LUCKY YOU
By Carl Hiaasen
Knopf, $24
When describing Carl Hiaasen’s comic-thrillers for an uninitiated reader, it rarely pays to explain the intricacies of a particular plot. It’s much smarter to say, “Trust me, you’ll love it,” and then back up your advice with a wager for lunch. Works every time.
“Lucky You” is no exception. Try to follow this scenario:
There are two winning tickets in the Florida Lotto. Half of the $28-million jackpot belongs to a feisty veterinarian’s assistant–the aptly named JoLayne Lucks–who plans to use her share to save a wildlife habitat, while the other ticket was bought by Bode and Chub, two dimwitted ex-cons with dreams of starting their own militia. Just to prove how amazingly greedy and stupid they are, Hiaasen has these beer-addled white supremacists contrive a plan to steal JoLayne’s ticket.
Also on the trail of JoLayne is Tom Krone, a jaded newspaper reporter who has been assigned to her story by a pun-happy features editor. Krone arrives in the tiny town of Grange–an outpost for several religious charlatans–almost simultaneously with Bode and Chub, and he takes it upon himself to help JoLayne recover her ticket after she is beaten and robbed. Their search takes them to the mangrove islets of the Florida Keys, where Bode and Chub, who have also kidnapped a Hooters waitress, are lying low for a while.
Krone and Lucks easily track down the varmints, and, typically for a Hiaasen novel, the resulting confrontation is as uproarious as it is horrific. So, too, are the rubes and rustics who populate the book’s various subplots. (The writer’s many fans know it is never wise to stray too far from the turnpike when visiting Hiaasen’s Florida.)
All this may sound like a bit much to digest, but, like all of Hiaasen’s novels, “Lucky You” is hilariously subversive and wonderfully entertaining. Trust me, you’ll love it.
MURDER BOOK
By Richard Rayner
Houghton Mifflin, $25
Dense and disturbing, “Murder Book” paints a noirish portrait of the Los Angeles Police Department–and the City of Fallen Angels–in the wake of the O.J. Simpson debacle. It is a time in the city’s history when
a homicide detective or TV reporter can become a celebrity just by his or her proximity to a notorious crime, and celebrities court notoriety of their own with their cynical refusal to abide by laws the rest of us are forced to obey.
Billy McGrath is a philosopher-cop, and a student of crime–one of the best of the best. Humiliated by the outcome of another high-profile trial–a veteran actor is acquitted of killing his wife–he vows to find a way to even the score. His vengeful pursuit coincides with an investigation into the brutal slaying of the mother of a local crack kingpin, who is made an unwitting participant in McGrath’s plot.
The edgy scenario moves nimbly from tony Beverly Hills and Palos Verdes to the ghetto–often in El Nino conditions–and on to the shadowy waterfront district. There’s plenty of high-voltage action, but much of the drama comes from McGrath’s battle with his inner demons and in his efforts to keep his daughter from moving with her mother to Seattle.
“Murder Book” makes a fitting companion to “L.A. Confidential”–the book and movie–as it walks the same emotional beat as James Ellroy’s LAPD, only 40 years later.
SHADOW WALK
By Jane Waterhouse
Putnam, $23.95
A quarter-century after the fact, retired true-crime writer Garner Quinn remains haunted by the ritualistic deaths of a childhood friend and most of her family. Now, she has returned home to Spring Lake, N.J., where she’s trying to make sense of her own life, insecure in the knowledge that the killer–Gordon Spangler, the
dead girl’s father–is still at large. It isn’t long before a journalist friend reveals to Quinn that he has come into contact with Spangler and hopes to revive his career by exposing the still-active psychopath.
Too soon, however, the journalist turns up dead–apparently by his own hand–and Quinn decides to track down Spangler. Her search takes her down the usual dark alleys and unmarked streets of the genre, but a detour into the horsy precincts of northern Virginia helps Jane Waterhouse open up the novel and make room for some interesting characters.
Quinn again makes a compelling, three-dimensional protagonist, and the crime-solving is first-rate.
MAMA STALKS THE PAST
By Nora DeLoach
Bantam, $21.95
You can almost taste the grits and sweet-potato pie when paging through this brisk and entertaining whodunit, the third in Nora DeLoach’s series of “Mama” novels. Grace Covington–a k a Candi–is introduced by the publisher as “an African-American Miss Marple” whose turf is rural Otis, S.C., and whose crime-solving prowess even impresses the local sheriff.
Here, Candi inherits a large parcel of land from a neighbor she barely knows, thus winning the enmity of the woman’s son. Coincidental to Candi’s effort to find out why she has received the gift, various members of her neighbor’s family are found poisoned, a fate she can’t avoid either. Once out of the emergency room, however, nothing can stop Candi from unraveling the tangled roots of her benefactor’s family tree and using her Southern cooking to help trap the killer.
DeLoach writes in a warm, over-the-backyard-fence style that rewards readers with its cozy atmosphere and recognizable characters.
BELLOWS FALLS
By Archer Mayor
Mysterious, $22
Archer Mayor’s estimable police lieutenant, Joe Gunther, returns to remind us that even bucolic Vermont isn’t safe from the nastiness that plagues the rest of the country. In the eighth novel in the series, Gunther is asked by the police chief of blue-collar Bellows Falls to investigate charges of sexual harassment against one of his officers. The frameup is the work of a local drug dealer and is easily adjudicated, but the case inspires a larger discussion of spousal abuse, while also revealing a network of teenage felons.
Vermont provides a convincing setting for Mayor’s mischief, which is delivered in an evocative and uncluttered manner. Gunther makes for an informative tour guide of the state’s darker precincts and, in “Bellows Falls,” he again proves himself to be an enlightened and dedicated sleuth.
IN BRIEF: With “Night Passage” (Putnam, $22.95), Robert B. Parker introduces a new crime-fiction series and an attractive new hero. As we meet Jesse Stone–a former minor-league ballplayer who traded his glove for an LAPD badge and a bottle of booze–he is trying to recoup from a series of disgraces by taking a gig as police chief of Paradise, Mass. What the town lacks in size it makes up for in corruption. No one will mistake the more damaged and vulnerable Stone for the author’s other star creation, Spenser, but the writing style belongs unmistakably to Parker, and his fans aren’t likely to be disappointed.
Just in time for the holidays comes “G Is for Grafton” (Holt, $25), an exhaustive guide to the world of Sue Grafton’s beloved Kinsey Milhone. Although the author has only made it to “M” in her popular series of California-based novels, Natalie Hevener Kaufman and Carol McGinnis Kay make full use of the alphabet in delivering the goods on a P.I. who knows a good peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwich when she tastes one. The scholarly package comes with photos of likely Milhone hangouts, and it is fully indexed.
Another sure-fire gift idea is provided by “The Best American Mystery Stories 1997” (Houghton Mifflin, $25, $13 paper), which offers bite-size bits of prose from such masters as James Crumley, Elizabeth George, Jonathan Kellerman, Elmore Leonard, Joyce Carol Oates and George Pelacanos. Editor Otto Penzler and Robert B. Parker picked the 20 stories included in the inaugural edition of the series, which complements similar anthologies of essays, sports writing and short stories from the publisher.
