TOP BANANA
By Bill James
Foul Play Press/Norton, $23
Bill James is such a tremendous writer that I actually just bought three of his Harpur & Iles books that haven’t been published in America yet. (Don’t tell anyone; that might be enough to get me bounced from the Reviewers’ League.) Meanwhile, his American publisher is doing its part by rushing out “Top Banana,” hot on the heels of last year’s “Roses, Roses,” which wound up on several Top 10 lists.
Detective Chief Supt. Colin Harpur (said to resemble a taller English version of the late boxer Rocky Marciano) plays a largely reactive role this time. Harpur is trying to keep his immediate superior, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, that “feral looney,” from destroying Chief Constable Mark Lane in their unnamed city to the north of London. “Lane’s life was mortally chafed by the ACC’s brilliant rough mind and unstoppable tongue,” James writes, reminding us that he could well be the finest stylist in the genre.
A 13-year-old girl known as Noon is killed while acting as a drug courier near a rundown park. (“Possibly she even realized, or half-realized, that there was something wrong with her life. . . . She wondered whether what had happened to the park had happened to her: a dark, rushed change that would never change back.”) Iles wants the police to make an unholy alliance with top drug dealers to catch the killers, whereas Lane is vehemently against any such deals and favors the already disastrous use of undercover cops. “The risks were gross. Normally, the Chief would have been the first to see it, but terrible anxieties and swelling guilt had begun to fracture his judgement, and even his humanity.”
Hampering Harpur’s efforts to keep the formidable Iles in check is the fact that Harpur had an affair with Iles’ wife several books back, and Iles knows all about it. Harpur is also making a special effort to be a more caring father, to help his teenage daughters get over the murder of their mother in “Roses, Roses”:
“Jill and Harpur were eating tinned mackerel in mustard sauce with canned spicy vegetables. He liked to spread himself a bit on teas when he was home in time. He wanted these meals to stay in their minds when they were older so they could think back to the mackerel and know he did his best for them: thoughts of treats, paid out.”
Where else can you find a mystery series with as many layers of gorgeous stuff?
DEFENSE FOR THE DEVIL
By Kate Wilhelm
St. Martin’s, $24.95
Having made her bed by marrying thorny geologist John Mureau in her last outing, ace Oregon defense attorney Barbara Holloway is now forced to squirm in it. The problem isn’t her total lack of cooking skills: Her father, Frank, has enough of those to spare and will eagerly help out, and the excellent restaurant she has invested in is also at hand. Nor is it the crush of living and office space: Renting two adjoining apartments in a new building in Eugene takes care of that. What really bothers John is the constant danger Barbara’s work conjures up for her, for her family, and now for his children from a previous marriage if they should be around when a case explodes.
By means of some slick, barely legal tap-dancing, Barbara is trying to enable her client, Maggie Folsum, to keep a large lump of cash that her career-criminal husband left behind when he trashed Maggie’s bed-and-breakfast inn and then was found beaten to death. The danger begins when Maggie’s brother-in-law is charged with the murder, even though the most obvious candidate is the crime boss who employed (and was double-crossed by) the late husband.
Will Barbara fight off the IRS in time to defend the innocent brother-in-law? Will the mysterious mobster (powerful enough to make witnesses perjure themselves) actually turn in his minions if pressed hard enough? Will John and Barbara stay together in those two terrific apartments, and will her white sauce ever work? Unlike most writers of legal thrillers, Kate Wilhelm cares as much about her characters as she does about her courtrooms–which is why her books are so much fun to read.
MARY, MARY
By Julie Parsons
Simon & Schuster, $23
This first novel by the producer of an Irish-TV talk show became an overnight success in England, and it’s not hard to see why: It combines excellent writing with a strong, poignant story and a glittering gimmick at its center.
Dr. Margaret Mitchell, who left Ireland for New Zealand when her daughter was an infant, now returns 20 years later as a successful psychiatrist and expert on women’s mental health. Shortly after her return to Dublin to care for her dying mother, Mitchell’s daughter, Mary, is brutally tortured and murdered.
Full of rage and sadness, Mitchell mourns her lost daughter and watches as a once-brilliant, now boozy cop catches Mary’s killer but botches the case against him and raises the possibility of his serving just a short sentence. Enter the gimmick–which I won’t spoil except to point out that anyone who doesn’t have suspicions about Mary’s father hasn’t been paying attention.
Julie Parsons makes Mitchell and her daughter memorable characters who throb with vitality. The final issue is the hot-button of personal retribution, and Meryl Streep is no doubt working on her Irish-New Zealand accent as we speak.
A DARKER PLACE
By Laurie R. King
Bantam, $23.95
The immensely gifted Laurie R. King, creator of two successful and scintillating series, tries something different in her latest book, and if she doesn’t quite pull it off to perfection at least she gives us many moments to remember.
Anne Waverly, a professor of religion at a small Western college, also works undercover as an infiltrator of possibly dangerous cults. Eighteen years before, Waverly’s 7-year-old daughter and 31-year-old husband died in a mass suicide that mirrored the Jonestown tragedy. Waverly had left the commune three days earlier; as her FBI handler, Glen McCarthy, says, “Anne believes that her departure triggered the suicides. It is quite possible that she is right.”
Now McCarthy wants Waverly to join another commune, a seemingly more-enlightened and environmentally aware group called Change, with branches in America and England. Despite a disaster at her last assignment, which resulted in many deaths and a permanently disabled knee, Waverly lets herself be persuaded into duty one last time. She drags out her old VW bus and sets off to probe Change’s darkest secret–which turns out to be a strong belief in the ancient science of alchemy and the possibility that people as well as elements can be changed by its powers.
King is such a vibrant, original writer that she and her very interesting lead character actually make us believe–at least for the first 200 pages–that there’s a real threat here. But the book is 384 pages long, and no amount of research or razzle-dazzle can save the end from sag and strain.
THE INVESTIGATIONS OF AVRAM DAVIDSON
By Avram Davidson
St. Martin’s, $23.95
As Richard A. Lupoff points out in his enlightening introduction, Avram Davidson (who died at 70 in 1993) was best known as a superb creator of fantasies and science fiction. But he was equally gifted as a mystery writer, and there is ample proof of his range and talent in this short-story collection lovingly compiled by Lupoff and Davidson’s widow, Grania Davis.
Writers of short stories need different sets of muscles to work their magic, which probably explains why Davidson never published a full-length mystery under his own name (although he ghosted several under the ubiquitous Ellery Queen byline). But plunge into “Thou Still Unravished Bride” (which Alfred Hitchcock made into a TV episode) or “The Cost of Kent Castwell” and you’ll come up gasping for more–and wishing that Davidson had more financial success and a longer working life.
IN BRIEF: The best L.A. earthquake scenes ever, the best private-detective-making-love-to-an-old-movie-star moments ever, the most-bearable private-detective-driving-a-beat-up-car scenes ever, the hands-down winner in the long-running “Where is the next Raymond Chandler coming from?” sweepstakes–all these honors belong to “The Cracked Earth” and its author, John Shannon. Remarkably, “The Cracked Earth” is an original paperback just published by Berkley Prime Crime ($5.99). Where has Shannon been all our lives? “The Concrete River,” his first book about private eye Jack Liffey (Get it? Shannon and Liffey? Both rivers in Ireland?) can be tracked down at libraries and used-book stores.
