FALSE MEMORY
By Dean Koontz
Bantam, $26.95
When we first meet Martie Rhodes, the main character of “False Memory,” she appears to be the model of sanity. A successful video-game designer, Martie is married to a loving husband and is the kind of person who chauffeurs her best friend, Susan, to weekly therapy sessions for her agoraphobia. But Martie’s world starts to collapse one day when she experiences a sudden moment of terror at her own shadow. Quickly, her fears begin to grow until it becomes clear she has developed autophobia: a fear of her own self.
In the meantime, Susan has become obsessed with the idea that her ex-husband is sneaking into the house every night and raping her, even though all the doors and windows are locked and he couldn’t possibly have a key. And finally, there is Skeet, the half-brother of Martie’s husband, who has been locked up in an institution after attempting to kill himself by jumping off a roof at the prompting of the Angel of Death.
Linking these three is psychiatrist Mark Ahriman, who has developed a dangerously keen interest in thought control.
Dean Koontz unfolds this bizarre tale with his typical patience and authority, although some readers may feel that their own patience is being tested at various points. With its echoes of “The Manchurian Candidate” and “The Matrix,” “False Memory” delivers a rousing tale of mental manipulation.
COLD CASE
By Stephen White
Dutton, $24.95
Two murdered girls, a slick congressman and an elite group of criminologists dedicated to solving “cold cases”– those that were no longer being actively investigated–form the elements of this highly entertaining tale by veteran thriller writer Stephen White.
After clinical psychologist Alan Gregory and his pregnant wife, Lauren Crowder, an assistant district attorney in Boulder, Colo., consult with an organization of crime fighters calling itself Locard (after a 19th Century French detective), they find themselves knee-deep in political corruption, sexual misconduct and sinister business.
White creates memorable minor characters, such as a forensic examiner who wears designer eye patches, and has Gregory and Crowder racing through the mazelike plot with vigor and style. Except for a talky ending, this may be White’s best entry yet in the popular Alan Gregory series.
THE ATTORNEY
By Steve Martini
Putnam, $25.95
While Turow and Grisham get most of the attention, other good authors write legal thrillers, and Steve Martini is one of them. His latest brings back Paul Madriani, once again acting as attorney and detective, this time in defense of Jonah Hale, an elderly man accused of molesting his granddaughter, Amanda.
As Madriani quickly discovers, the case has some nasty elements. Hale, the recent winner of
a multimillion-dollar lottery, and his wife have been raising Amanda since her drug-addict mother, Jessica, abandoned her. But Jessica becomes interested in the child after the Hales come into the big bucks. When they refuse to give in to Jessica’s demands for money, she hooks up with radical feminist Zolanda Suade and kidnaps the child, accusing Jonah of sexual abuse. Before Madriani can get started on the case, Suade turns up dead, and Jonah is the No. 1 suspect. The case against him is strong, at least until Madriani uncovers evidence that points in a different direction. Plenty of zigs and zags in the plotting make this another strong outing for Martini.
ROUGH DRAFT
By James W. Hall
St. Martin’s Press, $24.95
Hannah Keller is a mystery novelist and former Miami police detective whose parents were murdered five years earlier by order of J.J. Fielding, a banker and money launderer for the Cali drug cartel. At the time, Fielding disappeared with millions in embezzled cash just before Keller and her colleagues could nail him. Now, the FBI has decided Keller and her young son (who was traumatized when he saw his grandparents slain) would be the perfect bait to trap drug cartel assassin Hal Bonner, if the FBI can convince him that Keller knows where Fielding is hiding with his millions. To do this they use a copy of Keller’s first novel, complete with scribblings in the margins that seem to be clues to Fielding’s whereabouts.
Hall works a twisted subplot into this stew: Fielding’s daughter, Misty, angry over her father’s disappearance, decides to kill Keller’s son for revenge. As often happens in James W. Hall’s fiction, the bad guys are more memorable than the heroes, but that’s not a complaint. Lots of action, some of it gruesome, and an intriguing plot make “Rough Draft” worth checking out.
IN BRIEF: In “The Reckoning” (Forge, $27.95), a sequel to the popular “The Blood of the Lamb,” Thomas L. Monteleone brings back Rev. Peter Carenza, a Catholic priest who was previously revealed to be cloned from a drop of blood on the Shroud of Turin. The latest installment has Carenza–now the pope–trying to bring about Armageddon, with an assortment of clerics trying to stop him. It’s such a goofy premise that the book quickly breaks down into a series of unbelieveable plot twists.
“The Pachinko Woman” (Morrow, $25), by Henry Mynton, is a strong debut novel about East-West relations that features an enigmatic hero. Helim Kim, the title character, owns pachinko halls across Japan. She also has major connections to Japanese, North Korean and American intelligence networks, all of which are trying to figure out what political causes she is supporting with her vast fortune. Not always clear in its narrative, Mynton’s tantalizing story may appeal to readers looking for more-complex pleasures in their suspense stories.
