Crimefile: Writer and critic, Michael Painter, reviews some of the recent offerings from the crime/thriller department including Land of the Living by Nicci French and Robert Crais' The Last Detective.
The Magdalen Martyrs. By Ken Bruen, Brandon, €12.99
Another episode in the scandalous life of Galway City resident Jack Taylor, The Magdalen Martyrs again exhibits author Ken Bruen's all- encompassing ability to depict the underbelly of the criminal world and still imbue it with a torrid fascination.
Taylor, as his fans know, is an ex- policeman who now treads Galway's mean streets as a kind of ex-officio private investigator. Brought low by the twin evils of drink and drugs, he has lost his true love and ostracised most of his friends, and only manages to keep going through the good offices of the kindly Mrs Bailey, who puts him up in her down-at-heel B&B. Contacted by local hard man Bill Cassell to find a woman who worked in one of the infamous Magdalen laundries, he comes up against an exotic cast of characters, none of whom seems overly anxious to help him out. Bruised, battered and quite often bewildered, Taylor muddles along, in the process settling a few old scores and just about managing to hang on to his threadbare integrity. Bruen writes in the kind of London noir style of Derek Raymond and Mark Timlin, his prose very much in your face and permeated with a morbid and downbeat outlook. Definitely not for the blue-rinse set who love P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, but carrying an adrenalin charge for those who like their thrillers rough, tough, mean and dirty.
The Last Detective. By Robert Crais, Orion, £12.99
Regular readers of Robert Crais will be delighted to know that The Last Detective sees the return of private eye Elvis Cole and his super-hero sidekick, Joe Pike. The bad news, however, is that Elvis is still burdened with the awfully nice Lucy Chenier and her too-good-to- be-true son, Ben. The same thing happened to Robert B. Parker's Spenser when he became entangled in the banal blandishments of dire Susan Silverman.
In this latest episode, young Ben is kidnapped from Elvis's secluded Los Angeles home, but instead of wanting ransom for his safe return, his abductors are seeking vengeance on our hero for some wrong he did them in the past. The only clue is given by the designation "Five-Two", which was Elvis's unit number during the Vietnam War, a period in his past he is attempting to forget. Another possibility is that Ben's father, Lucy's ex-husband, Richard, has snatched his son. Aided by the phlegmatic and violent Pike, Elvis has to tread carefully to ensure the boy's safety while at the same time doing his utmost to maintain his own.
A satisfying thriller this, for Crais always manages to concoct an engrossing story. But please drop Lucy and introduce a more interesting and streetwise female in the next instalment!
Soul Circus. By George P. Pelecanos, Orion, £12.99
First a good word for publishers Orion, who are issuing their well- designed hardback thrillers at a very reasonable price, even if they are in sterling. Pelecanos, one of the newer crime writers on the scene, but already with a respectable back-list, sets his novels in the seedier side of Washington DC. Most of them feature private investigator Derek Strange and his rather embittered partner, Terry Quinn. In this, they are hired to find a missing girl, which they do, but when the girl is killed by their client, they are forced to do some soul-searching and to question the moral code by which they try to live.
There is also the problem of Granville Oliver, a local drug dealer, who is the prime suspect in the killing of a low-life. Should they take on the burden of proving him innocent of that crime, or let him go to the gas chamber by suppressing vital evidence? Pelecanos writes very well, his evocative prose and descriptive powers bringing vividly into perspective the process of life and death in Washington's black ghettoes. And another plus is that he is not a great one for happy endings, as this fine crime novel once again shows.
The Headhunter. By Paul Kilduff, Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99
Kilduff was born in Dublin and works here as vice-president of a large financial institution. This is his fourth novel and, like the other three, it is set in the City of London securities and banking world. I have to confess that these thrillers, with their backgrounds in the IT and financial sectors, always fail to thrill me. But there is a large readership for them, as is proved by this author's and others' success.
Here, a serial killer appears to be on the loose: a German banker is killed in Dusseldorf, while some time later a computer affairs consultant is knifed in Dublin. But our author is much more interested in shady dealings in the City, involving a crooked exchange trader and the woman he ropes in to help him. The result is that the serial killer strand of the plot is pushed into the background and, although the whole thing more or less comes together in the end, the suspense, at least for me, became rather diluted.
I also found a lot of the business-speak quite incomprehensible, which leads me to think that some enterprising young whiz kid would make a lot of money by bringing out a dictionary of all these new-fangled idioms.
Land of the Living. By Nicci French, Michael Joseph, £16.99
As most people who read crime fiction probably know already, Nicci French is the husband and wife writing team of Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. They've had a lot of success with psychological suspense novels such as Killing Me Softly and The Red Room, and this is another in that particular oeuvre.
Abbie Devereaux wakes up hooded and bound, and with no idea where she is or how she got there. A man she never sees feeds her, keeping her alive, but always with the threat that he will eventually kill her.
Time goes by, and Abbie resolves to escape by whatever means possible, her stubbornness borne of the desire to bring this monster who has abducted her to justice. Eventually she does manage to regain her liberty, but she knows she will never have true freedom until her mysterious captor is brought to book.
Our authors are experts at stringing out the tension, bringing it taut, loosening it, and then winding it once more to breaking-point.
What higher praise can I give Land of the Living than to say it is right up there with the suspense novels of Minette Walters, Frances Fyfield and Val McDermid?
Michael Painter is a writer and critic