CrimeFile: Alafair Burke has inherited some of her father's storytelling gifts, writes Vincent Banville
The first three novels under review here are part of a nine-pack series called New Blood which Orion is putting on the market. All in hardback, they are beautifully produced and come embroidered with praise from some of the better-known crime writers. Personally, I believe that the publishers would have been better off staggering them over the year, as it's difficult to sort out nine volumes when they all come in the same outpouring.
Alafair Burke will probably get a lot of notice, as her father is the best-selling crime author James Lee Burke. However, having read Judgement Calls, I must say that she has certainly inherited quite an amount of her old man's story-telling abilities. Her heroine is Deputy DA Samantha Kincaid, working in Portland, Maine's Drug and Vice Division. When her colleague, Tim O'Donnell, wants to settle for an assault charge in the case of a 13-year-old girl who was brutally attacked and left for dead, Kincaid steps in and, sickened by the viciousness of the crime, goes instead for attempted murder.
Of course she immediately opens up the proverbial can of worms, involving a prostitution ring of underage girls, an earlier, high-profile death penalty case and a possible serial killer. Burke, in this her first novel, handles the various threads of the story with aplomb, her characters are believable, her plotting is right on the button, and in Kincaid she has created a sympathetic protagonist that I'm sure we'll hear about again.
Massimo Carlotto is described on the blurb of The Colombian Mule as "Probably the best living Italian crime writer" - I'm possibly being glib when I wonder how many living Italian crime writers there are. Throwing my cynical hat aside, I have to admit that his novel maintained my interest for a number of reasons. First there is the exotic locale of Northeast Italy, then the kind of stilted oddity of the characters and the dialogue. His anti-hero is one Marco Buratti, known more colloquially as Alligator, former blues singer and ex convict, now a private detective. With the help of two shady partners, he attempts to prove the innocence of a rich smuggler, who has been arrested on a charge of bringing illicit drugs into Italy from Colombia.
The cast list includes drug users, pimps, lap dancers and a deadly female crook known as La Tia. All in all a jolly romp, expertly translated from the Italian by Christopher Woodall, who manages to preserve the ambiance of seediness that this tale surely possessed in the original.
The Stone Angels by Stuart Archer Cohen is set in Buenos Aires and is concerned with an investigation into the death of a struggling expatriate writer, American Robert Waterbury. The twosome heading the enquiry is made up of a local policeman, who was actually involved in the kidnapping and murder, and an inexperienced US lawyer named Athena Fowler.
It is obvious that neither the Argentinean nor American authorities are eager to have the crime solved, as it harbours within it the seeds of big business corruption and shady stock market dealing on a huge scale. Cohen handles his material admirably, and the background of underworld Buenos Aires seems authentic.
Brad Meltzer is one of the newer guys around, being all of 33 years old. However, I don't know how he takes to the blurb comparing him to one John Grisham. An attorney himself, he writes about the process of law and how it can be manipulated to suit various ends, not all of them above board.
In The Zero Game he creates a complicated plot, revolving on the game of the title, which has the staffers and lobbyists on Capitol Hill placing bets on various bits of legislation behind the backs of the Senators. Eventually things turn nasty, violence erupts and the good guys have a hard time saving themselves. A satisfying, big-scale read, The Zero Game keeps one turning the pages.
Playing with Fire, by Peter Robinson, is a more traditional police procedural, set as it is in a town near Leeds and featuring this author's troubled protagonist DCI Alan Banks. Here he's investigating the finding of two bodies in a couple of burned-out boats on the local canal.
Robinson has been writing this series over a long period and perhaps he's growing slightly tired of it. I certainly found this present effort limp in both plot and pace and, as is usual with crime novels nowadays, it is much too long. A case of a thin, taut story trying to force its way out of a much over-padded one?
Great title and great author's name come with our last offering. Janette Turner Hospital, author of Due Preparations for the Plague, is Australian, but now living and lecturing in the US. Her plot trails intimations of post-September 11, dealing as it does with a highjacked aeroplane and the fall-out from it.
The main character's mother died in the tragedy and, just as he is coming to terms with the event, a survivor contacts him, urging him to join her in discovering the truth. Due Preparations for the Plague is a very well-written novel, a superior one of its type, and deserves a wide readership.
• Vincent Banville is a writer and critic
Judgement Calls
By Alafair Burke
Orion, £9.99
The Colombian Mule
By Massimo Carlotto
Orion, £9.99
The Stone Angels
By Stuart Archer Cohen
Orion, £9.99
The Zero Game
By Brad Meltzer
Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99
Playing with Fire
By Peter Robinson
Macmillan, £15.99
Due Preparations for the Plague
By Janette Turner
Hospital 4th Estate, £17.99