I was alerted to this book by Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall, and you can read his review for a more detailed discussion.

The Marshal of the Borgo is an interesting book, a combination of modern mystery and supernatural novel. I suppose it would be called a work of “magical realism.” The mystical elements aren’t specifically Christian, although a Catholic bishop plays a positive role.

It’s about a policeman from Rome who was severely injured and reassigned to be the top cop in an Italian small town, or borgo. A foreign immigrant worker is found murdered in a field, and the cop, Matteo Scarpone, sets about investigating, stepping on some important local toes in the process. But he also meets a beautiful woman, who is unfortunately married.

What amazed me about The Marshal of the Borgo was that as I read it I was certain it was a translation from Italian. It had the perfect feel of a translation. But on finishing it I discovered the author is an American, and it was written in English. Which makes it a tour de force of literary tone.

Cautions for language and adult situations, and occult references.

And here we have another Bob Lee Swagger book from Stephen Hunter. I might be tempted to say it was another improbable Bob Lee Swagger book, except that a) I loved it, and b) it still fails to reach the heights of improbability achieved by The 47th Samurai, which I also loved.

So it’s like this. At the beginning of Sniper’s Honor, old Bob Lee is mooning around his Idaho ranch, at loose ends, bored. Then he gets a call from a woman reporter friend in Europe, who wants some technical advice on a story she’s researching – the mysterious disappearance of a female Russian sniper in World War II. This sniper, “Mili” Petrova, was renowned as much for her beauty as for her deadly efficiency with a rifle. Sent on a mission to assassinate an important German general, she disappeared from history.

Suddenly Bob Lee is energized with curiosity. He flies to Ukraine to help the reporter investigate, an action which causes them to run afoul of mysterious, powerful personages who want the dead past to stay dead. Soon Bob and his friend are running through the Carpathian Mountains, hunted, with no resources to rely on but Bob’s instincts and experience. And some remarkably good luck stage-managed by the author.

I’ll admit there’s a lot of manipulation in the plot. Author Hunter works pretty hard to arrange things in such a way as to believably manipulate the satisfying outcome we expect and get. Plausibility is pretty low.

But it’s a Bob Lee Swagger book and it’s fun. Educational too. Good enough for me.

Occasionally you run into a writer who approaches an old genre from a fresh angle. And occasionally you run into a writer who, though perhaps not a perfect stylist, knows how to create interesting, appealing characters and exciting stories that draw you in. It’s delightful when both those writers are the same person.

So it is with Brett Battles and his Jonathan Quinn novels, beginning with The Cleaner.

Jonathan Quinn (not, we are told, his real name) is not a spy. He’s not an assassin. He’s a Cleaner. Once the spies and assassins have done their jobs, Jonathan comes in and cleans up the mess. Blood gets washed off the walls, bullet holes get spackled, and bodies are disposed of. Jonathan is the best at his work. It pays very well, and he doesn’t have to risk his life… much.

But all that changes at the start of The Cleaner, when he goes to Colorado to examine the site of a fire where a man died. He finds a mysterious bracelet in the ashes, and when he goes back home to Los Angeles somebody tries to kill him. Attempting to find out why, he’s drawn into a confrontation with a world-wide conspiracy, and sets out on a journey that leads him to Ho Chi Minh City and Berlin, to a reunion with a woman from his past, and into a desperate attempt to save a kidnapped child.

This is the first in a series of Jonathan Quinn novels, all extremely readable as far as I’ve gotten. Credibility is a little weak – it’s hard to imagine a man of Jonathan’s humane character getting involved in a job like the one he holds (we’re told he was born in Warroad, Minnesota, and like all native Minnesotans he’s a prince among men). But the characters and relationships are vivid and interesting, and the dramatic tension never lets up.

Recommended. Cautions for language and mature themes, but fairly mild by contemporary standards.

Ed James’ novels on his police detective character Scott Cullen can’t help but be compared to a more famous series about an Edinburgh detective, Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus. And the books have some commonalities – gritty, urban crime settings, and tough, grim main characters. But James adds his own twists, and I found his stories pretty satisfying.

Scott Cullen is a new, inexperienced detective constable, but he’s still the smartest guy in the room – not because he’s a genius, but because his colleagues are generally pretty ineffectual – loafers and drunks (except for the female officers, who, in line with contemporary standards, are more or less exemplary one and all). Cullen’s worst trial is his superior, Inspector Bain, whose approach to any crime is to rush in, identify the most likely suspect, then turn all his (and his subordinates’) energy to building a case against that individual – even when there are other possibilities.

And yet… and yet, what I liked best about the books is that these characters, who could so easily have been caricatures, turn out to be more complex than they appear. Even Bain, when compelled to face the evidence, is capable of real police work, and even a measure of graciousness. Inconsistently, but now and then. In other words, he acts like a real human being. And Cullen has his own flaws, especially in his drinking and relationships with women.

I read the first two books in the Cullen series. Ghost in the Machine involves a missing person case which turns into a murder investigation, involving people who meet each other on a social networking site called “Schoolbook.” In Devil in the Detail Cullen and his colleagues are called out to a smaller town, where they investigate the disappearance of a mentally challenged girl. This story involves allegations of child abuse by a priest, but author James softens the possible offense but setting that abuse in a syncretist cult rather than a Christian church.

Well-written and tech-savvy, the Scott Cullen books are timely works in an old tradition. Cautions for language (the British police seem to have solved the problem of male language in female company by teaching the female officers to swear like the guys) and adult themes.

Vincent Zandri is producing a series of novels about Albany, NY private eye Dick Moonlight (I’m not kidding. That’s his name). Murder by Moonlight was the first I’ve read, and although I read it through and enjoyed it a fair amount, I find I didn’t really like it much.

Dick Moonlight is a private eye with a difference (aren’t they all nowadays?). He attempted suicide a couple years back, leaving himself with a .22 bullet in his brain which the doctors can’t remove. At any moment it might shift and kill him, so he lives with that.

In Murder by Moonlight, he is hired by Joan Parker, who was horribly injured in an ax attack in her home, one which killed her husband. At the time she told the police that her son Christopher was to blame, but now she’s changed her mind and wants Moonlight to prove the young man innocent.

A number of things irritated me in this book. One is the present-tense narration, which doesn’t actually spoil the story, but which I find an irritating affectation that adds nothing.

Secondly, the story wanders into the realm of ancient conspiracies, which I don’t believe in. People aren’t that good at keeping secrets, especially in large groups.

But most importantly, the hero/narrator, Dick Moonlight, got on my nerves. Many people in the story tell him he’s a jerk (they generally use more colorful language), and they’re right. He claims he has a built-in lie detector (again, he uses an earthier term), and feels that gives him the right to be insulting to anyone he doesn’t like on first sight — even when he needs a favor from them. That’s just bad detective procedure. What he is, is judgmental and tactless.

So though the story kept my interest (in spite of some weak writing moments and needless complications at the end), I don’t recommend it highly. On the other hand, it’ll keep your interest on a plane, if that’s what your needs are.

Cautions for language and adult themes.

Former journalist Andrew E. Kaufman has managed to jump from self-publishing to a major house contract on the strength of three novels, two of which involve the character Patrick Bannister. It’s those two, The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted, and Darkness and Shadows, that I’ll tell you about briefly today.

I was drawn to the Patrick Bannister novels because the main character is a fellow I can identify with. Though a successful journalist for a national magazine (OK, I don’t identify with that), he suffers from deep insecurities and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, brought on by a childhood dominated by a loveless and narcissistic mother. Patrick is, indeed, unusually unfortunate in his relationships with females, because the second book involves his disastrous first love relationship, with a girl who had a terrible secret.

In The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted, Patrick goes home for his mother’s funeral, and retrieves a single box of his childhood possessions from the house where he grew up. In it he finds a couple odd things – a piece of paper bearing a name, which a little research tells him belongs to the victim of a child murder in Texas years back, and a St. Christopher medal. When he finds a picture of that dead boy and sees that the boy is wearing the same medal in it, he starts on a desperate search to discover his mother’s and uncle’s relationship to the crime.

In Darkness and Shadows, Patrick finds himself out of a job, having allowed his emotions to overcome his journalistic good judgment. Then he sees a news report about the murder of a wealthy woman, and realizes that she is the same person as a girl he dated in college, who had (he thought) died in a fire before his eyes. Forging an unexpected alliance with a disturbed female criminal, he uncovers a sinister conspiracy and learns truths that could tear up his personal world.

Author Kaufman has had considerable success with readers, so I’m not alone in finding these books fascinating. Speaking for myself, I found the description of the inner life of an abuse victim extremely well-rendered. I was less impressed with the stories themselves. The writing was good – perhaps it could use a little pruning – but the plotting seemed to me weak. The first book, especially, ended with a big action scene that got resolved by pure luck. And the big surprise at the end was one I had guessed in about the second chapter. The second book was a little better.

Still, the characters were fascinating, and if the psychology of abuse interests you, these are a pretty good read.

I’ve been meaning to post a very short review of three of Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole mysteries. There’s a whole list of books in the series, but the trilogy of The Redbreast, Nemesis, and The Devil’s Star form a self-contained unit within it, and make an interesting read in themselves. I reviewed Redbreast sometime back, and read The Devil’s Star without reviewing it. Recently I read Nemesis (out of order), and gained a new appreciation.

Nesbø’s Oslo police detective character, Harry Hole (pronounced “hoo-leh”) is difficult to evaluate. He pushes credibility, because it’s hard to believe that anyone this alcoholic and reflexively self-destructive has managed to maintain a career in a modern police department. But in these books Hole has begun a difficult — but promising — relationship with a single mother, which inspires him (intermittently) to attempt to reform himself. This would give him one added thing he actually cares about in his life, beyond police work.

The running narrative in this trilogy involves another detective, a popular and charismatic one, whom Hole suspects of illegal activities and the murder of a colleague. Hole hates him, but is almost seduced into corruption by him.

What’s fascinating about the Harry Hole books is the multiple layers of mystery involved. Once the mystery is solved, there’s plenty of book left, and the reader discovers there’s a mystery within the mystery. Then there’s a further mystery within that. It unpeels like an onion.

This may relate to one of Harry’s mottos — “There is no such thing as a paradox.” Someone informs him in the third book that paradoxes do in fact exist. It seems to me possible (I’m not sure) that that discovery is the whole point of the books.