Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Missing Man,’ by David Carter

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Sometimes, especially in English crime fiction, your run across what I’m inclined to call a “Police Cozy.” It’s a story about cops, but low on the action and violence. That kind of story suits me very well.

Author David Carter is producing a series about Chester (England) detective Walter Darriteau. He works in a sex-balanced headquarters (they’re always sex-balanced these days, at least in fiction), and cooperates well with his colleagues. His partner, Karen, is an attractive blonde, but they both have outside romantic relationships. The Missing Man (one of the least charismatic book titles I’ve ever come across) is a novella featuring the regular characters.

A middle-aged woman calls the police and informs them, matter-of-factly, that she wants to confess to a murder. Nearly 25 years ago, she says, she killed her philandering husband. Now she wants to come clean.

Walter and Karen go to her home to interview her, and she tells them she didn’t actually commit the murder herself. She hired a couple criminals to do the job. She doesn’t in fact have any evidence of a crime. The perpetrators are dead, and even the purported burial site is under a concrete overpass (called a “flyover” in England), so it would be difficult to dig up. But her husband disappeared and hasn’t been heard from since, so she’s confident he’s dead.

Walter’s and Karen’s bizarre job is to try to ferret out any evidence or witnesses that might still be around after a quarter of a century. In time all will be revealed – and I have to admit it was a surprise.

The writing in The Missing Man was good. I enjoyed the story. Based on this short sample, the series appears worth checking out.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Odin,’ by David Archer and Blake Banner

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The voice on the other end was like dark chocolate that smoked and drank too much and didn’t give a d**n.

If you crossed Rex Stout’s Archie Goodwin with Ian Fleming’s James Bond, you’d pretty much get Alex Mason, hero of Odin, the first volume in a series by David Archer and Blake Banner.

Alex Mason is an agent for “Odin,” an officially nonexistent espionage agency operating for the US government. Its head is known as the Chief, but he’s sometimes called “Nero,” an obvious hat-tip to Nero Wolfe, of whom he is a near clone. He summons Alex to his office as Odin begins, telling him that he’s concerned about an agent he’s had in place in Manila, who has suddenly disappeared. That agent was part of a small, strategically placed cell of assets working against the Chinese. And now it seems they’ve been discovered.

In fact, as Alex arrives, Chinese agents are already moving against the cell. Quickly one is murdered, two go on the run together, and another is captured. Alex needs to find the two fleeing assets and get them to safety. As he begins that task, he is joined by a friendly – and gorgeous – female Mossad agent.

In terms of writing craftsmanship, I find no fault with Odin. The characters were sharp and interesting, and the dramatic tension escalated steadily. The prose was often delicious, with lines like, “He turned and strutted over on crisp little feet.”

The plotting impressed me very much. A plot development that looked like implausible coincidence turned out to be perfectly plausible, by neat authorial jujitsu. An apparent contradiction resolved itself, paying off in heightened suspense for the reader.

I was less happy with a moment of justification of adultery, but I’ve overlooked worse moral sins in a novel.

Bottom line – Odin was a superior thriller, crafted with high professionalism. It was a good time with a book, well worth the purchase price.

Fiction, Reviews

‘No Room for the Innocent,’ by Dan Wheatcroft

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The “Leveller” trilogy rounds itself off in a satisfying way in Dan Wheatcroft’s No Room for the Innocent.

This series, as you may recall, involves intertwining plots centered on two main characters – Inspector Thurstan Baddeley of the Liverpool police and a man known as Nicks, who is a top-level assassin dispatched by a high-level, secret government organization to kill the worst criminals the police can’t touch. The two men know each other, and share a grudging respect, though Nicks is always one step ahead of investigators.

But now there’s a problem. Nicks’ handler, Don, has been murdered. Because Don is his only contact in the organization, he’s suddenly out in the cold and vulnerable. When he learns that his controllers have been less than altruistic in their operational aims, he can think of only one person to go to for help – Inspector Baddeley.

The writing in these books is adequate, with occasional grammatical lapses. But the author’s knowledge of police work (he’s a former cop himself) makes the settings and procedures authentic, and I liked the characters a lot.

I enjoyed this series, and recommend it, with only minor cautions for grown-up themes and violence. Conservative opinions are occasionally hinted at.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dark Ride,’ by Lou Berney

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My city is a midsized metropolitan area in the middle of the middle of the United States. It’s flat and sprawling and a lot like a lot of other places, with no distinguishing characteristics geographic or otherwise. If my city was a suspect in a crime, the eyewitnesses would have a tough time describing it. You could probably say the same thing about me.

Think of The Big Lebowski. But imagine it, not as a dark parody, but as a full-on, dead-serious 21st Century Noir novel. That’s more or less the ambience of Lou Berney’s Dark Ride.

I’ve reviewed a couple Lou Berney novels before, and I liked them very much. I haven’t read one in a while now because the publisher prices them high, but I got a deal on Dark Ride. And it’s very, very good.

Hardy “Hardly” Reed is a classic slacker. Long, shaggy hair, tee-shirts, board shorts, flip-flops. He holds a minimum wage job as a “frightener” at a horror-themed amusement park, and the rest of his time is spent playing video games and getting stoned with his slacker friends.

Until one particular day, when he’s at the Department of Motor Vehicles, getting an extension on a parking ticket. He notices a pair of small children sitting on a bench outside of an office. He’s puzzled by how quiet they are. They don’t laugh, they don’t play, they don’t talk. They just sit staring, like commuters on a bus. He approaches them to say hello, and then notices small, perfectly circular marks on their bodies. Someone has burned these children with cigarettes.

Something comes over Hardly then that he’s never experienced before. He discovers he cares. He tries to get help from a DMV worker, then from Child Protective Services. Nobody seems greatly concerned. The bureaucracy is snowed under with work. Hardly decides that if nobody else will help, he will. He can’t afford to hire a private detective, so he’ll learn to investigate on his own. Usually in his life, he’s given up on any task that seemed difficult or dangerous. But he can’t let go of this one.

Will Hardly, just this once in his life, be good enough?

I read Dark Ride almost in one sitting. It proved to be a grimmer story than I expected, but that only pulled me in. This is an excellent and original thriller. I recommend it. Cautions for language, sex, and drug use.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Ask the River,’ by Dan Wheatcroft

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Installment Two of Dan Wheatcroft’s “Leveller” series. I still haven’t entirely made up my mind what I think about Wheatcroft’s work, but I have to say I enjoyed reading Ask the River.

Like the previous volume, this books follows two different main characters – Inspector Thurstan Baddeley of the Liverpool police, and “Nicks,” the mysterious hit man who eliminates very bad criminals under the direction – and protection – of some shadowy, unnamed authority.

The main problem with Wheatcroft’s books is their complexity. No doubt this mirrors real police work where – in contrast to the average cop show – detectives work on many cases simultaneously. It does tax the reader’s memory at times, though.

There’s the case of an old man, a Polish Holocaust survivor, who dies in his bed, overdosed on sleeping pills – it might be natural causes, but Baddeley is suspicious. There’s a neighborhood terrorized by punks on motorcycles, whom the police can never catch or stop. There’s a crooked businessman found hanging from a bridge abutment. Among others.

Meanwhile, Nicks (he doesn’t really advance the plot much in this book) dispatches several monsters by untraceable means.

This book was ultimately something of a downer, though there’s a nice rescue scene toward the end. But – as I keep saying – I just like these characters and enjoy following them. (Also, the books are free on Kindle right now.)

As always, I have quibbles. Wheatcroft is not at his best with grammar. He uses the word “intercede” wrong, speaks of someone being “in the throws of” something, and has never figured out how to conjugate the verb “sat.”

He makes a firearms error when he assumes a revolver can be effectively silenced. He mentions some of the CIA’s more unsavory accomplishments, which might indicate a political sentiment – though, on the other side, numerous jabs are taken at political correctness.

In short, not a perfect book, but engrossing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘One is Evil,’ by Jeff Buick

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I had never heard of the Canadian author Jeff Buick before I picked up One is Evil, the first volume in a prospective series. I’m pleased to report that I was highly impressed.

Bobby Greco used to be an Orlando, Florida homicide cop. Set up by crooked vice cops, he got kicked off the force. But he had friends who owed him favors, and managed to snag a good job doing insurance investigations.

It’s in that capacity that he checks out a claim relating to Alexis Chamberlain, the wife of the highly respected head of a major aerospace technology firm. It’s just a routine job – the company is ready to pay off on the claim. But Bobby has a cop’s instincts, and those instincts tell him something is off about this woman. Looking into her life more deeply, he reaches a startling conclusion – this isn’t the same woman. Somehow, she’s been switched for a duplicate. Which puts an unknown entity within reach of some of the country’s most sensitive military secrets.

That spark sets off an avalanche of consequences. Bobby teams up with an attractive female NSA agent, and before long not only they but their families are under threat – even as the clock is running out for the real Alexis Chamberlain. The action will stretch from the American south to the French Riviera, and on to Siberia.

There were flaws in One is Evil. The Canadian author sometimes gets American diction wrong – the Girl Scouts become the Girl Guides, bars become pubs. Cookies, of course, become biscuits. The prose is effective but not elegant, and there’s an occasional spelling mistake.

But the plot is intricate and beautifully choreographed. The dramatic tension ratchets up mercilessly. Like any thriller, One is Evil was less than entirely plausible, but it was convincing, and I bought into it completely. I also liked and cared about the characters.

One is Evil is a winner, and Jeff Buick is an author worth following.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead Beat,’ by Micheal Maxwell

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Detective Comrade (seriously, that’s his name!) Flynt is part of the police force in a small, fictional California city. He is known to the other cops as “the leprechaun,” because he’s short, ugly, and his red hair is always unkempt. He was traumatized in a bad shooting some years ago, and his old partner covered for him ever since.

But his partner is dead now, and as Micheal Maxwell’s Dead Beat begins, Flynt is partnered with Lieutenant Noah Steele (Flynt and Steele, get it?). Steele is an up-and-comer, and their commander has tasked him, among other things, with finding a reason to fire Flynt, whom he considers (not without cause) dead weight.

But then they’re called to investigate the murder of a teenage drummer from a punk rock band, found stabbed to death with his drumsticks in a storage locker. As they proceed, Steele gradually discovers that, in spite of his partner’s eccentric and even repulsive personal habits, he has genuine gifts for investigation. And they start to form a bond.

When I find an ineptly written book these days, my inclination is to drop it quietly without ragging on the author. But author Micheal Maxwell describes himself as an “Amazon bestselling writer,” and that annoys me in a petty way. The fact that this kind of writing can generate bestsellers is painful to contemplate for someone who’s worked hard to improve his skills.

What was wrong with Dead Beat? Let me list some of the problems:

The prose was awkward – a representative line runs, “She was both maternal and attention-starved at the same time.” Or, “A mad array of pushing and shoving…”

In describing life in a Catholic orphanage, the author indulges in extreme stereotyping: All the nuns are cruel and abusive. Even as a Protestant and a well-known misogynist, I find that implausible. Women, in my experience, tend to be pretty sympathetic people – I find it hard to believe that, in any group of women, every single one could be a sadist.

In general, the writing here is amateurish. The author describes his characters to us (at excessive length), rather than revealing their personalities through their actions – and their actions, in fact, seem inconsistent and pretty much random.

I found an odd continuity problem in one particular scene, where the characters are described getting ready to sit down in a room, and then suddenly they are back in the hallway, walking toward the room.

Police procedures (I won’t describe them in detail) seemed implausible and unprofessional.

And finally, the big, brilliant deduction that impresses everybody at the climax turns out to involve a very obvious technical matter that I’m certain any crime scene technician would recognize in a minute.

In short, Dead Beat was a book that any pulp publisher back in my day would have shot back to the author before he’d finished reading the first page. I do not recommend it.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Road to Eden Is Overgrown,’ by Dan Wheatcroft

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Detective Chief Inspector Thurstan Baddeley (hero of The Box, which I reviewed a while back, and which takes place later in his career) has just taken over the Major Crimes unit on the Liverpool police force, as The Road to Eden Is Overgrown begins. A recent widower, he gets on well with his colleagues, and is excellent at his job.

Meanwhile, there’s a killer out there. His name is Nickson (“Nicks”). He’s smart, professional, and efficient (and, like Baddeley, a recent widower). He only hits selected targets – the worst of the worst, depraved criminals who, for one reason or another, the police can’t touch. Serial murderers, sadists, child abusers, human traffickers. He gets his assignments from a shadowy organization with the influence to cover up his killings and facilitate movements and false identities.

DCI Baddeley’s job is to find and arrest Nicks. But he isn’t terribly broken up about the death toll among psychopaths.

Nicks always seems to be one step ahead of the police. But he’s never come up against a cop like Baddeley before. He may have met his match.

I am still at a loss to understand my fascination with Daniel Wheatcroft’s novels. His prose is nothing special, occasional shoddy (we’re told a character “reversed back” in his car, and he has trouble conjugating the verb “sat”). The Road to Eden Is Overgrown seemed to me less complex than the other Wheatcroft novels I’ve read, which I appreciated, though I still had some trouble keeping plot threads straight (not unusual for me). I think I like the characterizations best. The characters drew me in.

This book is the first in a trilogy called “Leveller.” I’m going to read more.

Oh yes, there’s a mention of the Narnia books, almost always a good sign.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Forever and a Day,’ by Anthony Horowitz

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For Bond, the casinos at Beaulieu and Le Touquet were less ostentatious and more welcoming. He was comfortable there. At Monte Carlo, he always felt as if he were auditioning for a part in a play he would never actually want to see.

I recently reviewed a book by Anthony Horowitz, an author I’d never heard of. Turned out that just showed my ignorance. Horowitz is quite a big noise in the world. He created Midsomer Murders, and has written bestselling Sherlock Holmes novels in addition to series of his own. He’s also done authorized James Bond books. I got a deal on Forever and a Day, a Bond prequel, and purchased it out of curiosity.

Full disclosure – I’m not a great James Bond fan. The movies have occasionally been amusing, if you didn’t think about them too much. I’ve read two or three of the novels, and I can take them or leave them. I find the literary James Bond hard to care about.

I have to say, though, that I did care about Anthony Horowitz’ Bond.

The book is written in period – it’s shortly after World War II. James Bond is a veteran spy, now an assassin for the British government. We observe him in Stockholm, cleaning up some leftover trash from the war – killing a Norwegian resistance traitor who thought he’d gotten away with it.

Back in London, he’s informed he’s been selected for the coveted “00” designation, the license to kill. Agent 007 has been murdered in Marseilles. Bond is to go and find out who’s responsible, and to complete his mission – looking into the activities of a Sicilian gangster who controls the drug traffic in the south of France. He is permitted to take over the 007 designation.

All the elements are present here for a classic Bond adventure – a colorful supervillain (actually, two), a mysterious, beautiful woman who may or may not be friendly, a casino interlude, fights and torture scenes.

But there was some quality in Forever and a Day that I never found in Ian Fleming’s books. Horowitz’ Bond is recognizably the same man, but he’s somehow more human. I could relate to him (to the extent that I can ever relate to somebody brave and handsome).

I must confess I saw the big twist at the end of the book a mile off. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the ride very much. I need to check to see if there are any more of these books in the public library.

Recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

Reading report: ‘A Study in Scarlet,’ by Arthur Conan Doyle

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“Poor devil!” he said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. “What are you up to now?”

“Looking for lodgings,” I answered. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.”

“That’s a strange thing,” remarked my companion; “you are the second man to-day that has used that expression to me.”

“And who was the first?” I asked.

“A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital….”

Back in 1886, Arthur Conan Doyle was a struggling physician in the London suburb of Southsea (I’ve always understood that he was an ophthalmologist, but his Wikipedia bio says he didn’t turn to eye medicine until a few years later). Lacking patients, he devoted some of his abundant leisure time to writing, with some success. He sold a detective story called “A Study in Scarlet” to Beeton’s Christmas Annual, a publication remembered today almost solely for that story. It was a one-off; Doyle took the modest fee and went on to other things.

But the story came to the attention of the editor of Lippincott’s Magazine in the US, and he commissioned a sequel. This would be “The Sign of the Four.” Doyle’s fictional detective, based to a large degree on the analytical methods of his medical teacher Dr. Joseph Bell, was off like a galloping horse – one that would eventually (in Doyle’s view) run away with its owner.

Having, as I mentioned before, started re-watching the excellent BBC Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett, I decided it would be pleasant to re-read the stories – something I haven’t done, I think, since the 1970s. I was right. I enjoyed “A Study in Scarlet,” which I read in this inexpensive Kindle collection (they’re all out of copyright now) immensely.

If you’re not familiar with the story (it’s never been properly dramatized, for reasons I can understand), it’s narrated by Dr. John H. Watson, an army surgeon recently returned from Afghanistan, where he was wounded in action. He’s living on his medical pension while recovering, and starts looking for a roommate. (See the extract above.) He soon finds himself living at 221B Baker Street with the eccentric Sherlock Holmes, whose profession is a mystery to him for a while. Finally, Holmes reveals that his frequent visitors, Lestrade and Gregson, are Scotland Yard detectives. He himself is the world’s first “Consulting Detective.” When the policemen ask Holmes to come view a body found in an empty suburban house, Holmes asks Watson to come along.

I’ll leave it at that. The story is to get hold of, and easy to read. Doyle’s prose is certainly Victorian, but not stuffily so. His characters are vivid; his dialogue is sharp, even after all these years.

I’ve always rated “A Study in Scarlet” as one of the weaker stories, mainly because of the “back story” chapters, where the murderer – arrested (he uses the delightful Americanism “snackled” for it) after being lured in by Holmes, explains how and why he came to commit the terrible murders he is confessing. The story takes us back to the American Wild West and the Mormon state of Utah. This back story works better than I remember, though (although I have no time for Mormon theology) I still think the Mormons are portrayed pretty harshly.

But taken all together, I found “A Study in Scarlet” more entertaining than I expected. And I have even better stories to look forward to, as I move into Doyle’s stronger work.

One caveat about this edition – it appears that, in scanning, the OCR software incorporated the page numbers into the text. So you’ve got to ignore those when they show up.