Angela McCready is Gone Again

At the beginning of his writing career, Dennis Lehane wrote an excellent series of gritty P.I. novels set in Boston and featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, detectives who operated out of an office in a church bell tower. The 1998 entry was Gone, Baby, Gone, in which the detectives mounted a long search for a missing four-year-old girl named Amanda McCready. The girl had been kidnapped from an abusive mother and a generally miserable home environment and left in the care of a stable, middle class couple who loved Amanda and provided her with an excellent home. Once having found Amanda, Patrick and Angie disagreed about whether they should return the girl to her awful mother or leave her in the home of the people who were obviously much better prepared to care for her. Ultimately, they returned Amanda to her biological mother, but the decision to do so drove a wedge into the relationship between the two detectives.

Lehane would write one more Kenzie/Gennaro book, Prayers for Rain, published in 1999, before leaving the series to write a number of stand-alones, including Mystic River and Shutter Island. He now returns to the series with Moonlight Mile, a book that Kenzie/Gennaro fans have long awaited.

Much has changed in the eleven years that have elapsed. Patrick and Angie are now married and the parents of their own four-year-old daughter. (This gives nothing away. It's in the promotional material and is revealed in the opening of the book.) Patrick is still working as a P.I., but the cases are few and far between. Angie has gone back to school and the family is struggling financially, victims of the recession. The office in the bell tower is gone--a casualty of the Catholic church's financial crisis--and now Amanda McCready has gone missing again.

The case has haunted Patrick and Angie for twelve years and Patrick agrees to try to find Amanda for a second time. The hunt takes Patrick and Angie into a tangled world of Russian mobsters, irresponsible parents, and a young woman who is wise way beyond her years. In addition to the intellectual and physical challenges that the case poses for Patrick, he faces a number of ethical and moral dilemmas that are not easily resolved.

This is a very good book--both highly entertaining and thought-provoking. But as a long-time fan who has read this series from the very beginning, I had a couple of quibbles. First, I regret, to some extent, the fact that Lehane simply picked up the series eleven years down the road. Major changes have occurred in the lives of characters that fans of the series have come to care about. And I feel somewhat cheated by the fact that I didn't get to watch those changes as they happened. It would be as if Lawrence Block had simply skipped over the book in which Matthew Scudder stopped drinking and became sober.

My other concern is that Patrick makes choices in this book that would have been perfectly logical for a single detective in his early thirties, possessed of a strong moral code. Patrick still has a strong moral code, but I'm not sure that some of his choices are appropriate for a man with a wife and child who may well be seriously affected by those choices. He has other people to think about now, and I found myself questioning the logic of his actions at a couple of points.

Those admittedly minor reservations aside, I enjoyed this book very much and it was very nice to see Patrick and Angie back again.

A Plague of Secrets

A Plague of Secrets reunites John Lescroart's main series characters, Dismas Hardy, Abe Glitsky and Wyatt Hunt, along with the cast of minor characters that populates this very engaging series. The book opens with a personal tragedy that afflicts Glitsky, Hardy's best friend and the head of the San Francisco Homicide unit. Not surprisingly, the tragedy will distract Glitsky's attention from his duties in the department, and it probably goes without saying that this will not be a good thing.

Immediately thereafter, Dylan Vogler, the manager of a very popular coffee shop, is found shot to death at the back door of the shop. Vogler is wearing a backpack filled with high quality weed that he's also selling out of the coffee shop. His client list, which includes some very prominent names quickly becomes public, causing no end of embarrassment for a number of people.

Suspicion falls almost immediately upon the coffee shop's absentee owner, wealthy socialite Maya Townshend, who knew Vogler in college. Townshend claims she felt sorry for her former classmate when he finished a stint in prison and needed a job. Thus she made him the manager of her coffee shop at the rather astonishing salary of $90,000 a year.

Townshend is well connected politically and the case provides the opportunity for a number of ambitious and very scary politicians and others to advance their own careers and agendas by prosecuting her. Maya retains Dismas Hardy to defend her, and the game is on.

Last week, I reviewed one of the very early Perry Mason mysteries, and I always think of Mason and his creator, Erle Stanley Gardner, when I read one of Lescroart's Dismas Hardy books. As fond as I am of the Mason books, it always strikes me that Dismas Hardy is a defense lawyer for grown-ups. Reading Lescroart, you get an excellent impression of what a defense lawyer's life is really like and how a murder trial really works, especially with a high profile client. Not surprisingly, I suppose, it doesn't look much like a Perry Mason novel.

Lescroart's court room scenes are always enormously compelling, and once one of his cases gets to trial you know you're in for a long night because from that point on, it's always impossible to put one of these books down. Certainly, that's the case here.

As the title suggests, this is a book in which an awful lot of people have buried secrets, and Dismas Hardy is forced to uncover and understand the meaning of any number of them if he's going to have any chance at all of saving his client. Watching him attempt to do so is a great treat.

Perry Mason in His Literary Youth

First published in 1934, The Case of the Howling Dog was the fourth entry in Erle Stanley Gardner's long-running series featuring Perry Mason.

At this point, Gardner was still in the process of establishing the formula that he would adhere to once the series hit its stride. Lieutenant Tragg, the intelligent and sympathetic homicide detective, and Hamilton Burger, the D.A. who would become Mason's principal adversary had not yet been introduced. The police department is still represented by the oafish Sergeant Holcomb, who wouldn't recognize a clue if it bit him in the backside. The D.A.'s office is represented by an assistant D.A., Claude Drumm who immediately falls into every trap that Mason so cleverly baits for him.

Della Street, the faithful and adoring secretary, Paul Drake, the reliable detective, and Perry Mason himself are still evolving into the characters they would ultimately become. Mason is a bit rougher around the edges than the suave attorney that most crime fiction readers would recognize, and at this stage of the game he's much more willing to severely bend, if not actually break the law in the interest of serving what he sees as the greater good.

As is often the case in this series, the plot becomes almost hopelessly convoluted: A man comes to see Mason about his neighbor's howling dog and about writing a will. Complications ensue.

Suffice it to say that there will be a murder. Inevitably, Mason's client will be the prime suspect, and inevitably the case against the client will appear to be open and shut. As always, the D. A.'s office will be salivating at the chance to finally beat Mason after suffering so many ignominious defeats at his hands. And of course, as always Mason will pull the rabbit out of the hat and save the day at the very end.

Obviously, this story is a bit dated and is clearly a product of its times, but it's still a fun read and an opportunity to see Perry Mason and these other characters in their formative stages.

Busses always seem to be dropping Jack Reacher off in the oddest of places where, inevitably, trouble is brewing.

In this case, Jack has hitched a ride on a tour bus filled with elderly folks who, for whatever insane reason, have decided to visit scenic South Dakota in the middle of winter. The bus hits an icy patch and skids off the road leaving Jack and the other passengers stranded out in the middle of nowhere in Bolton, South Dakota, a tiny town with huge problems.

A pint-sized Mexican drug lord has created a meth lab on an abandoned federal installation just outside of town. The outlaw bikers who run the lab are generally on their best behavior while in town and have given the local cops no reason to roust them. But just before Reacher arrives in town, one of the bikers is caught selling meth to a dealer from Chicago. An elderly woman witnesses the sale and the biker is arrested. The woman is determined to do her civic duty and testify against the biker, irrespective of the danger to herself.

The local police know that the drug cartel has dispatched a killer to eliminate the witness so that their operation will not be endangered. But the Bolton P.D. is not really up to the task of taking on a wily drug lord and his biker henchmen and the situation is looking grim. Enter Jack Reacher.

Jack will spend the next 61 hours attempting to do what he does best--outsmarting nasty villains while protecting helpless but civic-minded librarians. This is a book that moves at a somewhat slower pace than many other Reacher novels, but there are some very interesting characters, some plot twists that you don't expect, and as always, it's fun to watch Reacher in action. The action slowly builds to a great climax that will reward careful reading.

Harry Bosch in Hong Kong...

9 Dragons opens with the murder of John Li, the Chinese owner of a liquor store in south L.A. Connelly's long-running protagonist, Detective Harry Bosch, is assigned the investigation and quickly concludes that the murder is more complicated than it might initially appear on the surface.

Displaying his excellent skills and dogged determination, Bosch discovers that Li had been paying protection money to one of the ancient Chinese triads that now operates in the United States as well as in China. Harry identifies a suspect and begins the process of arresting and charging him with the crime. As he does, Harry receives an anonymous phone call warning him off the case. If he persists, the caller warns, there will be consequences. Harry naturally ignores the warning and proceeds to make the case against his suspect, and then Harry's world is completely upended.

As readers of the series know, Harry has a daughter with Eleanor Wish, a former F.B.I. agent. Madeline, the daughter, is now thirteen and living in Hong Kong with her mother. Harry visits her regularly and otherwise maintains close ties with Madeline through phone calls and emails. As Harry continues to put together his case, ignoring the warning, he receives a video on his phone. Madeline has been kidnapped and is being held somewhere in Hong Kong, apparently in an effort to force Harry to back off.

Harry flies to Hong Kong in a desperate effort to locate and rescue Maddie and now must operate in what is, almost literally, a different world. The Hong Kong scenes are expertly written and it's virtually impossible to put this book down once Harry arrives there.

In 9 Dragons, Bosch's professional and personal lives intersect as never before; he is at once both the desperate father that one would expect to find under these circumstances and the consummate professional detective that he must be if he is to have any hope of rescuing his daughter.

As the book opens, Harry is clearly frustrated with his new partner, Ignacio Ferris. Bosch, who is almost fanatically devoted to his mission as a homicide detective, believes that Ignacio lacks the fire in the gut that the job demands. In particular, Harry believes that Ignacio spends too much time attending to the demands of his family. And then, in a twist of fate, Harry's family becomes absolutely the only thing that matters in his life. Once that happens, he will travel, if not to the ends of the earth, at least to Hong Kong, and he will bend, if not break, virtually every rule in the book to ensure his daughter's safe return.

While not the equal of some of the earlier books in the series, 9 Dragons is still a great read, and it's going to be very fascinating to see where Connelly takes Harry Bosch in its wake.

Richard North Patterson's "Eclipse"

Recently divorced, California lawyer Damon Pierce receives an urgent message from Marissa Brand, a woman he once loved (and perhaps still does), asking him to come to the West African country of Luandia. Marissa's husband, an activist named Bobby Okari has been accused of murder by the corrupt, brutal regime that runs the country.

Luandia sits on an oil of ocean and lots of outsiders, Americans included, are anxious to get their hands on it. None of them are much concerned about the way in which Luandia's government exploits and abuses its own people. Nor do they care about the catastrophic environmental consequences of the oil production.

Pierce is determined to save Bobby and so becomes his lawyer at great personal risk. Patterson weaves a complicated web of intrigue that is at once scary and terribly disheartening, and by the time you finish the book, you want to swear off ever using a drop of oil again.

I have always been a huge fan of Patterson's work, especially his political thrillers, and I really wanted to like this book as well. There is a terrible earnestness about it; in addition to telling a riveting story, Patterson is obviously determined to open our eyes to the consequences of our addiction to oil.

And therein lies the problem, such as there is one. A lot of the book is spent in an effort to educate the reader to the situation in Luandia, which is a stand-in for Nigeria, and to the larger implications of our dependency on the resources of countries like it. In consequence, the book seems almost preachy at times, and it takes a fair amount for time for the book to really gather steam. Once it does, though, you can't put it down.

I'm giving this book three stars, which to me means that it's really very good, but not excellent. I respect the book's good intentions and it's an appropriate reminder of the fact that our continued addiction to oil--and to low oil prices--has a cost that goes well beyond that which we pay at the pump. And, once it does get rolling, it's very compelling. But I don't think it's as riveting as a lot of Patterson's other work.

A Review of John Sandford's "The Eyes of Prey"

This is the third book in John Sandford's long-running series featuring Lucas Davenport, and it features probably the most vile and complex villain of the entire series. Actually, there are two major bad guys. One is much more intelligent and much scarier than the other and, not surprisingly, he is the one pulling the strings in a series of murders inspired by the old Alfred Hitchcock film, "Strangers on a Train."

The mastermind's plan goes awry right from the start and the bad guys are left scrambling to clean up the mess and stay one step ahead of the cops. That will not be easy, because Lucas Davenport is hard on their trail and he's getting really pissed.

This is probably the most gruesome book in the series, and Davenport is at his darkest and most violent here. He's working out of a major depression that has virtually paralyzed him and acting out as a rogue cop ala Dirty Harry, without even a twinge of conscience.

As always, Sandford puts the reader right in the middle of the action. The writing is crisp; the plot is fast-paced, and the action is non-stop. And, even in a book this grim, there is a fair amount of the humor that characterizes the series.

It's hard to imagine that there could possibly be a fan of crime fiction who has not sampled this series yet, but if that person should exist, he or she should probably not begin with this book because, while it is a very good read, it's not really representative of the series as a whole. Some readers who might otherwise enjoy the series might be put off by the violence that permeates this particular book. As always, but especially in this case, the best place to begin would be at the beginning with the first book, Rules Of Prey. You won't be disappointed.