Jenny Siler's Easy Money (Orion, £9.99 in UK) has to be the best crime novel debut I've come across in a long time. A bit shaky in the action scenes, perhaps, but everything else is Grade A. Characterisation is adeptly done, plotline faithfully followed, scene-setting of the you-are-there variety. And the quality of the writing is just, well, par excellence think James Crumley, injected with a new, youthful zest. The heroine is Allie, a tough loner who collects packages and delivers them to their destination without questioning their contents. When her ex-lover, Joey, asks her to collect a computer disk and drop it off in a Washington bar, she takes the assignment without a second thought. However, her contact turns up dead and an attempt is made on her life, setting off a train of events that brings her down the spine of the US to the Florida Keys and a date with destiny. It was here that she grew up, with her eccentric father and his equally off-the-wall partner, Cyrus - veterans, both of them, of the Vietnam War - And it is in their murky pasts that the resolution of the mystery lies. Ms Siler shows technical brilliance in her work, as well as an ability to write exceptionally well. She is one to watch.
Ian Rankin needs no introduction, his series of police novels featuring Scottish DI John Rebus having garnered multitudes of plaudits from critics and readers alike. His latest is Dead Souls (Orion, £9.99 in UK), an intricately plotted and tightly written novel as dark as the badly-lit Edinburgh streets that Rebus prowls. There are a number of strands to the story: the son of an old school friend of Rebus's has gone missing, someone is poisoning the animals in the city zoo, a policeman colleague has committed suicide, a known paedophile is photographing children again and a convicted killer is having his life story told in a local tabloid paper. In addition Rebus is still having wife trouble, is back on the sauce and has lost his faith in the power of prayer. When reading Rankin, you know you're in good hands; he seldom fails to deliver, and in Dead Souls he is at the top of his form.
Glenn Meade, the Dublin-born writer who once worked for both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent, and still lives here, dividing his time between writing and training pilots, follows up his bestselling Brandenburg and Snow Wolf with The Sands of Sakkara (Hodder & Stoughton P/B, £9.99 in UK). Again he works on two levels of timescale, opening the book in the present when the body of an old man is washed up on the banks of the Nile, then returning in flashback to September, 1939, to begin the main storyline. The body may or may not be the remains of Major Johann Halder, one of German Intelligence's most brilliant agents who, during the second World War, was entrusted with the audacious mission of killing President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, while they were in Cairo to plan the Allied invasion of Europe. Weaver arrives to view the body, then the real story kicks off as memories crowd in around him. As usual with Meade, the research is stunning, the exotic locales immaculately described, and the action scenes explosively detailed. This is a big, gung-ho thriller that sets out to entertain, and it achieves this purpose to no little effect. For escapist fare, The Sands of Sakkara is force 10 out of 10.
Donna Leon sets her crime novels in Venice, a suitably sombre setting with its physical and moral decay. Her new one. Fatal Remedies (Heinemann, £15.99 in UK), opens with an elegantly dressed woman throwing a brick through a travel agency window in the Campo Manin. The violent act is by way of a protest at the fact that the agency specialises in sex tours to Third World countries, but it is the identity of the demonstrator that draws the reporters in their hordes. She is Paola, the aristocratic wife of Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police. As well as having to deal with his wife's indiscretion, Brunetti is saddled with investigating a mafia robbery, death threats to a witness and the murder of the owner of the very travel agency his wife despoiled. Leon, like Michael Dibdin before her, has a nice feel for her exotic setting, and in Brunetti has created a sympathetic and very plausible policeman. Her plots do tend to be a little on the far-fetched side, and there are long intervals describing the Brunetti home life, which tend to dissipate tension and slow down the pace. However, for those who like a rather rambling storyline with very little violence, Fatal Remedies will more than suffice.
Gerald Seymour is another professional at the thriller writing game, his books tending less towards the flashy and more towards the solidly reliable in terms of action and plot structure. In A Line in the Sand (Bantam Press, £16.99 in UK) he gives us a traditional adventure story, with ex-agent Frank Perry being threatened by figures and events from his past. Ten years before the story opens, he spied on Iranian chemical and biological installations: now an Iranian assassin has been sent to eliminate him, and the local inhabitants of the village community on the Suffolk coast where he has taken shelter are up in arms because of the restrictions imposed on them as a consequence of the preparations undertaken for his safety. In the end, it is a toss-up as to whether Frank will survive the violence of the assassin or the depredations of the outraged locals.