Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Reviews

‘Relentless,’ by Mark Greaney

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The tenth novel in Mark Greaney’s exciting Gray Man series is Relentless. The Gray Man, you may recall from previous reviews, is Courtland Gentry, a former CIA assassin who was expelled from the service, operated as a free-lancer for a while, and has now been reinstated, though off the books. In Relentless, we find him in a hospital, being treated for wounds and a bone infection. But his boss asks him to interrupt his recovery to do an emergency extraction of a fugitive from Venezuela. That mission goes sideways in a big way. But Gentry learns that Zoya Zakharova, a former Russian agent and the woman he loves, has been assigned to a dangerous assignment in Berlin. He figures he’ll just postpone his treatment a little longer, to watch her back until the operation is over.

The mission is a complicated one – more complicated than most of the participants think. A private security agency called Shrike has been hired by a group – whom they believe to be Israeli Mossad-backed – to carry out an operation in Berlin. Only it’s not the Mossad they’re really working for, and the objective is known to only one man – a terrorist with lots of money and grandiose ambitions.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I found this book slow reading, and wasn’t sure why. I think the problem was that it was very, very complex – involving three nested covert operations. Also there were several different groups maneuvering against one another, and I had trouble keeping them straight. I think that kept me from getting emotionally invested until I was fairly well along in the story.

High stakes, lots of action. I’m not sure my trouble getting involved was the fault of the book. So, recommended, because I like the series as a whole.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Fool Moon,’ by Jim Butcher

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Many of my reading friends seem to be fans of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, a fusion of hard-boiled detective and fantasy stories. Harry is a working wizard operating in Chicago. At the beginning of Fool Moon, he is roused from a dry period in his career when his cop friend, Karrin Murphy, calls him in to look at the scene of a horrific murder – lots of blood, and gigantic wolf prints on the floor to boot. Harry isn’t an expert on lycanthropy, but he studies up on it quick, learning that there are several kinds of werewolf, and what he’s dealing with here is the baddest of them all.

Which leads us into a very complex story involving hostile police, hostile FBI agents, hostile werewolves, and hostile mobsters, all at odds with each other, but mostly agreed in not liking Harry. Much blood will be spilled before we get to the big final showdown.

I read one Harry Dresden book already (the first), and wasn’t greatly taken with it. My Butcher Brigade friends said I should try it again – the books get better. I have to say, I still don’t get it. The writing wasn’t bad, but it didn’t grab me. My main problem, I think, was that I just have a visceral reaction to the mechanics of Magic. Gandalf’s okay, because he’s a supernatural being (essentially an angel). But potions and magic incantations and pentagrams and all that stuff – it repels me.

Also, I sometimes had trouble following the story. In particular, the penultimate climactic scene involves a pit trap below some kind of wooden superstructure, and for the life of me I couldn’t picture the thing in my mind.

So I guess I’m not going to add the Harry Dresden books to my reading rotation. But lots of people like them, so you may react differently. The story, I must admit, was exciting, and sometimes stirring. And by the way, I should note that there’s lots of violence and gore.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder Unseen,’ by bruce Beckham

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Bruce Beckham’s Inspector Skelgill series, set in Cumbria, continues with Murder Unseen, though Skelgill himself takes a somewhat reduced role this time out. He’s off on a different assignment (and on holiday) much of the time, so the focus is on DS Emma Jones, his subordinate, mentee and secret admirer. DS Leyton, the other main member of the team, has a smaller case of his own to look into.

Lisa Jackson, an attractive young employee at a Carlisle design firm, walks into the office one morning and disappears from the face of the earth. The office is in a blind alley, and there is no back exit from the building.

A suspect quickly appears. Ray Piper, a married man and co-worker who recently ended an affair with Lisa, is seen with his car backed up to the office door shortly after her disappearance. But he has an explanation for every suspicious act and piece of evidence in the case, and it’s notoriously difficult to prosecute a murder without a corpus delicti. As time passes, the team will begin to despair of a conviction – until Skelgill himself returns to apply his intuitive investigative approach, and his close familiarity with the local terrain.

The Skelgill books aren’t highly charged thrillers, and that suits me just fine. They’re slower, quieter, and more character-driven than most mysteries, and the author loves to pause to describe the Lake District scenery. I enjoyed Murder Unseen, and recommend it.

I do wish Skelgill and Jones would get together, though. If she waits for him to make a move, she’ll probably wait forever.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Serpentine,’ by Jonathan Kellerman

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Below all that, the Valley was a vast circuit board, brown and white and beige, with dots of coral red where tile roofs sprouted like spores.

Brand new Alex Delaware novels are not cheap, but I can never resist buying them as soon as they’re available for Kindle. Because they’re that good. The premise (civilian psychologist assists police detective in solving crimes) has gotten a little threadbare over the years, but the storytelling has not diminished.

In Serpentine, Detective Milo Sturgis (the least gay homosexual in literature) asks Alex to consult on a case that’s been dumped in his lap by the powers that be, something he deeply resents. A city council member has pressured Milo’s boss to “strongly suggest” that he reopen a very cold case. It involves the death of a woman whose charred body was found in a burned-out Cadillac on Mulholland Drive back in the 1980s. A bullet in the body indicated it was actually a murder, but the case was never solved. The woman’s daughter is now a very wealthy woman, and she’d like to learn why her mother died.

Milo is prepared to hate Ellie Barker, the rich daughter, but she turns out to be an extremely nice person, very apologetic about asking for special attention, but hungry to learn about her origins. The evidence itself is suspiciously thin – it’s almost as if the original detectives, and several who picked it up cold over the years, did no work at all. All Ellie has of her mother’s things are one old photograph and a serpentine necklace.

Working from almost no evidence, the team spreads its net wide, employing shoe-leather investigation and a fair amount of psychological dead reckoning. A lot of lies are revealed, and gradually a story of remarkable evil comes to light.

What I particularly liked about Serpentine was that, unlike most books labeled “psychological thriller” these days, it actually lived up to its advertising. Most “psychological thrillers” nowadays devolve into obligatory slasher stuff. There’s violence in Serpentine, but the real climax is what it should be – a psychological shocker. An extremely good one.

Cautions for the usual – depraved goings on, some rough language. This book takes us a little further into the lives of homosexuals than I enjoy, but, as in all Kellerman’s books, there are delightful moments of anti-PC sensibility. Highly recommended.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Smoke Screen,’ by Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger

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I see I forgot to review the second book in Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger’s new detective/journalist mystery series, starring Oslo police inspector Alexander Blix and writer Emma Ramm.

Smoke Screen opens tragically, with a bang, as a bomb goes off during Oslo’s New Year’s Eve celebration. Emma, who was left with a phobic fear of “countdowns” due to the horrific case she just finished, has gone to Oslo harbor for the midnight fireworks, just to face the big countdown involved. A tragic choice – her new boyfriend, who had come down to be with her, is killed in the explosion.

Another victim of that bombing is a woman named Patricia Semplass, who has been sought by the police for ten years, as a suspect in the kidnapping of her own daughter. Meanwhile, her husband, in prison for killing a man involved in the kidnapping, has received a photograph of a young girl in the mail. He is convinced it’s his daughter, who hasn’t been seen since the kidnapping.

Blix and Emma both get caught up in an investigation that just seems to grow more convoluted and contradictory as it goes. In the end, both their lives will be endangered, and a tragic choice will be made by the least likely person.

Smoke Screen wasn’t bad. I still don’t like this series as well as Horst’s Wisting books, but there were genuine surprises, and the attitude here remains more positive than in your general run of Scandinavian Noirs, so I give it a thumbs up.

Cautions for what you’d expect.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Death Deserved,’ by Jorn Lier HOrst and Thomas Enger

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As I never tire of telling you, I’m not a huge fan of Scandinavian Noir as a literary genre. My samplings indicate that most such books ought to be classed as depressants and dispensed only with a doctor’s prescription. However, I make an exception for Jørn Lier Horst’s William Wisting novels. (I first discovered Wisting, as I also never tire of telling you, while helping to translate the Wisting TV series, now available on the Sundance Channel).

It’s been a while since a new Wisting book has been released in English, though. But I was happy to discover that author Horst has teamed up with another Norwegian mystery author, Thomas Enger, to produce a new police series, about an Oslo detective named Alexander Blix. The first book in the series is Death Deserved.

Alexander Blix is a top-notch detective, but somewhat the worse for wear. Years ago he was involved in a shooting that’s still studied at the police academy. He was exonerated, but his career has always been under a shadow. His former partner (and former friend) is now his boss.

When a legendary female long-distance runner disappears from her home, almost the only clue left behind is a race number (1) taped to the TV. Since the woman had recently published a memoir entitled, Always Number One, that number seems to have something to do with the criminal’s motives.

Over the next few days famous people start disappearing or being murdered all around the city, each of them associated with a particular number. It looks like somebody is doing a macabre countdown.

The first person on the original crime scene was a young celebrity reporter, Emma Ramm. Suddenly she’s covering her very first hard news story – and Blix can’t resist helping her out a little. He has a secret reason for this, which the reader will learn in time.

Meanwhile, Blix is dealing with having a celebrity in his own family. His daughter, of whom he has seen little since her mother left him, is currently a contestant on a big Norwegian reality show along the lines of Big Brother. And gradually he begins to suspect that the celebrity-hunting murderer may have his eye on whoever wins that show.

I liked Death Deserved, though not as much as the Wisting books. It suffered (in my opinion) from the natural defects of the criminal mastermind story – this sort of thing never happens in the real world, and gets pretty implausible as the plot works itself out.

But the final showdown was exciting and well crafted, with a certain emotional resonance that pleased me.

There’s one excursion into the world of big evangelicalism – a sequence involving a venal celebrity pastor. Not surprisingly, they don’t get the jargon right – but the man’s a plain grifter, so I suppose it doesn’t matter much. I was pleased that the translator, Anne Bruce, translated “prest” as “pastor” rather than “priest,” which is my preferred interpretation. In fact, the translation as a whole earned my coveted admiration.

I also note, with appreciation, that the translator got a thank you in the Acknowledgements (which are otherwise too long and too cute).

Not a bad book. I’ll be reading the next.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Prodigal Son,’ by Gregg Hurwitz

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“That’s the point of dating,” she said. “To, like, get to know someone.”

“The guy’s a communications major—ironic given his lack of verbal acuity—and he barely maintains a two-point oh. Been on academic probation twice. And he had a jaywalking ticket—”

“Uh, you just butchered six dudes in an impound lot.”

“Context is everything.”

Imagine you finished reading a James Bond novel, and felt you’d been made a wiser and better person.

That’s the effect (at least for this reader) of reading Gregg Hurwitz’s Orphan X series of thrillers. It’s a pretty neat trick, one any author ought to admire.

As you may recall, our hero, Evan Smoak, has lived three lives so far. First he was an orphan in a group home, abandoned and hopeless. Then he was recruited into the government’s super-top-secret Orphan program, becoming a deadly covert assassin. Then, after extricating himself from that life, he became The Nowhere Man, living in a luxury condo in LA, answering calls for help from the desperate, saving them if he can. But as Prodigal Son begins, he’s transitioned to yet another new life. Pardoned through a special deal with no less a personage than the president of the United States, he has given up his vigilante career, and he finds himself untethered in the cosmos. He is a physically fit minimalist with OCD. His human contacts are few. There’s Joey, a 16-year-old girl he rescued from the Orphan project, who does computer hacking for him and has become a sort of surrogate daughter. There’s his neighbor Mia, the single mother of a boy who desperately wants a father figure. There’s real chemistry with Mia, but she works for the DA’s office, and has figured out she doesn’t want to know too much about his life.

Then Evan gets a call over his secure phone, from a woman who claims to be his mother. He refuses to believe it at first, but finally he goes to meet her in Buenos Aires. She wants him to save the life of a man named Andrew Duran, a man who owes money to loan sharks and is working at a city impound lot, trying to make his child support payments. Evan can’t figure out why she cares about this guy, but it’s something he can do for his mother. Of course, that means breaking his deal with the president. And it will put him in the sights of a lethal brother-sister assassin team and the richest man in the world, who has lots of high-tech military-industrial-complex toys.

The stakes keep rising, the twists and turns and setbacks escalate to impossible levels. And yet, the really compelling thing about Prodigal Son is Evan’s personal journey. Meeting his mother after all these years sets him to contemplating what it means to be human, realizing that he has to find some way to connect with humanity. And step by step, he starts doing just that. It’s touching and inspiring – and sometimes funny.

Loved this book, in spite of the slightly preposterous plot (standard in the series) and the cliff-hanger ending (to be fair, all the plot threads had been tied up, so this was more of a cliff appendix). Highly recommended. Cautions for language and violence.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Chain Reaction,’ by Bill Kitson

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After workmen discover a pair of mummified human fingers (female) while remodeling a country hotel, the local police begin a search for some missing person who could possibly belong to them. Meanwhile various prostitutes are disappearing, possible victims of a serial killer.

The timing could have been better for Detective Mike Nash. One of his best team members has just left on vacation (or holiday, as they say over there), and he himself is having trouble handling the absence from his life of the woman he’s fallen in love with. But he’ll need to bring his best game to handle what’s going to be the most horrific case he’s seen in his whole career.

The book is Chain Reaction, by Bill Kitson. I found that I’d already read one of the books in this series. At the time it didn’t impress me enough to continue with the next, but I found Chain Reaction quite enjoyable, after a string of disappointing reads lately. Mike Nash is a relatable cop, and the story was well told, with a nice twist at the end. Too many woman cops in the cast, as is the custom these days, but the book was good.

Recommended. The main cautions are for disturbing themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Murder Revisited,’ by William Coleman

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Jack Mallory is a police detective in (as far as I could tell) an unnamed American city. In William Coleman’s Murder Revisited, first in the series, he is called off the investigation of a murdered young woman when the chief of police (whom he hates, and it’s mutual) orders him to investigate a cold case. 20 years ago, Timothy Waters was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, whose father is now governor of the state. Recently he was released from prison, because all the evidence against him disappeared. Jack is ordered, literally, to find evidence that will send Timothy back to prison, and to look no further. Jack has no intention of railroading anybody, and goes to work doing a real investigation.

Meanwhile, Jack is approached by the cop assigned to assist the detective investigating the first murder – that detective is notoriously lazy and sloppy at his work, and the cop is concerned another miscarriage of justice is coming. So Jack agrees to look into that one too.

Those are just two of the multitudinous plot threads that entwine to make up this unusually complicated story. There were too many coincidences in it for this reader’s taste. Also, author Coleman attempted to make his characters human and complex, but only succeeded (in my perception) in making them one-dimensional in complicated and sometimes contradictory ways.

The chapters were very short, the writing undistinguished. I didn’t care for this book. Maybe smarter people will find it easier to follow along.

Fiction, Reviews

‘One Last Lesson,’ by Iain Cameron

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A dog walker finds the corpse of a young woman hidden in the bushes at the edge of a golf course. The girl was a student, beautiful, smart and popular. But Detective Inspector Angus Henderson of the Bristol police learns she had a dark side. She’d been a model and actress for a popular porn site. Not only that, but one of her university instructors was among the site’s owners.

That’s the highly colored premise of One Last Lesson, the first volume in a mystery series starring DI Henderson, a native of Scotland relocated to the south of England. The story follows relatively predictable lines, and the characters never really came to life for this reader. Also, the final resolution kind of came out of left field.

There were hints, however, of relatively conservative views on certain issues on the author’s part. So points for that.

My main problem with the book had to do with punctuation. I’ve seen the same thing in a couple books I’ve read recently – a deficit of commas. I’m not talking about omitting the Oxford Comma (though I have opinions on the subject), but about ordinary commas the kind that separate clauses making it necessary for the reader to read the sentence twice in order to sort the thoughts out. No author should do this. One of the things the reader pays you for is to separate those thoughts out for them.

Verdict: It was OK, but it won’t ease your bereavement over the loss of Colin Dexter.