Surely it must annoy authors in the extreme when their work is compared to that of others in a particular genre? For example, Kathy Reichs's debut novel, Deja Dead (Heinemann, £10 in UK), comes emblazoned with the slogan that it is "As good as Patricia Cornwell or your money back". Granted, there are similarities in that Reichs, like Cornwell, is a forensic scientist, knows intimately the pathology of the human body, and has as her heroine a clone of herself, in this case one Temperance Brennan, who is Chief Forensic Anthropologist for the city of Montreal. But Reichs, on the evidence of her first effort, can stand on her own two feet and wield a scalpel with the best.
Setting the scene, she gives Brennan a wayward daughter, a cat, a failed marriage and an uneasy relationship with the detective on the case, a taciturn inspector called Claudel. And the case in question? A serial killer is at large, murdering and eviscerating young women and doing unmentionable things to their private parts. The hotter the trail gets, the more Brennan puts herself in danger, and the bloody climax admirably sets off the tautness of the narrative with a bang, rather than a whimper. Good characterisation here, a believable story-line and plenty of suspense. It also helps, of course, if you happen to be keenly taken up with the practice of necrolatry.
More serial killing in Jonathan Kellerman's Survival of the Fit- test" (Little Brown, £15.99 in UK), as his protagonist, child psychologist Alex Delaware, also puts himself in mortal danger in order to break up a ring of psychopathic killers. Readers of this author will be familiar with the set-up here, as Delaware, working closely with gay cop Milo Sturgis, investigates the seemingly random killings of handicapped people. This time Kellerman reintroduces his Israeli policeman Daniel Sharavi from his novel The Butcher's Theatre, brought all the way from his homeland to dispense his own brand of expertise. Although mining this type of bedrock for quite a few years now, Kellerman never fails to maintain interest, and I found this one a particularly good example of his work.
A relief, in a way, to take up James Kennedy's Silent City (Heinemann, £10 in UK), with its offering of rather old-fashioned adventure. This is Alastair McLean country, although set on our own green shores, and provides an action-driven narrative, stock characters, gung-ho writing and a plot that boils down to an effort to assassinate the US President as he visits our rocky, western shores. The hero is Eddie Halpin, a civil-liberties activist who teaches history in UCG, and a man set firmly in the image and likeness of Bulldog Drummond or, in our own day, Indiana Jones. The plot has its beginnings in the bombing of the North Strand during the last war, a religious charity set up by the Rev Joseph Manning, and the usual international conspiracy to subvert the social fabric. But our man in Galway is, as the saying goes, up for it, and, with the help of attractive policewoman Rainey, he beats the baddies, tears off their moustaches and leaves them properly hogtied. An amiable read for the long, dull days of winter.
The title of Stuart Woods's novel, Dirt (HarperCollins, £17.99 in UK), gives a clue to the contents, although perhaps Stirring the Dirt might have been more apt. The setting is the Manhattan tabloid business, where ace gossip columnist Amanda Dart is being threatened by an anonymous rival, who is circulating details of her on-going indiscretions with a business tycoon. She calls in lawyer and man-about-town Stone Barrington to help her out, but then goes off the rails to the extent of introducing extreme prejudice into her efforts to still the waspish insinuations that are giving her a taste of her own medicine. Author Woods obviously knows the scene well and he writes from an insider's viewpoint. Good, vitriolic stuff, this, with a leavening of celebrity know-how to make the medicine go down.
More comparisons in the blurb for Fid Backhouse's first crime novel, By Other Means (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 in UK). This time we are told that readers of Michael Dobbs and Jeffrey Archer will go manic over this contemporary political thriller. And of its type, it is indeed readable enough, as the radical British Prime Minister is killed, subordinates jockey for the job, American involvement in the strife is feared, and bullets begin to fly. Would make a good television mini-series and give Ian Richardson another of his oleaginous roles.
And finally, a throwback to the by now rather quaint-seeming crime novels of yesteryear: Jane Jakeman's The Egyptian Coffin (Headline, £16.99 in UK). In this one, set in the 1830s, Lord Ambrose Malfine journeys from his peaceful West Country estate to the narrow, danger-filled alleyways of Cairo in order to rescue Lilian Westmoreland, young, attractive and an heiress, from a fate worse than death. Lovely stuff, wreathed round by the olde world atmosphere of intrepid derringdo, twirling of moustaches and discreet bodice-ripping. Come back Agatha, Dorothy and Ngaio, all is forgiven.
Michael Painter is a freelance journalist