BLOOD RAIN
By Michael Dibdin
Pantheon, $23
The career of Italian police officer Aurelio Zen has taken more twists than a radiatore pasta, especially since he came close to exposing high-level corruption in the kidnapping of politician Aldo Morro several books ago.
Now, in “Blood Rain,” the seventh in Michael Dibdin’s exquisitely written series, Zen has hit bottom. Even though an influential film producer promised him protection if he solved a famous Piedmontese winemaker’s murder in his last outing (“A Long Finish”), Zen has been posted to Sicily, the dead-end job that finishes off so many cops’ lives. But, writes Dibdin: “(H)e couldn’t really complain. The fact was that he just didn’t care any more. Career, love, family, friendships–he’d tried his best in each field, but the results had not been encouraging.”
The posting isn’t even to a relatively safe and civilized part of Sicily like Syracuse. Instead, Zen has been sent to Catania, a hotbed of Mafia activity, to spy for his Roman bosses in the Interior Ministry on an elite unit known as DIA (Direzione Investigativa Anti-Mafia) run by the rival Ministry of Defense. He reads supposedly secret reports and pumps DIA colleagues for information–a dirty job in a dirty war with which even the non-criminal public has become fed up. About the only bright spot on Zen’s horizon is the presence of his adopted daughter, Carla, in Catania to install a computer network. But even that relationship becomes a source of worry and pain when Carla befriends a tough woman judge marked for death.
Dibdin, a Brit who lives in Seattle, slides into the skin of all his Italian characters, making us see the differences between the Venetian-born Zen, his Sicilian friends and enemies, and those he deals with on a trip to Rome to visit his dying mother. He also makes us understand how devious and dangerous politics and policing can be in a country that has had centuries to corrupt those callings. Along with Donna Leon’s series (many not in print in America) about Venice police officer Guido Brunetti, Dibdin’s Zen books are essential reading for lovers of mysteries, and of Italy.
A TWIST AT THE END
By Steven Saylor
Simon & Schuster, $25
Steven Saylor’s mysteries (“Rubicon” came out in 1999) about Gordianus the Finder, ancient Rome’s greatest detective, are full of wit, compassion and immediately accessible period detail. So it should come as no surprise to find all of these qualities in his latest book, which moves back and forth between the New York City of 1906 and the Austin, Texas, of 1885. What is surprising is how much Saylor makes us care for writer William Sydney Porter, better known to the world as O. Henry, whose bittersweet little stories made him the Stephen King of his day.
In his youth, Porter fled to Honduras and then spent some time in jail for embezzlement from a bank where he worked, but he was basically such a cold fish that it would seem difficult to work up much sympathy for him. Saylor pulls it off by making his Will Porter a sideways rather than a direct participant in the book’s central crimes–the actual serial murders of black servant girls in the Texas capital. Only when the crimes spread to include a married woman whom Porter coveted does he rouse himself to become involved, and even then his best efforts are outstripped by a reporter friend.
It’s only 21 years later, as Porter struggles with his New York success, that a mysterious figure arrives to take him back to Austin and give him the chance to correct some old wrongs. This twist at the end works because Saylor is a much more accomplished writer, and probably a better person, than his subject.
MURDER AMONG STRANGERS
By Jonnie Jacobs
Kensington, $20
Jonnie Jacobs’ latest mystery begins with one of those scenes — so popular in fright films — where the reader is encouraged to stand up and shout: “Don’t do it! Don’t get out of your car! That’s what cellular phones are for!”
But if art consultant Kate Austen wasn’t a sucker for a bedraggled young blond standing out in the rain next to a disabled car, she wouldn’t find the body of the woman’s husband in the trunk. And the nasty boyfriend wouldn’t arrive back on the scene and make Kate join the corpse in the trunk on a painful journey to the woods of Idaho, where more murders would occur. And police detective Michael Stone, Austen’s live-in lover, wouldn’t have to risk his life and career chasing after Austen across several states.
Jacobs walks that thin line between the ludicrous and the gripping as well as anyone in the business, giving excellent value for money in terms of chills and puzzles per page. About the only thing a reader can do is pass the popcorn, scrunch up next to that corpse and go along for the ride.
DEAD AIR
By Rochelle Krich
Avon, $23
The mostly sad but occasionally frightening sound of contemporary talk radio sets the tone for Rochelle Krich’s latest book about Los Angeles homicide detective Jessie Drake, giving it a believably nasty edge.
At first, radio psychologist Renee Altman comes across as such a self-obsessed and often vindictive character that we wonder why Drake ever became, let alone stayed, her friend. But gradually we see the conflicted, talented person beneath the veneer: the mother terrified of losing her child in a custody battle, the woman struggling to stay in control as a stalker takes out his vengeance on her household. Drake, too, is more than first meets the eye, as she struggles with personal problems of faith and work.
As in her other excellent books, including her medical mystery, “Fertile Ground,” Krich shows us a world where strong women are made to think they have to pay extra to get to use their strengths.
THE HEARSE YOU CAME IN ON
By Tim Cockey
Hyperion, $22.95
There’s a gentle, wistful quality to TV writer Tim Cockey’s first mystery that might remind you of Harlan Koben’s wry books about sports agent Myron Bolitar, plus a fully evoked sense of place–the streets and bars of Baltimore’s colorful Fells Point.
Add to that an original job for a crime solver (Hitchcock Sewell is an undertaker), and you have a promising and mostly enjoyable debut that makes you forgive its faults. These include too much back story dished out in too few pages (Hitch’s late parents were local TV personalities; his ex-wife, still a friend, is a sexual athlete and prominent artist who travels in high social circles), and a female cop with more twists than a tangled fishing line who makes Sewell go all giggly but who changes faces whenever the author needs a plot twist.
Against this you can balance some shrewdly observed politicians, a couple of moderately baffling murders and many scenes in a marvelous bar called the Screaming Oyster Saloon.
THE POISON SKY
By John Shannon
Berkley Prime Crime, $5.99 paper
John Shannon’s third book of the Los Angeles apocalypse begins with private detective Jack Liffey driving his ancient car into the San Fernando Valley and ends with him driving a big new BMW through a yellow cloud of toxic gas through the streets of that same valley. (Liffey hasn’t struck it rich: The Beemer belongs to someone else.) In between comes a powerful and poignant story of lost souls and the kind of weakness and venality that seem to thrive in Los Angeles. In fact, John Shannon uses the geography of the sprawling city as a metaphor for crime and neglect better than anyone since Nathaniel West. (Ross Macdonald was no slacker, but he tended to see L.A. from the aloof view of a Santa Barbara resident.)
Hired to find a missing boy, Liffey infiltrates a dangerous religious cult and uncovers corruption at a giant chemical plant. Surrounded by people whose dreams have come up short, the detective manages to survive on scraps of success that might look like trash at first glance.
Grab this one up while you can: Despite critical raves, Berkley has dumped the Liffey series (along with many of its other hard-edged books), and it’s now out on the mean streets, looking for a home.
DETECTING WOMEN: 3rd Edition
By Willetta L. Heising
Purple Moon Press, $34.95 paper
Want to find a mystery series starring a woman set in Arkansas as a present for Hillary Clinton? On Page 346 of the latest edition of Willetta Heising’s indispensable guide is just the job: Charlaine Harris’ books about Lily Bard, a shrewd cleaning woman who solves crimes as well as she does windows.
Can’t remember who wrote those three books about a professional scuba diver named Chicago Nordejoong in the early 1990s? Victoria McKernan, of course (that answer is on Page 326).
And according to Page 349, no fewer than 13 series–by everyone from Nikki Baker to Edith Skom–starring female detectives have been set in Chicago.
This book (also available in hardcover and pocket guide editions) and its companion, “Detecting Men,” have become as important a part of my social baggage as the Internet Movie Database, and all are equally effective in putting pompous quasi-experts in their place.
TWICE DYING
By Neil McMahon
HarperCollins, $24
Another debut mystery, another central character with an unusually interesting occupation. Dr. Carroll Monks works as an emergency room physician at San Francisco’s Mercy Hospital long after younger people move on to easier berths because he believes these patients need and deserve the best attention. He also moonlights as an investigator for a group of medical professionals who try to keep a handle on malpractice-insurance claims, including blowing the whistle on guilty doctors.
Monks adds much-needed strength and believability to a wild plot with overtones of deja vu: Psychologist Alison Chapley’s stumbling across a private hospital that treats criminals found not guilty by reason of insanity and apparently turns them into supercriminals occasionally reads like a cross between Raymond Chandler and Thomas Harris. But when Chapley calls on her ex-lover, Monks, for help, the somewhat wobbly narrative regains a stability that carries us through to a satisfying conclusion. More Monks, please, Mr. McMahon.
