Lawrence Block is unquestionably one of the most prolific writers of crime fiction about, second only, perhaps, to the equally productive Ed McBain. He is the author of the Chip Harrison series, the Bernie Rhodenbarr series, the Matthew Scudder series, and now comes the eighth in the Evan Tanner series. It is called Tanner on Ice (No Exit Press, £10 in UK), and features adventurer Tanner, a man whose sleep centre has been destroyed in the Korean War, with the result that forty winks for him means merely tired eyelids upon tired eyes. The next best thing for him is to be put into the deep freeze, and that's where he's been for the last twenty-five years. Now, newly awakened, he is recruited to destabilise the government of Burma and soon, Indiana Jones-like, he is up to his neck in intrigue, cross and double-cross, exotic beauties, and inconvenient dead bodies. This is Block at his most playful, the book being no more than a romp, but a highly entertaining one, with just the right amount of deadpan humour to keep it from becoming risible. Virtual Stranger (Headline, £17.99 in UK) is a first novel by television actress Emer Gillespie. Set mainly in the night-time streets of central London, it is an interesting debut, with Ms Gillespie sure in her character depiction, plotting and general technical know-how. The first-person narrator is thirtyish film editor Karen McDade, a woman whose job causes her to work unconventional hours. Returning home one night, she stumbles across the body of a woman in a Soho doorway and recognises her as Katie, a young actress who had featured in a short film she, Karen, had edited.
The discovery brings back to Karen the night, three years earlier, when she herself was attacked and raped, and was lucky to escape with her life. She determines to find out what happened to Katie, in the process putting herself in danger. The book maintains a steady pace, leading to a climax that is perhaps a trifle too simplistic, but for a first effort it is quite impressive. Gillian Linscott's suffragette detective Nell Bray seems to be turning up in book form every second week. Only recently I reviewed her featuring in Dance on Blood, and now here she is again in Absent Friends (Virago, £10.99 in UK). It is now 1918, the war is over and Nell herself is standing for parliament. But there are a number of obstacles in her way, not least two former enemies who have returned from the front, the fact that the Conservative candidate has been blown up by a firework, and the obvious evidence that at least one person in the constituency has a murderous hatred of all politicians. But Nell is indomitable and, managing to keep her sense of proportion - and humour - she battles on.
Ms Linscott has created a most likable and believable character in her protagonist, and the period detail, lovingly sketched in, adds an extra gloss to the series. The Orion publishing house has started a Criminal Records series of novellas, edited by Otto Penzler, and the first one to land on my desk is Ian Rankin's Death Is Not the End" (Orion, £5.99 in UK). It features Inspector John Rebus, Rankin's rather embittered Scottish detective, and is concerned with a missing persons case. Damon Mee, the son of an old friend of Rebus's, was last seen in a blurred security video on the dance floor of a Kirkcaldy night club, before he apparently disappeared off the face of the earth. Rebus investigates, the ripples spread, and soon he is in confrontation with the gang bosses of Edinburgh's underworld. Tightly plotted, Death Is Not the End provides a nice introduction to the more substantial main course of the Rebus series of novels. And so to yet another series, the Detective Inspector Bill Slider one, by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. In Shallow Grave (Little, Brown, £16.99 in UK), Old Bill is delving into the case of the body found in the Old Rectory, a beautiful house set in the middle of the west London sprawl of a Victorian Edwardian terrace. On the surface a simple case of domestic violence - flirtatious wife murdered in a rage by her jealous husband - the event takes on wider connotations as the investigation progresses. Yet again, Ms Harrod-Eagles hits the bull'seye with her concoction of mystery and humour, as Slider and his subordinate, Atherton, trundle their sometimes farcical way to a denouement. Highly recommended. Kem Nunn is the author of the classic surf noir, Tapping the Source, and in The Dogs of Winter (No Exit Press, £12 in UK) he returns to that source. His protagonist is Jack Fletcher, a former hot-shot surf photographer fallen on hard times. Suddenly, out of the blue, he is asked to travel to the desolate wastes of Northern California to photograph legendary surfer Drew Harmon riding the waves of the remote reef known as "Heart Attacks". Hoping that this will mean a ticket back to the big time, Fletcher sets out, accompanied by two young surf punks. Things soon go wrong, however, as the little group manages to upset the local Indians, and in no time at all they are fleeing for their lives.
Author Nunn is an expert at describing physical hardship and violence, and at times his work reminded me of James Dickey's wilderness novel Deliverance. The language does become a bit biblical at times, and the sections featuring Harmon's half-mad wife, Kendra, rather set my teeth on edge, but generally the book hits hard and often. Peter Lovesey sets his crime novels featuring Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond in the beautiful town of Bath. His latest, The Vault (Little, Brown, £16.99 in UK), kicks off when an Asian man arrives in the police station with the remains of a human hand in a pizza box. The plot soon thickens with the arrival of a visiting American professor who is doing research into the house in the Abbey Churchyard where Mary Shelley is alleged to have written Frankenstein. The professor's wife then goes missing, a body is washed up in the Avon, and a police colleague is found in a field, the victim of a vicious beating. All of Diamond's intuitive skills are called for, but he once again proves that he is one of the best in the business by unravelling a tortuous skein of conspiracy. Traditional, but highly satisfying.