STATE OF MIND
By John Katzenbach
Ballantine, 409 pages, $24
With his previous novel, “The Shadow Man,” John Katzenbach solidified his reputation as a suspense writer who could plunge his readers deep into the heart of madness and evil. In his latest, he gives us not one main character, but two: Susan and Jeffrey Clayton, sister and brother, both in their mid-30s, whose tyrannical father was a suspect in the ritualistic murder of a young woman nearly 25 years earlier. The father, who was never charged with the crime, later committed suicide under suspicious circumstances. As the book begins, Susan is a puzzle writer for Miami magazine who comes home one night to find a cryptic note in her mailbox stating: I Have Found You. Meanwhile, Jeffrey, a professor of abnormal psychology at the University of Massachusetts, is approached by a policeman who seeks his help in finding a murderer who arranges his victims’ bodies in the same grotesque positions as the earlier killer. To Susan and Jeffrey it begins to become horrifyingly clear that their father is not dead and is including them in a sick game of cat-and-mouse with the authorities. Katzenbach sets his tale in the future, when America has become a country in which crime is so rampant that security police are everywhere and violence is a way of life. The futuristic perspective is at first intriguing but eventually becomes a distraction. And that’s a shame, because the heart of the story–two children confronting their killer father–is gripping and churns up plenty of thrills.
WALKING BACK THE CAT
By Robert Littell
Overlook, 220 pages, $24.95
Sometimes called “the American le Carre,” Robert Littell has built a solid reputation with outings such as “The Amateur” and “The Defection of A.J. Lewinter.” In his latest, set on a Surma Apache Indian reservation in New Mexico, a deep-cover KGB agent from the Soviet era is given orders by his handler to assassinate a number of young Apaches. The killer–code-named Parsifal–presses his boss for reasons but is stonewalled. In the meantime, a Gulf War veteran named Finn arrives in town to hide out from the law and becomes friends with the tribe’s leader and family. From them he learns of an extortion scheme by the Mafia in a local casino that has led to the deaths of several tribe members. Eventually, Finn is set up for an ambush by Parsifal, but once the assassin learns that his previous victims were innocent players in a particularly ruthless game of local politics, he joins forces with Finn in going after the bad guys. Good local color and lots of solid characterization here, both in the major and minor players; Littell pulls it all together with cool elegance and restraint.
OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH
By Aljean Harmetz
Scribner, 286 pages, $22
Eight-year-old David Greene climbs out his bedroom window and runs away from home after a fight with his mother and younger brother. Walking to a nearby video arcade, he is snatched by a stranger named Denver, who tells David that his family doesn’t want him and that he is David’s new father. What follows is the painstaking search for the child, as well as his brave efforts to avoid death at his captor’s hands. This is, of course, ancient plot material, and our involvement depends on the author’s ability to breathe new life into it. For the most part, Harmetz is sucessful: The book has a subdued tone, and the characters — particularly Detective Angus West, the beleaguered investigating officer–are well-sketched. This is a confident, quietly engaging debut.
THE PRESENCE
By John Saul
Fawcett, 338 pages, $25
Anthropologist Katharine Sundquist arrives in Haleakala, a town on the Hawaiian island of Maui, with her 16 year-old son to study bones found near an extinct volcano. Mysteriously, the bones seem to defy all classification, human or otherwise, and soon Katharine begins to suspect that the wealthy Japanese industrialist who owns the land where the bones were discovered is not an altogether kind-hearted soul. While Katharine struggles with her work, she also has to keep an eye on her asthmatic son, Michael, who has fallen in with a wild crowd of locals–one of whom dies under mysterious circumstances. Even more distressing, Michael shows signs of being possessed by a force that may be gradually killing him. While Saul weaves back and forth between mother and son in telling his story, the heart of the taut novel is Michael’s physical and emotional descent into terror. A rousing good story by one of the best and most consistent.
SIBERIAN LIGHT
By Robin White
Delacorte Press, 441 pages, $23.95
In a small town in Siberia, three men are brutally murdered, and it’s up to the local mayor, Gregori Nowek, to investigate the deaths. Two of the victims were from Nowek’s militia, and the third, Andrei Ryzkhov, was a black marketeer who may have been smuggling bones of the nearly extinct Siberian tiger. A prime suspect in the case is Anna Verskaya, an American environmentalist who was supposed to be working with Ryzkhov to save those same tigers. Nowek doesn’t really believe that Anna was the killer, and in fact it soon becomes apparent that she has uncovered a conspiracy that will threaten the life of both her and the mayor. Plenty of good descriptions of the harsh and beautiful Siberian landscape, but this suspenser moves a little too slow to generate any heat.
