COMEBACK
By Richard Stark
Mysterious, $18
It’s been a heck of a year for Donald E. Westlake, whose terrific summer thriller, “The Ax,” gave new meaning to the term “corporate downsizing” and who will be honored next month by his fellow genre practitioners at the Bouchercon Mystery Convention. “Comeback” marks the re-emergence of Westlake’s celebrated Parker series, written under the pen name Richard Stark.
In 1974, after 20 novels, Westlake put Stark–and Parker, his cold-blooded thief–into mothballs, ostensibly because the author felt ’70s readers might be looking for something less hard-boiled. Well, thanks to Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy and Quentin Tarantino, the times have proven ripe for a return of the noirest of the noir.
In “Comeback,” Parker is enlisted in a scheme to raid the kitty of a crooked TV evangelist while he pulls the wool over the eyes of his flock at a St. Louis crusade. The $400,000 heist goes down with precision, but one of the inside guys turns soft and one of Parker’s gang gets greedy. With so much money in play, everybody from the cops to the preacher’s security chief is put on full combat alert, with Parker scrambling to get out of town in one piece.
This is icy stuff, and the author wastes few words as he lays out his spare and riveting tale of betrayal and escape. It’s great to have Parker back (another novel is due in 1998), along with all of Westlake’s other memorable creations.
RING GAME
By Pete Hautman
Simon and Schuster, $22
If Miami’s Carl Hiaasen were to be hogtied and forced to live in Lake Wobegon, he probably would end up writing about the same desperate characters who populate the criminally insane novels of Minnesota’s Pete Hautman (“Mortal Nuts,” “Short Money”).
In “Ring Game,” for example, we’re introduced to Hyatt Hilton, a purveyor of counterfeit Evian water, who, in seeking revenge against a phony eternal-life church he once led, kidnaps his prairie-Madonna fiance and threatens to drain her blood for the benefit of a tabloid TV news magazine. When Hilton’s future father-in-law smells one of the many rats to arrive on the scene, he hires Joe Crow–a bodybuilder and occasionally lucky poker player–to investigate the gangly con man’s background. Meanwhile, the underachieving Crow has his hands full trying to avoid an overamped steroid junkie and fish-bone-wearing female powerlifter.
Think “Fargo,” minus Frances McDormand’s marvelous turn as an imperturbable North Woods cop, and you’ll have an idea of what to expect in “Ring Game.” These are the people all of our moms warned us about.
BLOOD RED ROSES
By Margaret Lawrence
Avon, $23
This special novel picks up right where Lawrence’s 1996 debut sensation, “Hearts and Bones,” left off. It’s the tinderbox summer of 1786, on the edge of the Maine wilderness, and luckless Hannah Trevor is trying desperately to hang on to her simple existence as a healer and midwife.
As the fiercely independent widow of a despised Tory–and mother of a bastard child–Hannah is feeling the wrath of an intolerant citizenry unaccustomed to democracy. When she is threatened with the loss of her 8-year-old daughter and becomes chief suspect in a grisly multiple murder, she schemes to escape the mob but lingers in an effort to clear her name. The search for the true killer reveals a conspiracy of hypocrisy and corruption that spares almost no one in Rufford.
Like the novel that preceded it, “Hearts and Bones” can be read as an engaging whodunit and as a richly observed period piece. Lawrence uses excerpts from trial transcripts and journals to complement a narrative filled with suspense, romance and fascinating details of post-Colonial life. At once deeply moving and educational, it would make a wonderful addition to a college’s history curriculum.
PERSON OR PERSONS UNKNOWN
By Bruce Alexander
Putnam’s, $22.95
Another novel that’s as enlightening as it is entertaining is “Person or Persons Unknown,” which extends Bruce Alexander’s fine series featuring the blind magistrate Sir John Fielding. Set in 18th Century London, this fourth installment finds Fielding–and his teenage ward, Jeremy Proctor–involved in an investigation into the grisly murders of several Covent Garden prostitutes. (Even in the shadows of history it’s tough to escape serial killers.)
What distinguishes this series–and these particular crimes–is the evocative period prose and intricate detail employed by Alexander (a k a Bruce Cook) to expose the guilty parties. He transports us back in time to 1770, into the crowded stalls of the open-air market, the libraries of the learned and London’s teeming tenements.
Fielding and Proctor make a terrific team. They complement each other out of necessity, love and mutual respect, and much can be learned about the evolution of our own legal system from their discussions of British law.
FEAR OF FRYING
By Jill Churchill
Avon, $22
While some of the punny-to-a-fault titles in Churchill’s eight-book Jane Jeffry series (“Silence of the Hams,” “War and Peas”) may qualify her for the Mystery Writers Hall of Shame, the stories do benefit from sprightly writing and familiar characters. In “Fear of Frying,” her crime-fighting North Shore mom finds herself trapped in the boonies with a disappearing corpse and some creepy rustics.
Jeffry is among a group of suburban parents invited to check out a lodge in northern Wisconsin that might be leased for a school excursion. After a rain-shortened campfire, the amateur sleuth and her best friend literally stumble upon the body of one their neighbors. Minutes later, however, the same fellow wanders into the lodge none the worse for wear. So what gives?
The solution, while somewhat predictable, leads back to Chicago and the usual intricacies of life in the suburbs. A good title for fans of less demanding mysteries.
IN BRIEF: Just like clockwork, Dick Francis is back with his 36th novel in almost as many years, “10 lb. Penalty” (Putnam, $24.95). The 76-year-old jockey-turned-writer’s usual mix of horsemanship and detective work can be found in this story of an 18-year-old aspiring jockey who forsakes his dream of becoming a steeplechase rider to help his father realize his dream as a politician. The title refers to a prohibitively high weight that can be assigned to a horse in a handicap race, and it begins to explain the burden placed on the son as his father’s enemies take aim on them.
Kinky Friedman also returns with “Road Kill” (Simon and Schuster, $23), the 10th in his series of laugh-a-minute mysteries starring . . . himself. This installment finds the Kinkster on the road with old pal and country-music legend Willie Nelson, who disappears after his tour bus plows into an Indian shaman and he’s informed of a curse put on his head. This chummy whodunit takes a while to get smoking–unlike Kinky’s cigars–but longtime fans of both the author and the missing minstrel will find plenty to like in this literary backstage pass.
