whom she is again dating, something that adds further complication to an already convoluted plot. There is also quite a lot of graphic forensic detail, much in the manner of Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs - to whom Karin Slaughter probably detests being compared - so beware, dear reader, if you're faint of heart. However, A Faint Cold Fear is an engrossing work, with a well-drawn cast of characters and a nicely tuned plot. And one can always skip over the bloody bits!
Barry Eisler's protagonist, John Rain, is a professional assassin. Nothing very original in having an anti-hero such as this: I'm reminded of Richard Stark's Parker and Lawrence Block's Hitman. However, the fact that Rain is based in Japan gives an added resonance to his activities. In Hard Rain, an old enemy, who blackmails him into tracking down and eliminating a cold-blooded killer, drags him back from putative retirement. Of course things go wrong, an international conspiracy involving Japanese money invested in US treasury bills is uncovered, and Rain has to be quick on his feet and deadly with his hands to survive. Fast paced and inventive, Hard Rain, gallops along to a suitably violent climax.
Not really a traditional crime novel, Peter Straub's Lost Boy Lost Girl is more a kind of fantasy horror meditation on the effects of violence on young lives. Straub has, in the past, collaborated with that old necromancer Stephen King, so one immediately has some idea of the kind of work he produces. In this case, Straub resurrects a character he has used before, one Timothy Underhill, and brings him back to his hometown to investigate the mysterious death of his brother's wife and the disappearance of her teenage son, Mark. Dark forces are at work, a local abandoned house is slow to give up its secrets, and a strange phantom girl is possibly luring Mark into a world parallel to our own. Hold someone's hand while you're reading this one!
Last Car to Elysian Fields By James Lee Burke Orion, £12.99
The Rottweiler By Ruth Rendell Hutchinson, £16.99
Medusa By Michael DibdinFaber & Faber, £16.99
A Faint Cold Fear By Karin Slaughter Century, £12.99
Hard Rain By Barry Eisler Michael Joseph/Penguin, £12.99
Lost Boy Lost Girl By Peter Straub HarperCollins,£17.99