Ace Atkins Finds Robert B. Parker's Spenser in Wonderland

This is the second novel written by Ace Atkins featuring Boston P.I. Spenser, the late Robert B. Parker's best-known and best-loved series character. As the story opens, Spenser is approached by his long-time friend and trainer, Henry Cimoli, who owns the gym where Spenser works out. Henry has never before asked Spenser for a favor, but he needs one now.

Henry lives in a condo complex near an abandoned dog racing track called Wonderland. The units in the complex are owned mostly by elderly citizens like Henry and someone is making a play to buy them out. The developers are working through dummy agents, and when Henry and some others refuse to sell, the developers or their agents send in some thugs to intimidate them.

Naturally Spenser agrees to help. His long-time sidekick, Hawk, is out of town and so Spenser recruits his new apprentice, Zebulon Sixkill, a Cree from Box Elder, Montana to assist. Sixkill is no Hawk, at least not yet, but Spenser has high hopes for the young man and feels an obligation to pass on the knowledge and skills he has acquired through the years to someone who might follow in his footsteps.

Spenser and Sixkill deal pretty easily and effectively with the two hoods that have been threatening Henry and his pals, but of course the developers who want the land will not surrender the field nearly that easily. Upon further investigation, Spenser discovers that the developers have ambitions of bringing casino gambling to Boston and have settled on the Wonderland site for their development. Henry's condo complex is the last piece of property that they need to acquire, and so Spenser negotiates with the developers, as only he can, to get Henry and the other residents a much better price for their property. Now everyone is happy--until everything turns to crap. All of a sudden, people are dying and a sinister web of greed, ambition and violence threatens to ensnare and take down Spenser, Sixkill, Henry, and a whole lot of others.

With this book, Atkins hits the sweet spot that Robert B. Parker had achieved about halfway through the series. By then, the characters and their relationships were pretty well established and Parker was still writing complex and interesting plots. That's a polite way of saying thatWonderland is, frankly, a better book than some of the ones that Parker himself was churning out later in the series. By then, Parker seemed to be writing these stories about as fast as he could type. The plots were thin and not very believable, and the books seemed to exist largely as an excuse for Parker to write witty dialogue. And by then, the relationship between Spenser and his main squeeze, Susan Silverman, had become so saccharine as to seriously antagonize lots of long-time fans.

In this case, Atkins provides a lot of snappy dialogue but gives us a great plot and a number of interesting characters to go along with it. In particular, he handles the development of Zebulon Sixkill very nicely. Sixkill may not yet be ready for prime time and watching him react to the challenges that face him as the action progresses is one of the pleasures of this novel. And, mercifully, Atkins has also sent Susan out of town for the duration of the book. Readers have to endure a few telephone calls between the two and one weekend spent together, but virtually all of us I'm sure are in Atkins's debt for sparing us any more of this.

I'm a huge fan of Ace Atkins's other work, particularly his Quinn Colson series which has become one of my current favorites. It's nice to see that another of my favorite series characters has been left in such capable hands. 

Introducing Plucky Detective Cordelia Gray,

This book, which was first published in 1977 (and not 1972, as Goodreads suggests) reads like it was written in 1947, if not earlier. It's very much in the tradition of English mysteries that were set in country houses in the years between the two world wars, and there's nothing in the book to suggest the time period in which it is supposed to actually take place. There are a number of young men and women in the book, but they don't sound remotely like the young people who were living in England in the '60s and '70s; rather they sound much more like characters who would ultimately become the parents of those young people. P. D. James was 57 at the time this book appeared, which suggests that she probably didn't have a lot of contact with the young people of that era and didn't begin to understand them.

The protagonist is a plucky female detective named Cordelia Gray, who also sounds like she just stepped out of the 1940s. She inherits the detective agency where she's worked for only a brief period, when her partner commits suicide after learning that he has cancer. 

Following the partner's funeral, Cordelia is asked to investigate the suicide of a young college dropout named Mark Callender. Callender's father is a prominent scientist who didn't have much contact with his son, but he tells Cordelia that he needs to know why his son would have hanged himself. Cordelia accepts the case and promptly moves into the primitive country cottage where the boy took his life, apparently to be as close as possible to the investigation.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever read a crime novel, let alone one in this particular sub-genre, that before long our intrepid heroine will begin to suspect that Mark Callender didn't actually kill himself but rather was murdered. Cordelia will question a number of the young man's friends and will go to parties and outings with them as her investigation proceeds. And before long, she will find herself in serious danger.

This is a book that could have been shorter by a good thirty percent. There are endless descriptions of landscapes, houses, clothing and characters that go on and on and on and on unnecessarily. It's also very hard to take the story seriously because it unfolds in ways that often make no sense at all. 

That said, this is a pretty good example of a type of book that was once very popular in the mystery genre. Clearly the author had immersed herself in this field before writing the book and she then produced a novel that would have appealed to lots of readers "back in the day." It's hard to imagine, though, that this book would find much of an audience in the modern era. James would later abandon this character after only a few outings and turn to her much more successful and enjoyable (and believable) protagonist, Adam Dalgliesh, who makes a cameo appearance here. Readers curious to sample the work of P.D. James would be much better served by trying one of those novels.

Inspector Morse Must Sort Out the Secrets of Annexe 3

A New Year's Eve costume ball at an Oxford hotel ends unhappily when the grand prize winner is found murdered in his bed in the hotel annex the next day. Complicating matters is the fact that most of the guests and the staff as well imbibed rather heavily at the party and their memories of the evening aren't all that an investigator might wish. And further complicating matters is that the other five guests who were staying in the hotel annex, including the victim's wife, have all fled the scene, leaving behind only the registration cards on which they filled out their false names and addresses.

Not to worry. Chief Inspector Morse of the Oxford Homicide Division will get it all sorted out eventually. First, of course, there's the matter of identifying the unfortunate victim. Then Morse and his faithful sidekick, Sergeant Lewis, will have to wade through the complicated marital and extra-marital relationships of the three couples who were staying in the annex that night. It's a pretty complicated affair, with little evidence to go on. But Morse's keen intelligence eventually focuses in on the critical clues and the only remaining question is whether or not he can trap the killer before he or she evades his grasp once and for all.

This is the seventh entry in Colin Dexter's popular series and by now the characters and the relationships among them are very well established. Picking up one of these books is like falling instantly back into pleasant company. The mystery itself becomes almost secondary; the pleasure in these books derives from watching Morse and Lewis at work, and fans of the series will certainly enjoy this entry.

A Compelling New Novel from the author of THE WHEELMAN

Set in Philadelphia, this is a gripping tale of crime, family and race that stretches over three generations. It begins with the murder of two cops, one white and one black, who are sitting in a bar in civilian clothes one afternoon in 1965. Dead are Stan Walczak and his partner, George Wildey.

Walczak leaves a young son, Jimmy, who grows up to be a cop like his father. Thirty years later, he's a homicide detective who's still obsessed by his father's murder. No one was ever charged and convicted of the two killings, but Jim Walczak is firmly convinced that the shooter was a snitch named Terrill Lee Stanton was supposed to meet his father and Wildey in the bar that afternoon. Stanton has been in jail for a very long time, tried and convicted of another crime, but he has recently been released and is living in a halfway house. What, if anything, to do with Stanton is now the question that haunts Jim Walczak.

Jim Walczak, in turn, has a son named Stas who will follow him into the department. He also has a daughter, Audrey, and by 2005, Audrey is enrolled in CSI school and is set on becoming a forensic scientist. Along the way, though, she's become the black sheep of the family. She's living in Houston, is drinking way too much, and has pretty much screwed up her life. But in 2005, the city of Philadelphia decides to erect a plaque on the site where her grandfather and his partner were killed. It's going to be an important moment for the family and, against her better judgment, Audrey flies back to Philadelphia for the ceremony.

As the novel progresses, Swierczynski follows the progress of the three main characters, moving back in time to the point where Stan Walczak and George Wildey were first partnered together during riots in the 1960s. He jumps back and forth from 1965 to 1995 to 2005, alternating chapters among the three main characters.

It's a fascinating story about the way in which a single event can affect the trajectory of a family's life for several generations and about the ways in which the various members of the family deal with the consequences of those few fatal moments that still reverberate fifty years later. It's also a very compelling crime drama that will involve several different investigations. The characters are very well drawn; the settings and the history seem right on target, and all in all, this is another great read from the man who burst onto the scene ten years ago with The Wheelman: A Novel. 

The Deaf Man Returns to Taunt the Detectives of the 87th Precinct

The penultimate book in this long-running series is something of a disappointment. A clever career criminal named the Deaf Man, who has been bedeviling the detectives of the 87th Precinct for a very long time, returns to taunt them again.

After killing a woman who had previously betrayed him, the Deaf Man begins sending a large number of cryptic messages to Detective Steve Carella who has been his principal nemesis through the years. The messages are mostly quotations from the plays of William Shakespeare and some of them are coded in a variety of ways. The detectives correctly interpret the first of the messages as a confession of the murder that the Deaf Man has committed, but the rest of them are beyond confusing.

Carella and the other detectives assume that the Deaf Man is taunting them with the plans of an upcoming crime, and in the past, he's planned and executed some huge plots. But will the detectives be able to decipher the clues in time to disrupt their adversary's plans?

It's an interesting plot, at least initially. But it runs on and on and on as the deaf Man sends message after message after message, and by the time the reader is halfway through the book (well, this reader at least), you're screaming for McBain to get the hell on with things. Then, by the time the great caper is revealed it's more than a little anticlimactic and you're thinking, "Wow, I came all the way through this book just for this?"

The more interesting parts of the book involve stories of the personal lives of the characters that have been running on for the last few books in the series. Fat Ollie Weeks is still looking for his stolen novel; Steve Carella is still depressed about the upcoming double wedding of his mother and his sister, especially now that he's paying for it, and a couple of the other detectives are experiencing problems in their relationships. These diversions are fun and often very amusing, but the rest of the book really doesn't measure up to the high standards that McBain had established earlier. It's as though he came up with a clever idea and then got too carried away with it. This isn't a bad book, but it's certainly not one of his best.

Harry Bosch Might Be Retired, But He's Still on the Job

The twenty-third entry in this excellent series is among the very best, and that's saying quite a lot. As an L.A.P.D. homicide detective, Harry Bosch has pretty much always gone his own way, often alienating his bosses, partners and others, but almost always producing results in the end that no one else could have achieved. Finally, though, he goes a step too far and, although he solves a particularly complex case, his methods give his snarky boss a chance to finally get rid of him. Harry pulls the pin and takes retirement before that can happen and he then sues the department for its actions against him.

Harry is now off the job and rebuilding a vintage motorcycle, when his half-brother, Mickey Haller--the "Lincoln Lawyer"-- tries to hire him. Mickey has a client who's about to go on trial for a particularly viscous rape and murder. Haller insists that his client is innocent, even though the evidence against him seems a lock.

Haller wants Harry to join the defense team and investigate the case in an effort to save his client. To do so goes against the grain of everything Bosch has stood for in his career and he has no interest in helping his brother get a guilty man off on a technicality because of something he might discover. Harry thus refuses, but Mickey convinces him to at least take a look at the Murder Book--the log of the investigation that the police have turned over to the defense. Reading the material, Harry notes a number of minor inconsistencies in the evidence, and once he does, he's hooked. Against his better judgement, he agrees to investigate the case and the deeper he gets, the more complex and dangerous things becomes.

This is a very well-written and well-plotted novel. Nobody does police procedural as well as Connelly, and it's a lot of fun watching Harry attempt to pursue the case from outside the police department. It's a standard trope in this sort of novel that the P.I. always has a "friend" in the P.D. who looks things up in the computer and who does other favors for him. There's always another "friend" in the phone company and so on and so forth, enabling the P.I. to gain access to information that no other outsider could get.

Connelly doesn't cheat that way. Harry asks one favor of his old partner who gets him some inside info, but otherwise Harry is on is own and is hugely inventive in developing ways to get the material he needs. He basically starts by pulling at one small loose thread and then follows where it leads him. Watching Bosch work is always a lot of fun, but watching him do so with these limitations is even more so. 

The plot is gripping and moves like the proverbial runaway train, and it's interesting to see Harry Bosch working at odds against the institution he has served for his entire life. It's also very intriguing to see the two half brothers at work and to watch Harry struggle with his conscience throughout the book. All Mickey really needs is for Harry to find something that will raise a reasonable doubt with the prosecution's case. But Bosch will never forgive himself if that's all he does. If Mickey's client isn't guilty, then someone else is, and Harry Bosch won't rest until he finds him. A great read.

Monty Harris of the Park Police Confronts a Troubling Death in Glacier National Park

On the heels of her excellent debut novel, The Wild Inside, Christine Carbo returns with another suspense-filled book,Mortal Fall, which also takes place in and around the majestic setting of northwestern Montana’s Glacier National Park. The protagonist is a park police officer named Monty Harris who somehow survived an extremely dysfunctional family life as a child to graduate college and become a productive citizen. But he’s haunted by specters from the past which continue to affect his current life, both personally and professionally. He’s now separated from his wife, Lara, due in large part to issues springing from his childhood, and his work is now basically his life. He strives to do the best he possibly can, focusing on the job almost exclusively.

As the book opens, Monty is called to a scene off the park’s main highway, Going-to-the-Sun Road, where a body has been discovered at the bottom of a deep ravine below a very popular hiking trail. The victim is a wildlife biologist named Paul “Wolfie” Sedgewick who was studying the wolverine population in and around the park. It’s possible that Sedgewick fell accidentally, as hikers sometimes do in a moment of carelessness. But Monty has trouble imagining such a thing. Sedgewick was no ill-prepared tourist from the flatlands; he was an experienced mountain hiker and the fact that he could have fallen seems incomprehensible. 

It’s possible that Sedgewick might have committed suicide, but did he have a plausible reason for doing so? As for other alternatives, as one of the characters observes, the most fool-proof way to murder someone would be to push them off a mountain cliff when no one else is looking. But who might have wanted Sedgewick dead? Harris has no evidence at all to suggest that Sedgewick’s death might be either a suicide or a homicide and, if the latter, he also has no plausible suspects, at least initially. But then, when Monty discovers portions of another body near the site where Sedgewick died, it appears to be too much of a coincidence, even though it very well might be.

Hikers are anxious to have this business laid to rest so that the trail can be reopened. It’s clear that Monty’s boss would prefer that Harris rule these deaths accidental, so that things can get back to normal and so that the tourists won’t be scared away by concerns of a killer roaming the park. But Harris doggedly pursues his investigation while at the same time he deals with complicated family issues. The deeper he digs, the more sinister these deaths appear and before long, Harris may be in serious danger himself.

Monty Harris is a deeply conflicted and multi-layered protagonist, and one of the pleasures of reading the story lies in watching the way Carbo develops him and the other characters. This is almost as much a character study as it is a crime novel. As in her first book, Carbo writes beautifully about the awesome physical setting in which this story plays out. At the same time, though, she captures the dark undercurrent of the environment around the park where significant numbers of people have no use for environmentalists, for the park service, the park police, or the government generally. The suspense builds from the opening pages and pays off with a great climax that few readers will see coming. This is another sure winner.