HOME FIRES
By Margaret Maron
Mysterious Press, $22
In “Home Fires,” Margaret Maron once again so effectively conveys the pull of the North Carolina landscape that even those of us with no country roots more recent than the plains of Russia still feel like we’re coming home: “A half-moon was up and the air was full of the summer sounds of frogs and cicadas and crickets. We crossed Possum Creek onto Knott land over a homemade bridge of logs and boards, then took a west-branching lane that led past a twenty-acre tobacco field. It must have been topped that afternoon, for the smell of green tobacco was strong on the air and wilted pink blossoms littered the ground between the rows.”
Judge Deborah Knott, Maron’s compelling and totally credible central character, fits into that landscape with ease. Part of a huge family, young enough to remember (and even mourn) her own wild past, she knows enough about the strengths and weaknesses of the gene pool not to be surprised by the vagaries of human behavior. When her nephew A.K. is arrested with two other teenagers for vandalizing a graveyard and then becomes a suspect in a series of fires that destroy black churches, Knott doesn’t gasp in mock horror or overreact with heavy moralizing. She’s a pragmatist, just like her reformed bootlegger father: Their liberalism and determination to treat people equally isn’t skin deep. So when a tough, young, black, female prosecutor accuses Knott of being too soft on youthful black offenders, we quickly see the problem is with the prosecutor, not the judge.
Balancing a murder mystery (two bodies are found in one of the torched churches) with some heavy social relevance–plus the bucolic pleasures of a pig roast and the amazement of an old woman easing the pain of a burn victim with a process known as “fire-talking”–calls for some expert, fearless juggling and high-wire walking. Not to worry: Maron is working at top form, and there’s nobody better.
MAMA ROCKS THE EMPTY CRADLE
By Nora DeLoach
Bantam, $21.95
There’s another kind of Southern honesty and grit on display in Nora DeLoach’s latest book about Atlanta-based paralegal Simone Covington and her mother, a social worker in Otis, S.C., who can’t help getting involved in murders. Mama Candi (named for her golden complexion, like candied yams) might appear to be cozy and comfortable on the surface, ready to whip up a splendid meal or quiet a crying child at a moment’s notice, but underneath she’s as tough and sharp-edged in her own way as her urban daughter.
“She was a tall girl whose head strutted two sets of weave,” says Simone about Cricket Childs. “Her complexion was mocha and her green dress fit her body like a wet suit. Cricket had a good figure except for a narrow behind that stuck out like a wad of chewing gum.” Mama might have been somewhat less acerbic in her description, especially after Childs is found dead and her baby girl missing. But both Covington women are tough and shrewd survivors of a society that tries to force women, particularly blacks, into molds. Childs might not have made it, but you can be sure her daughter will have a better shot–if the Covingtons have anything to say about it.
CRIME OF SILENCE
By Patricia Carlon
Soho, $21
It should come as no surprise to readers of last year’s “The Running Woman” that Australian ace Patricia Carlon is an absolute master of wringing every drop of suspense from an apparently simple phrase or an exchange of glances.
“Crime of Silence” starts out as a story of compassion: The father of a kidnapped child who was returned after a ransom was secretly paid now agrees to help another father in the same perilous situation. But as Evan Kiley, the reporter whose son has most recently been taken, begins to play on the guilt of businessman George Winton, we watch in growing horror as the story changes into something much darker. A mysterious woman dies, a body is disposed of, lives and deaths are linked by outwardly random actions. By the time they get to the chilling conclusion, most readers will be eager for more of Carlon’s unique brand of understated virtuosity.
THE MAN WITH NO FACE
By Peter Turnbull
St. Martin’s, $21.95
Scotland’s Peter Turnbull has quietly become the best in the police-procedural business by making his police as interesting as his procedure. His detectives at P Division in Glasgow are a blend of wisdom and humanity, doing the dull, dirty detail work and coming up with occasional flashes of insight.
The book opens with the discovery of a man whose face was blown off to slow identification of the body. But Sgt. Ray Sussock, tired by a double shift and more than ready for retirement, still recognizes the clothes as those given released prisoners after lengthy sentences, which narrows the search to men just let out, because nobody would keep that outfit longer than necessary. Similar moments move the case along and give the detectives subtly distinct personalties. By pushing just the right ego buttons on an antiques dealer, one officer links the murdered man to a suspicious fire and insurance fraud. Another police officer, disturbed by his wife’s odd behavior when he stays home later than usual one morning, gets a clue to her actions while meeting with his superior. Two detectives with adjacent desks profit from an overheard telephone request. It’s the buzz of the mundane turned into music by an artist’s ear.
DEAD LETTER
By Jane Waterhouse
Putnam, $23.95
What makes Jane Waterhouse’s books about true-crime writer Garner Quinn so much fun to read is that both never seem to know when to quit. You’d think that after being subjected to so much terror and personal humiliation in “Graven Images” and “Shadow Walk,” Quinn would listen to all those people who constantly urge her to (1) rethink her dangerous line of work, wherein every new book proposal turns into a death-defying situation, and (2) give up on the weird sculptor Dane Blackmoor who dumped her in her first outing. But, no–“Dead Letter” begins with Garner desperately scanning the mail in her New Jersey coastal home for word from Blackmoor and finding instead the first in a series of really nasty threats from an obsessed fan. Things get so dangerous that a top security expert named Reed Corbin is called in, and for a while it appears this fascinating hunk will solve both of Quinn’s problems. The wily Waterhouse, however, has other surprising and satisfying solutions up her well-knit sleeve.
IN BRIEF: If you like historical mysteries with some literary meat on their old bones, Oakley Hall’s Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades (University of California Press, $23) should hit the spot. The veteran novelist conjures up a wonderfully yeasty San Francisco in the 1870s, where Bierce is editing the weekly Hornet and waging war on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Somebody is slicing up street women and leaving playing cards as suggestive clues. Aided by a former firefighter and aspiring writer named Tom Redmond, the acid-tongued Bierce tries to tie the killings to his corporate enemies. The dialogue and detail are sung with perfect pitch.
