NO SAFE PLACE
By Richard North Patterson
Random House, $25.95
Over the last few years, national politics has been a topic to which fewer and fewer suspense writers have turned. So it’s a happy occasion to be able to recommend Richard North Patterson’s latest, “No Safe Place.”
Set in the year 2000, it follows the campaign of Kerry Kilcannon, a U.S. senator running for the Democratic presidential nomination. California is a key state for Kilcannon, but it is also one that brings back bad memories: 12 years earlier, his older brother, James, was assassinated in that state during his own run for the nomination. Kilcannon is portrayed as a Mr. Clean of politics, and he contrasts well to his opponent, Vice President Dick Mason, who never met a special-interest group he didn’t like.
But there is trouble afoot. Nate Cutler, a reporter for a large weekly magazine, has discovered that Kilcannon once had an affair with a reporter covering his campaign. Also, an assassin responsible for a bloodbath at a Boston abortion clinic is now stalking Kilcannon by working for his campaign.
While the main plot, with its echoes of Kennedyesque assassinations, feels a bit derivative, Patterson scores big with his portrayal of the grueling realities of a political campaign. The infighting between advisers and consultants is well-rendered, and the way Kilcannon’s team wrestles with the threat of scandal is riveting. If the book has any problem, it’s an overreliance on speeches. Patterson is obviously fond of writing them, but they slow the plot and are a little too idealistic in this age of spin control. These are small complaints, however, against a piece of storytelling that is highly entertaining.
PERJURY
By Stan Latreille
Crown, $24
Jack Brenner is a burnt-out public defender who has left Chicago and settled down in a small Michigan town to set up a practice with an old friend from law school. But the good life in the country quickly fades when Brenner is assigned by the court to defend a woman, Davey Alden, accused of perjury.
A year earlier, Alden had created a furor when she accused her husband, Joel, of sexually abusing their daughter. On the witness stand during his trial, however, Davey confessed to making up the allegations, and the sympathies of the town turned against her. Now, with the district attorney pushing for a long jail sentence for her perjury, Brenner tries to figure out how to best help his client. Along the way he learns that while she may have committed perjury, Joel may, nevertheless, be a child molester. Complicating matters is the fact that Joel is a local big shot with a lot of strings to pull.
With a style reminiscent of Raymond Chandler’s, debut author Stan Latreille has put together a well-paced, tightly crafted story with distinctive characters and nice twists.
BLOODSTREAM
By Tess Gerritsen
Pocket Books, $23
Tranquility, Maine, is the kind of resort town that is a perfect setting for the brain-altering parasite that turns up in Tess Gerritsen’s latest.
Dr. Claire Elliott has come to the town with her 13-year-old son, Noah, to escape the big city and to get over the death of her husband. But as winter settles in, there’s an outbreak of violence–including the shooting death of a high school biology teacher–among the local teenagers that sets the entire town on edge. Gradually, Elliott suspects a parasite lurking in Locust Lake, where all the local kids go swimming, but her theory is ignored by the locals, who fear losing their resort business. Soon, Noah is showing signs of strange behavior–not to mention a green, glowing earthworm in his sinus.
One of the pleasures of this book is that Gerritsen takes issues that have settled in the popular consciousness–unstoppable microbes, violent teenagers–and makes a scary story out of them.
12 DRUMMERS DRUMMING
By Diana Deverell
Avon Books, $23
Espionage stories with female protagonists are rare, and after reading “12 Drummer’s Drumming,” I found myself wishing for one a little bit saltier than Casey Collins.
In this debut novel, Collins is a U.S. Foreign Service officer (same as author Diana Deverell) who believes that her lover, Stefan Krajewsky, who is a Polish operative for Danish intelligence and a counterterrorist, has died in the terrorist bombing that destroyed Global Flight 500 over Scotland. The blast occurs 10 years to the day after the similar tragedy over Lockerbie in 1988, and Collins, who is also an expert on terrorist activity, wants to find out who is responsible. Unfortunately, her search makes her suspect in the eyes of the FBI and a few other counterintelligence agencies around the world. Soon she’s on the run, relying on the help of friends to discover the truth and to thwart an even more sinister–and on a literary level, idiotic–master plan to blow up 12 airliners on the 12th day of Christmas.
It’s hard to maintain suspense when the stakes are this goofy, and when the heroine frequently behaves like a moody teenager. This one starts off well, but nosedives in the late pages.
PRESIDENTIAL DEAL
By Les Standiford
HarperCollins, $24
In his newest outing, Les Standiford hooks up nice-guy contractor/sleuth John Deal with a plot involving the abduction of the first lady. For his role in helping some Cuban refugees in south Florida, Deal is to receive a medal at a special ceremony involving Linda Sheldon, wife of the president. But terrorists interrupt the occasion, taking Sheldon and Deal hostage, and most of what follows are their struggles to stay alive and flee their captors.
Not a particularly original plot, but Standiford creates such a good chemistry between the two hostages that it becomes easy to ignore the flimsy pretext for the kidnapping. A typically gritty, action-packed outing for this always dependable author.
