SPEAKING IN TONGUES
By Jeffery Deaver
Simon & Schuster, $25
Taking a break from his Lincoln Rhyme series, Jeffery Deaver pens a novel that has enough violence and madness to satisfy the most bloodthirsty of appetites. The story centers on two men: Tate Collier, a former prosecuting attorney in Fairfax County, Va., and Aaron Matthews, a seriously disturbed psychiatrist who has been treating Collier’s rebellious teenage daughter, Megan. Then Matthews kidnaps Megan, hiding her in a deserted mental institution in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
What sets this thriller apart from anything else currently on the shelves are the characters of Matthews and Collier. Both men are persuasive in their use of language, each trying to manipulate the other.
In that respect, “Speaking in Tongues” is appropriately titled, but don’t get the impression that this is a highfalutin literary thriller. There’s plenty of action to back up the talk, and while the plot mechanics may falter at points, this one packs a lot of wallop.
FROM THE CORNER OF HIS EYE
By Dean Koontz
Bantam, $26.95
The day Bartholomew “Barty” Lampion is born in Bright Beach, Calif., is one of tragedy. His father was killed in a car accident while driving Barty’s mother to the delivery room, and hundreds of miles away, in a seemingly unrelated event, the evil Junior Cain has thrown his wife off the side of a mountain in Oregon. But in what could best be described as a supernatural vision, Cain knows that Barty is out there and that their paths will cross in a deadly confrontation someday.
Before that day comes, Barty goes through enough agony to test the patience of Job. He loses his eyesight at age 3, when surgeons remove his eyes to halt a fast-spreading cancer. But Barty reveals visionary gifts and other abilities.
The third character in this strange mix is Angel White, a young woman born under tragic circumstances the same day as Barty. How she and Barty meet, and how Barty regains his vision and goes on to battle Cain, constitute the bulk of this sprawling novel.
Angels, devils, visions and miracles–Dean Koontz opens up a mystic grab bag in “From the Corner of His Eye,” not much of it making a lick of sense but most of it still highly entertaining.
DR. DEATH
By Jonathan Kellerman
Random House, $26.95
When Dr. Eldon Mate, known in the media as “Dr. Death” for his Kevorkian-like endorsement of euthanasia, is found murdered in the van he uses in connection with assisted suicides, Los Angeles Police detective Milo Sturgis is assigned the case. As fans of Jonathan Kellerman’s series know, when Sturgis is called in, his friend, psychologist Alex Delaware, is not far behind.
The case is baffling: Mate was killed by his own death machine, the Humanitron, and then relieved of a vital organ by the murderer. Delaware, meanwhile, faces a potential conflict of interest: The mother of one of his patients was killed by Mate, and the woman’s husband believes it was a case of murder, not compassionate killing. To complicate matters, a surprisingly large number of people wished the departed doctor harm, and Sturgis and Delaware must sort them out.
As is often the case in Alex Delaware novels, Kellerman gives readers a generous portion of psychological insights to go along with all the chills. This is a stylish outing in a series that covers 15 years and shows no sign of stopping, thank goodness.
DOG ISLAND
By Mike Stewart
Putnam, $23.95
Following up his fine debut novel, “Sins of the Brother,” Mike Stewart returns with another story of Alabama attorney Tom McInnes. Here, McInnes takes up the cause of Carli Monroe, a teen runaway who witnessed a murder at a remote beach house and eventually seeks counsel from McInnes on what to do.
The girl is frightened, and with good reason. McInnes quickly discovers that the Bodines, a redneck Mafia family involved in the killing, are not above roughing up a lawyer or anybody else who gets in their way. So McInnes calls in his old buddy, Joey, a gigantic bodyguard who doesn’t scare easily. Plenty of mayhem follows after Carli disappears and McInnes and Joey go searching in dangerous places to save her.
Despite occasional excesses–Stewart is fond of grisly scenes–this is a hard-driving narrative, and it looks like Stewart has come up with something special in the combination of the savvy McInnes and his sidekick.
CODE TO ZERO
By Ken Follett
Dutton, $26.95
Ken Follett’s latest starts off fast and never slows down. In the book’s opening pages, Dr. Claude Lucas wakes up in a Washington, D.C., train station dressed as a bum and with no idea who he is. His painful attempts to find out and to escape the shadowy figures who seem to be following him form the basis of this sharply told story set in 1958.
We learn that Lucas had been working on the upcoming launch of the Explorer 1 space satellite but believed he had stumbled onto a plot to keep the launch from occurring. Why he wakes up without a memory is the key to the plot, and Follett does a solid job with the story. Barely staying ahead of his pursuers, Lucas tracks down his wife and several college friends, only to find that all of them have either been or are spies of some sort.
With Lucas’ survival tied to knowing which is friend and which is foe, Follett creates a rousing story that never flags.
DEAD OF WINTER
By P.J. Parrish
Pinnacle, $6.99 paper
This brisk, tight police procedural is set in the bucolic but obviously dangerous town of Loon Lake, Mich. Louis Kincaid, formerly a police officer in the South and a man with a troubled past, takes a job as a detective on the town’s police force and has to deal with a psychopath who is killing officers on the force. At the crime scenes, the murderer has been leaving playing cards marked with signs and numbers.
It’s clear that somebody is holding a major-league grudge against the Loon Lake police, and it’s up to Kincaid to find out who and why. His search forms the bulk of this fast-paced, well-conceived yarn.
