Tag: suspense

Day 324: Trick of the Dark

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Cover for Trick of the DarkCharlie Flint is a profiler who is on probation because her testimony freed a man who went on to murder four women. She is asked by Corinna Newsam, her old tutor, to investigate the lesbian lover of the tutor’s daughter, Magda. Corinna Newsam thinks that this lover, Jay Stewart, may be a serial killer, because several people who were in her way conveniently died, including Magda Newsam’s husband on the night of their wedding.

Charlie finds herself attracted to a woman she meets in a seminar. (Spoilers follow in this paragraph and the next. I usually don’t include spoilers, but these are integral to my criticism.) This woman is clearly manipulating her from day one, and in the course of her investigation, Charlie violates the confidentiality of the people she is investigating by confiding in her. Of course, without this happening, there wouldn’t be a plot, but it is still the crux of my problem. I don’t think it would be likely that a person in her position would make the mistake of confiding information on a sensitive case to a new acquaintance, even if she is dating her.

It is the nature of this violation that bothers me most, as it is extremely unprofessional and I felt it unlikely from a profiler. Of course, the woman actually turns out to be connected to the murders, and this coincidence also bothered me.

Finally, I am reluctant to say this for fear it will be misconstrued, but at least five characters are fretting about their sexuality. These characters are lesbians, but I don’t enjoy this kind of emphasis in heterosexual literature either.

I am a big fan of the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books, and I also like the Kate Brannigan series by McDermid. I know she has a Lindsay Gordon series, but I don’t think I have read any of those. McDermid has written some of the best stand-alone thrillers I have ever read, particularly A Place of Execution. I was disappointed not to enjoy this novel as much.

Day 310: The Killer Inside Me

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Cover for The Killer Inside MeJim Thompson’s classic noir thriller The Killer Inside Me was one I had never read, so I picked it up out of curiosity. Normally, I am not drawn to classic noir, even though I like a crime novel that is dark. This brief novel easily kept my attention, though.

Lou Ford is a deputy sheriff in a small Texas town. He projects the image of a jovial good guy, maybe even a little stupid, who continually spouts clichés. But he has actually been hiding his sociopathic tendencies for years.

Ford begins a sadomasochistic relationship with Joyce Lakeland, a prostitute. He sees a way to use his relationship with Joyce to get revenge for his brother’s death. As a teenager Ford sexually abused a little girl, and his foster brother Mike took the blame. After he got out of jail, Mike died in a construction accident, and Ford has blamed the local owner of the construction company for Mike’s death.

Ford and Joyce begin blackmailing the owner of the construction company in return for keeping his son’s affair with Joyce secret. Then Ford sees a way to take it all one step further. Of course, things don’t always go as planned.

As in reading Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels, a large part of the fascination of this disturbing book lies in wondering how Ford is going to get out of one fix after another. Thompson’s writing is deft and tight. You will be glued to the page, even if you don’t like noir.

Day 303: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

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Cover for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's NestI just realized that, having reviewed the other two books in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, I never reviewed The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. This final novel will be difficult to discuss without giving away what happened in the previous books.

As Lisbeth Salander recovers in the hospital from her injuries, journalist Mikael Blomkvist investigates Alexander Zalachenko, the Soviet defector she shot in self-defense at the end of the last novel. He begins to think there has been a massive cover-up on the part of Säpo, Sweden’s security police, to hide Zalachenko’s crimes while he was viewed of value to them. Among those crimes were the horrendous beatings he gave Lisbeth’s mother, for he is her father.

Some former members of Säpo are currently colluding with Dr. Peter Teleborian, the psychiatrist who supervised Salander’s institutionalization when she was a girl, to either have Salander re-institutionalized or to murder her, so that their activities do not become known. Salander is able to assist in her own way with preparations for her trial when a sympathetic doctor smuggles her laptop computer and a phone into the hospital for her.

The freakish Niedermann is still loose, having murdered a police officer and carjacked a woman during his escape.

All these subplots are wrapped up through an exciting trial and a subsequent pursuit of Niedermann.

I believe this series is so successful because of a strong message about violence toward women, interesting and believable characters, complex but careful plotting, thrilling action, and a strong, compelling, and unusual heroine. If you have not read the series already, I strongly recommend it. Start with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Day 302: The Cradle in the Grave

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Cover for The Cradle in the GraveFliss Benson is a television producer who on the same day is unexpectedly handed control of an important documentary on women falsely accused of murdering their babies and then receives a mysterious card with 16 numbers on it.

As a result of her boss’s work, three women have been released from prison and the doctor who testified against them, Dr. Judith Duffy, is under investigation for misconduct. Now Fliss’ boss wants to resign and turn the project over to her. Shortly after receiving the job, Fliss learns that one of the mothers featured in the documentary was murdered–and a similar card was found in her pocket.

As Fliss tries to make sense of all the research materials she has been left with, DC Waterhouse is trying to untangle the evidence from his side. His boss “the Snowman” was the person who originally arrested the murder victim, although he knew her well and continued to protest her innocence. A little later, another of the freed mothers is attacked, and another card left for the police to find.

As usual with a Sophie Hannah novel, the characters are convincing, the plot is complex, and the conclusion is hair-raising. The dialog is bright and clever. Simon Waterhouse is as neurotic as ever, but he always eventually gets to the solution. When I am in the mood for some dark, twisted fun, Sophie Hannah is a great choice.

Day 266: Found Wanting

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Cover for Found WantingI usually enjoy Robert Goddard’s convoluted thrillers, but this one seems a bit far-fetched.

Richard Eusden is a proper civil servant who has been estranged from his best friend Marty Hewitson for some years because of the latter’s drug habit and unreliability. Richard is on his way to work one morning when he gets a call from his ex-wife, Gemma, who has agreed to pick up an attaché case from Marty’s aunt and bring it to him in Denmark. Gemma wants Richard to go in her place. She tells Richard that Marty is dying of cancer.

Richard reluctantly agrees, only to find a stranger at the rendezvous instead of Marty. The stranger says Marty has been kidnapped and tells him his friend will die unless he hands over the case.

Richard chases the case and Marty through Germany, Denmark, and Finland, and ends up discovering a dark sectret that involves the Romanov’s last fortune, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, and the Tsarevich.

The novel has so many briefly drawn characters that I could not keep track of them. I also didn’t really buy that Richard would go through all of this for a man he had already established couldn’t be trusted. But ultimately my judgment is that this is silly stuff.

Day 261: Blue Monday

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Cover for Blue MondayI never read Nicci French before and was at first irritated by Blue Monday because the reader is introduced to several characters, using a shifting third-person limited narration, without understanding who they are or why they’re important. Eventually, though, I was able to fasten on Frieda Klein as the main character.

The novel begins in 1985, with nine-year-old Rosie going home from school, followed by her five-year-old sister Joanna. Rosie takes her eyes off Joanna briefly, and the little girl is gone.

Twenty-two years later, a little boy, Matthew Faraday, disappears on his way home from school after his mother is late picking him up. Although at first the crimes don’t seem to be connected, Detective Chief Inspector Karlssen thinks they may be.

Psychiatrist Frieda Klein has recently taken on a new patient, Alan Dekker, who claims to be having such troubling obsessions that he can’t sleep or function correctly. They are about having a son, a boy he can play ball with. He is unable to have children but he doesn’t want to adopt. He obsessively wants a son, one who looks like him as a boy–exactly like the missing Matthew Faraday.

Confidentiality laws apparently not being exactly the same in England as they are in the states, after some soul searching, Frieda feels she must go to the police. Karlssen is impatient with her until she tells him that Alan had these feelings once before about having a daughter but they went away–just around the time of Joanna’s disappearance.

This psychological thriller, which is the first in a series, turns out to have a couple of twists I have never before encountered, so proved to be very interesting. Frieda is an unusual heroine, a cold, analytical person who roams the streets of London at night because of insomnia. I think it would be well worth it to continue reading books in this series.

Day 256: The Truth-Teller’s Lie

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Cover for The Truth-Teller's LieIn The Truth-Teller’s Lie, Sophie Hannah has written another perplexing, dark tale. (Caution, book buyers: as with some other of Hannah’s book, this one was previously published under another title–Hurting Distance.)

Naomi Jenkins has a secret she has never told anyone–that a few years ago she was viciously raped. Lately, she has been having an affair with a married man, Robert Haworth. When he doesn’t turn up for their weekly meeting, she is convinced that something has happened to him, but she can’t get Detectives Charlie Zailer and Simon Waterhouse to do more than ask his wife about him. So, she decides to tell a bizarre lie–that Robert was the man who raped her.

When Simon searches Robert’s house, he finds him lying bleeding on the bed and his wife Juliet behaving strangely. Juliet refuses to tell what happened. As the police investigate, they begin to think that there is a serial rapist abducting women and raping them in front of an audience and that there is some connection between these incidents and the attack on Robert.

As usual in a Sophie Hannah novel, everyone is a bit strange. Even the innocent parties seem to be quite batty, and the police have their own, very odd problems. But her novels are dark and complex, and that’s what I like about them.

Day 254: Vulture Peak

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Cover for Vulture PeakBurdett’s Bangkok series is dark, but Vulture Peak is much more twisted than the others. Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police is ordered by his powerful superior, Colonel Vikom, to investigate a triple murder in a luxurious villa on Vulture Peak, a steep hill above the seaside town of Phuket.

Sonchai realizes that this investigation is linked to Vikom’s stated intention of wiping out trafficking in body parts, part of his campaign for governor of Bangkok. But Sonchai is puzzled by two things: he has never heard before that Thailand is a center of trafficking for body parts and he doesn’t understand why Vikom wants to be governor. Still, it is certainly true that the three bodies have been harvested of every possible organ, including their faces.

Sonchai believes the murders are connected to a trip he took at Colonel Vikom’s command a few weeks before, during which he was posing as an organ merchant. He was dispatched to Dubai to meet Lily and Polly Yip, a pair of Chinese twins who are rich, spoiled, and very odd–and engaged in organ trafficking.

Soon Sonchai is enmeshed in a complicated case that involves trips to Hong Kong and Shanghai, possible involvement of Colonel Vikom’s biggest rival General Zinna, a wandering lunatic with a badly disfigured face who is raping women in Bangkok, and a schizophrenic Chinese cop.

As usual, the pace is fast, the atmosphere is edgy, the characters are interesting, and the insight into Thai and Buddhist culture fascinating.

Day 232: Darkside

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Cover for DarksideThe holidays are over and it’s time to get my act back in gear!

Darkside is a mystery with an unusual twist and an even more unusual ending. Belinda Bauer again sets this novel in the town of Shipcott on the edge of the moor in the area of Exmoor explored in Blacklands.

An old, helpless woman seems to have died in her sleep, but the death turns out to be murder. The local constable, Jonas Holly, who is a resident of the town, is being sidelined and even ridiculed by police detective Marvel, who dislikes him on sight. With another death, the police begin to figure out that a serial killer may be murdering sick and mentally ill people.

Frighteningly, Jonas’s beloved wife Lucy has multiple sclerosis. Jonas begins getting notes from someone that say he is not doing his job, so he decides to investigate on his own.

The ending of the novel is ambiguous. Does Jonas know who the killer is or not?

Bauer manages as she did in her first book to create a tense, atmospheric thriller. Characters are plausibly drawn, and the writing is tight. I have been very pleased with Bauer’s dark psychological thrillers so far.

Day 195: The Water’s Lovely

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Cover for The Water's LovelyRuth Rendell is not for the faint of heart. She is certainly capable of building her readers’ sense of dread, and I felt one from the beginning of The Water’s Lovely, to the point where I almost couldn’t enjoy it.

Ismay suspects that her sister Heather drowned their stepfather Guy in the bathtub years ago to save Ismay from his advances. She and their mother assumed Heather’s guilt at the time but never spoke of it, and their mother is now mentally ill. When Heather gets seriously involved with a coworker, Edmund, Ismay begins to worry that she should tell him what Heather did. She stupidly records her theory on a cassette tape.

Rendell does a great job of portraying a slew of repellent characters, including self-obsessed Ismay; Edmund’s clinging, whiny mother; and Ismay’s selfish, manipulative boyfriend Andrew. The worst is Marion, the woman Edmond’s mother would like him to date. She likes to befriend elderly people she thinks will put her in their wills, and then she perhaps poisons them.

I worried what was going to happen with that tape, because Heather and Edmund were practically the only likeable characters in the book, except for the girl’s aunt Pamela and her friend Michael. Happily, the ending wasn’t as dreadful as I feared.