Crime.

FICTION

****

About Face

A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

By Donna Leon

Former English professor Donna Leon again shines the spotlight on her beloved adopted city of Venice in this 18th installment of her award-winning mystery series.

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THE STORY: Commissario Guido Brunetti's professional and personal lives collide when Maggiori Guarini of the carabinieri--the Italian military police--asks him to look into the murder of a truck driver possibly tied to the Mafia and the illegal dumping of toxic waste. Meanwhile, Brunetti's father-in-law, the wealthy and powerful Conte Falier, asks him to investigate a potential business partner who may have ties of his own to the Mafia. The happily married Brunetti quickly becomes more interested in the businessman's much younger wife, a former beauty horribly disgured by a botched face-lift. When Guarini's body is discovered in a deserted industrial storage facility, Brunetti's informal inquiries turn deadly.

Atlantic. 272 pages. $24. ISBN: 0802118968

Boston Globe ****

"In About Face she ratchets up the tension further, expanding on both the intimate and social complexities that make her books so rich. As a result, the discoveries feel natural, the revelations inevitable." CLEA SIMON

Independent (UK) ****

"She combines the minutiae of daily life in Venice with pitch-perfect descriptions of police procedure, the now-familiar rhythms of Brunetti's home life with a ferocious knowledge of literature, delivered--how else?--with a sure, yet light, touch. ... The details of home-cooked meals and family arguments, alongside a never-ending flow of crime, add a depth to Leon's stories and are what makes her characters so believable and, in turn, her books so readable." REBECCA ARMSTRONG

South FL Sun-Sentinel ****

"Brunetti, one of crime fiction's most beloved police inspectors, knows he can never defeat Italian corruption, but he will never give up trying. Leon balances the unseemly aspects of his job with the satisfactions of his comfortable domestic life." OLINE H. COGDILL

NY Times Book Review ****

"It would be easy to punch holes in a contrived subplot, thick with symbolism, about a beautiful young woman whose face was ruined by cosmetic surgery. But who would want to, when Leon is being so generous with the humanizing details that make this series special?" MARILYN STASIO

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ***

"As a writer, Leon has mastered an engaging way with the Venetian culture, always the strongest element in her books. It's the preachy side of her--an understandable reaction to the appalling conditions in Italy--that needs to be mastered as well." BOB HOOVER

CRITICAL SUMMARY

In this latest installment, Leon returns to Brunetti's charming, if problematic, domestic life--rather neglected in recent installments--which contrasts vividly with the violent crimes Brunetti must solve, a move applauded by critics who consider the genial, sophisticated Brunetti one of crime fiction's most engaging detectives. Though Leon's loving descriptions of life in contemporary Venice can at times displace the plot, she nevertheless heaps on the suspense in this hard-edged thriller. The New York Times Book Review complained of a cliched story line, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette bemoaned Leon's shrill, preachy tone, but most critics considered About Face an enjoyable romp through modern Venice and a worthy addition to this well-regarded series.

FIRST IN THE SERIES

DEATH AT LA FENICE "(1992): When infamous German maestro Helmut Wellauer is found dead of cyanide poisoning after the second act of La Traviata, Commissario Guido Brunetti must unearth secrets buried since World War II in order to catch the killer.

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****

Nobody Move

By denis Johnson

Poet, playwright, and novelist Denis Johnson won the National Book Award for his expansive, bold epic of the Vietnam War, Tree of Smoke (**** SELECTION Nov/dec 2007). He originally wrote this noir crime novel as a four-part serial for Playboy.

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THE STORY: Barbershop quartet member Jimmy Luntz has just lost a choral competition when Ernest Gambol, a sadistic hired gun with a taste for human flesh, pays him a visit. A recent losing streak means that Jimmy doesn't have the money to pay his gambling debts to Gambol's loan shark boss, and he manages to escape only by shooting Gambol in the leg and speeding off in the hit man's Cadillac. As he careens across California's Central Valley, Jimmy crosses paths with the beautiful Anita Desilvera, framed for robbery by her crooked county prosecutor husband. Together, Jimmy and Anita race against time to find the stolen money while staying one step ahead of Gambol.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 196 pages. $23. ISBN: 0374222908

Boston Globe ****

"Nobody Move does exactly what noir should do--propel the reader downhill, with its cast of losers, louts, and toughs as they cheat, shoot, and exploit one another into fast-talking oblivion. Yet there's a playful tilt, a humane rendering of its dark characters, and a relentless buzz in the sentences that recalls Jesus' Son, Johnson's tight little classic of fractured junkie transcendence." JESS WALTER

NY Times Book Review ****

"One senses that Johnson took great pleasure in writing on a deadline, keeping the story tight to the bone, honing his sentences down to the same kind of utilitarian purity he demonstrated in Tree of Smoke. ... If Tree of Smoke--intricately plotted, embracing the entire Vietnam era and bringing it up alongside the war in Iraq--was a huge piece of work, a 'Guernica' of sorts, then Nobody Move is a Warhol soup can, a flinty, bright piece of pop art meant to be instantly understood and enjoyed." DAVID MEANS

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ****

"In tone, Nobody Move sounds like Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, moved to the dull towns of central California. ... Organized in expert fashion by Johnson, the tension rises by the page. At 196 of them, there's no room for digression." BOB HOOVER

San Francisco Chronicle ****

"Eschewing the milder, more reflective emotional range of most literary fiction, this expertly titrated entertainment delivers a steadily pleasurable dose of voyeuristic dread. Johnson writes pulp fiction with alarming ease and economy, crisply working the old noir character types through a relentless series of reversals, milking them at the most dire moments for unlikely, enigmatic utterances that are quickly forgotten as we turn the page and hurry on." JACOB MOLYNEUX

South FL Sun-Sentinel ****

"It's got all the [Elmore] Leonard requisites: a lowlife but somehow noble hero; a beautiful (and in this case deranged) broad; bad people in both the legit and criminal worlds who want to do them harm--all conjured with deadpan humor in lean and supple prose. ... While Johnson weaves all this together with an expert touch, he gives the familiar tropes a deft, off-kilter spin." CHAUNCEY MABE

Washington Post ****

"The brevity of this novel limits Johnson's scope, but he still has room for zingers (like a character who gets 'thirty percent drunk'); observations of human nature (Anita: 'Do you always talk about people like they're invisible?' Jimmy: 'Usually just women'); and an extended gunfire sequence that plays like an outtake from Tree of Smoke. Nobody Move does not rank as a major work, but enjoy it for what it is: an idiosyncratic journey through familiar terrain." SARAH WEINMAN

Newsday ***

"Denis Johnson's Nobody Move is a small-caliber crime thriller, a petty perpetration of literary kleptomania that clips along at such a beach-blankety pace you hardly notice that the characters are cliches, the plot recycled pulp and the destination obscure. ... Johnson dazzles us with footwork, with word choices and poetic constructions, but he can't disguise that Jimmy, Anita, Gambol and the rest are pure cartoons." JOHN ANDERSON

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Critics were puzzled by Johnson's choice to follow up the award-winning Tree of Smoke with a lightweight genre piece like Nobody Move. While most viewed the novel as a laudable exercise in style and technique, a few considered it a literary side step--a minor work by an acclaimed writer. Taking a few pages from such crime story greats as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Johnson has produced quintessential noir--with snappy dialogue, violence, sex, and a wry sense of humor. Though Newsday complained of one-dimensional characters and flimsy plotlines, other reviewers regarded these as hallmarks of the genre, proclaiming Johnson "marvelously fluent in noir" (Boston Globe). Lacking the heft and depth of Johnson's previous work, Nobody Move is the perfect choice for easy, entertaining summer reading.

****

The Birthday Present

By Barbara Vine

Barbara Vine is the pseudonym of acclaimed British writer Ruth Rendell, creator of the popular Inspector Wexford series as well as other murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, and short stories (recently reviewed: The Water's Lovely, **** Sept/oct 2007). The Birthday Present is the 13th novel Rendell has published as Barbara Vine.

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THE STORY: A young Conservative MP in the last days of Margaret Thatcher's administration, Ivor Tesham seems "the quintessential English gentleman," but his wealth and ambition conceal a voracious appetite for women and sadomasochistic sex. As a birthday present, he hires two actors to kidnap his married mistress, Hebe Furnal, for a night of kinky sex games. But things go terribly wrong when the getaway car crashes and Hebe is killed. Frantic to hide his involvement, Tesham is driven to increasingly desperate measures while homely, isolated Jane Atherton, Hebe's best friend and alibi for her secret trysts with Tesham, becomes more and more unbalanced as the police search for clues.

Shaye Areheart Books. 336 pages. $25. ISBN: 0307451984

Boston Globe ****

"Vine is nothing if not a clear (though mischievous) storyteller, and so the plot unfolds with her usual clarity and grace. ... It's Vine's ability to limn the sexual as well as the material have-and-have-not nature of recent British history that makes the book a tasty morsel for us, if not her characters." ED SIEGEL

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ****

"The crash sets off a chain of events, as usual in a Vine/Rendell story, that branches off in the most unexpected directions. ... It's a nasty story, told with wry black humor, and an ending that's both happy and sad--and only marginally moralistic." ROBERT CROAN

Telegraph (UK) ****

"Ruth Rendell, writing here as Barbara Vine, is both a Labour peer and a connoisseur of human iniquity, so it is no wonder that she has a high old time with this novel about a Tory politician in that notably sleaze-riddled period, the early Nineties. ... Rendell is at her most mischievous and entertaining here, but the novel is a serious and sympathetic attempt to understand what makes an egotist tick." JAKE KERRIDGE

Washington Post ****

"Within the first five pages of The Birthday Present, you know you're in the hands of a mystery/thriller writer who's in perfect control of her material. In addition to that fabulous control, Rendell/Vine maintains a matronly, almost magisterial tone that lends unexpected dignity to the goriest, creepiest material." CAROLYN SEE

NY Times Book Review ****

"Although we're reminded that 'all political parties have their sleaziness,' the story might be read as a cautionary fable for a particularly tense time, perhaps subtitled 'How the Tories Shot Themselves in the Foot in the 1994 Elections.' ... Ivor can't avoid becoming ridiculous; but because Vine leaves out nothing in portraying him, he remains likable--never admirable, but likable." MARILYN STASIO

Independent (UK) ***

"The novel becomes episodic, and at times long-winded. ... Rendell's Barbara Vine novels usually contain some of her sharpest writing, but it's never quite clear whether The Birthday Present is a thriller which happens to have a Westminster setting or a book which aims to say something about the nature of Tory politics--or, indeed, which version of the Tory party she has in mind." JOAN SMITH

Guardian (UK) **

"The sad truth, however, is that all these promising sparks do not result in fireworks. ... What's more, the suspense worked up so potently in earlier Vine novels is not in evidence." CARRIE O'GRADY

CRITICAL SUMMARY

In her newest Barbara Vine novel, Rendell has crafted a subtly sordid tale studded with imaginative plot twists and black humor. Though she reveals Tesham's eventual downfall within the first few pages, Rendell builds a great deal of tension into her complex, tightly constructed plot, and her descriptions of Tesham's sexual adventures, though accurate, are never lurid. Interestingly, most British critics panned the novel--a possible reaction to the liberal Rendell's political leanings or a jaded familiarity with the national events framing the plot. However, American critics praised The Birthday Present, calling it "one of [Rendell's] best literary excursions" to date (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Readers in search of a smart, fast-paced thriller by an expert storyteller will appreciate Vine's latest.

****

The Long Fall

The First Leonid McGill Mystery

By Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley is best known as the author of the Easy Rawlins mystery series, about an African American detective working in postwar Los Angeles (see Blonde Faith, **** Jan/Feb 2008). The Long Fall is the first book in a new series set in Mosley's present hometown, New York City.

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THE STORY: A good mystery protagonist always needs problem-solving skills, but private investigator Leonid McGill may have more problems than most PIs. He is trying to go straight after years of being a pawn for the mob and, all things considered, a pretty nasty guy. Although married, he knows that two of his three children are not his; the rent for his office is dirt cheap, but his landlady, an ex-lover, is scheming against him; on top of these issues, someone is killing the four men a client employed him to find. Like Easy Rawlins before him, McGill provides an interesting perspective on race and class in America while also trying to figure out whodunit.

Riverhead. 320 pages. $25.95. ISBN: 1594488584

San Francisco Chronicle ****

"There's a lot of plot to keep track of in The Long Fall, but the pleasures of the novel come not mainly from its narrative mechanics but from McGill's first-person perspective on race and class in an America on the verge of electing its first black president. ... If The Long Fall is overstuffed with incidental characters whose importance may not be obvious until later installments, that's a minor flaw. Having retired Easy Rawlins, Mosley has devised a worthy successor in Leonid McGill." MICHAEL BERRY

South FL Sun-Sentinel ****

"While Easy was a good man who was often forced to do bad things, Leonid is, at heart, a bad man trying to do good. ... The Long Fall is just the beginning of what should be an invigorating new series." OLINE COGDILL

Chicago Sun-Times ****

"[Mosley] keeps McGill in proper perspective by pulling back on his intuitive ability, so that the crime does not just solve itself. As a result, the reader quickly becomes immersed in the story line, groping along with the hard-boiled PI as he begins to connect the dots." JEFF JOHNSON

NY Times Book Review ****

"While nowhere near as charming as Rawlins, McGill is easy to like, given the character-building temptations that come his way as he tries to be an honest investigator and a good family man. ... All things considered, McGill is someone you can definitely settle down with." MARILYN STASIO

USA Today ****

"Fans won't be disappointed. ... Like Rawlins, McGill is more tantalizing than the plot Mosley concocts around him. still, The Long Fall is a well-written twists-and-turns story that runs up to a satisfying conclusion." CAROL MEMMOTT

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Perhaps inevitably, every reviewer attempted to assess how Leonid McGill compares to Mosley's beloved (but now retired) protagonist Easy Rawlins. In general, critics were pleased, if a little stunned, by the two characters' stark differences. Yet every reviewer was satisfied with Mosley's masterful abilities to construct an intriguing mystery around any kind of character. A few reviewers complained that the plot and the character development of The Long Fall were somewhat convoluted. However, as one critic noted, this novel still does the things the first book in a successful mystery series must do: it establishes a character that can solve today's caper, and it shows readers the character's inner personal flaws that let them know that greater ordeals lie ahead.

*****

The Way Home

By George Pelecanos

International award-winning novelist George Pelecanos is well known for his gritty thrillers depicting the squalid, crime-ridden side of his beloved Washington, D.C. (see The Turnaround **** SELECTION Nov/Dec 2008, and The Night Gardener **** SELECTION Nov/Dec 2006). He is also a film and television producer who worked most recently on HBO's police drama The Wire.

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THE STORY: Young Chris Flynn, having paid his debt to society for a violent assault, is released from juvenile detention and given a job in his father's flooring company. His father Thomas Flynn is an ex-cop who blames himself for Chris's delinquency. Thomas tries to guide him into adulthood, but his lessons are put to the test when Chris and a friend from prison, Ben, find a gym bag stuffed with $50,000 under the floorboards of a house where they are installing new carpet. Chris convinces Ben to put it back, but Ben is unable to keep the secret. Soon, they set off a game of cat-and-mouse that could cost the boys their lives.

Little, Brown. 336 pages. $24.99. ISBN: 0316156493

Boston Globe ****

"The Way Home is an action-packed, suspenseful mystery story that explores family loyalty and friendship. Pelecanos, as usual, writes crackling prose that propels the reader forward, turning the pages deep into the dark night." CHUCK LEDDY

South FL Sun-Sentinel ****

"Pelecanos, who earned an Emmy nomination for his stint as a screenwriter for HBo's The Wire, makes the old saw of finding a bag of tainted money fresh and original. The Way Home offers additional proof that Pelecanos continues to be one of today's top crime fiction authors." OLINE H. COGDILL

los Angeles Times ****

"The Way Home remains true to its titular purpose; as a result, the structure is perhaps less weighted toward a classic narrative arc and more toward the journey itself. As with his last two novels, Pelecanos demonstrates that redemption, if it comes at all, is hard-won." SARAH WEINMAN

New Yorker ****

"Despite its hard-charging elements, the story unfolds almost languidly, and it is clear that Pelecanos, a seasoned novelist and a writer for The Wire, means to provoke more than quickened heartbeats. His passionate advocacy for juvenile-prison reform--and his well-reasoned argument that a poorly run system can punish petty offenders far more severely than their crimes merit--occasionally turns the plot into a polemic."

Washington Times ****

"Sometimes, Mr. Pelecanos gives in to the sort of prime-time plotting that solves the characters' problems in 44 minutes of airtime, and his denouement leans uncomfortably toward TV sentimental. But between the wonderful dialogue, the characters who unpeel like onions before your eyes, and action that punches from the shoulder and hip--the very technique Thomas Flynn taught young chris--Mr. Pelecanos brings things off with bravura." JOHN WEISMAN

NY Times Book Review ***

"After taking his sympathetic portrayal of the father-son standoff as far as it can go, Pelecanos remembers that he needs to work some serious crime into the story. ... But the device Pelecanos engineers--the discovery of a gym bag with nearly $50,000 in cash--is too tame to support the violence that follows." MARILYN STASIO

Washington Post ***

"A secret bag of money? It's as shopworn as it sounds, and the loudest false note in The Way Home. Ben and chris's reaction also stretches credulity: Would anyone really replace an old bag of money back in a floor, particularly when it seemed to have been there for years?" KEVIN ALLMAN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Pelecanos received mixed reviews on his latest thriller. While some critics complained of the cliched hidden bag of money, others countered that Pelecanos's clever writing, sympathetic characters, and nuanced portrayal of a difficult, heartrending father-son relationship offset an otherwise hackneyed plot device. His vivid descriptions of Washington, D.C., and its racial and social tensions rise above the genre and pose important questions about the nature of loyalty and what it means to be a man in the midst of urban decay and violence. Though the Washington Times felt that Pelecanos couldn't separate the author from the screenwriter and the New York Times Book Review cited a lack of tension or direction in the plot, Pelecanos's fans will enjoy this suspenseful thriller.

***

The Last Dickens

By Matthew Pearl

Matthew Pearl is best known for his historical literary mysteries, including The Dante Club (*** May/June 2003) and The Poe Shadow (** Sept/ Oct 2006); The Last Dickens is another example of this genre.

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THE STORY: When Charles Dickens died in 1870, he left behind an unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In this fictionalization of the book's fate, Dickens's American publisher, James Osgood, is baffled by a series of mysterious deaths--including that of his faithful clerk, who was to receive Dickens's latest installment of Drood. With his beautiful young bookkeeper, Rebecca Sand, Osgood travels from Boston to London to investigate and try to maintain the book's integrity and his own profits. The action then pans to the opium wars in India, and then back to the novelist's final American tour in 1867-events filled, throughout, with danger, duplicity, and intrigue.

Random House. 386 pages. $25. ISBN: 1400066565

Providence Journal ****

"[A] rollicking, exciting, suspenseful, Chinese box of a novel." SAM COALE

Washington Post ****

"When opium, mesmerism and depravity begin to seep through Pearl's pages, however, the novel turns a darker and more interesting shade of red--that of spilled blood, not womanly blushes. Against this background, dubious characters acquire substance and depth." ANNA MUNDOW

Christian Science Monitor ****

"One of the pleasures of The Dante Club was the interaction among the literati (Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell) as imagined by Pearl. In The Last Dickens, Dickens himself appears but has less chance to live and breathe as a character." MARJORIE KEHE

Independent (UK) ***

"Pearl's research ... is often impressive, but he doesn't have a convincing sense of British contexts, or much of an ear for British idiom. There's a less than plausible portrait of Frederic Chapman, Dickens's London publisher." ANDREW TAYLOR

Seattle Times ***

"[Pearl's] work wears its deep research lightly, combining real-life figures and bookish references with robust prose and storytelling. ... Of course, the book's conclusion can't be revealed here--though it's safe to say that Pearl has constructed an ingenious ending to the enduring mystery of the last Dickens." ADAM WOOG

Boston Globe **

"[T]he plot often overreaches, and the reader loses sight of it, particularly in the less successful subplot--the opium wars in Bengal, India, involving Dickens's son Francis, with which the book confusingly begins. ... If his editor had applied a heavy hand to this manuscript and redirected Pearl's more errant flights of fancy, the result would have been a more cogent, credible, and well-written book." VIRGINIA A. SMITH

Times (UK) *

"Take it as a warning. Like [Dan] Brown's work, this is a book for people who either don't mind or don't notice when writing is wincingly bad. ... Let the world's greatest novelist rest in peace." KATE SAUNDERS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Many critics compared Pearl's latest effort to Dan Simmons's recent, lengthy SF novel Drood (**** May/June 2009)--though they are far different beasts. A historical literary mystery filled with real-life figures, The Last Dickens showcases Pearl's impressive research into the Victorian era--from opium wars in India to publishing house culture. The novel also entertains, with surprising twists that quickly turn sinister. Yet American critics faulted the tangential (and coincidental) subplots, while British reviewers questioned Pearl's grasp on their culture. For readers interested in Dickens or who want an engaging mystery, however, The Last Dickens is "a fitting testament to the thrall in which many of us are still held by the world of the great Victorian novelists" (Christian Science Monitor).

RELATED ARTICLE: BOOKMARKS SELECTION

****

The Scarecrow

By Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly, a former newspaper reporter and the bestselling author of the Harry Bosch series, introduced crime reporter Jack McEvoy in The Poet (1996). Recently reviewed: The Lincoln Lawyer (**** SELECTION Jan/Feb(2006); Echo Park (**** Jan/Feb 2007); The Overlook (**** Sept/Oct 2007); and The Brass Verdict (**** Jan/Feb 2009).

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THE STORY: In The Poet, crime reporter Jack McEvoy wrote a best-selling book about a serial killer he covered. Years later, in his latest adventure The Scarecrow, his luck has run out. About to be laid off as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times due to budget cuts, McEvoy, determined to report on one more high-profile case in an attempt to save his job, starts to research a story about a teenage murderer. When he discovers that the boy faked his confession, McEvoy starts to investigate a real serial killer--the Scarecrow, a computer security genius. Soon, McEvoy reunites with FBI agent Rachel Walling (who has appeared in the Harry Bosch novels), and a cat-and-mouse game ensues, set against the backdrop of the demise of print newspapers.

Little, Brown. 419 pages. $27.99. ISBN: 0316166308

Boston Globe ****

"While Connelly is not a literary writer, there are no flights of lyrical fancy here or profound, existential truths, what he provides is high-grade entertainment." CHUCK LEDDY

Entertainment Weekly ****

"Connelly is an excellent mystery writer, but the usual laws of maintaining suspense do not seem to apply to him: The killer ... is ID'd in the very first chapter. ... The Scarecrow certainly reads like a movie--but it's one that unfolds not just in your mind's eye but primarily in your mind." THOM GEIER

Houston Chronicle ****

"As with most Connelly novels, this is an energetic page-turner. His fans--of which I am one--will count this as among his best books, as was The Poet, his best-selling title. ... McEvoy, who is a dead-ringer in voice for Harry Bosch, is the attraction, and he propels the story along with vigor." DWIGHT SILVERMAN

St. Petersburg Times ****

"As a journalist, I'm not sure what I found more chilling in Michael Connelly's new thriller, The Scarecrow: the serial killer of the title or the book's vivid portrayal of a newspaper in its death throes. ... Connelly masterfully whips the reader back and forth between McEvoy's point of view and the killer's, accelerating the pace as the full threat to McEvoy and Rachel becomes clearer." COLETTE BANCROFT

New York Times ****

"The sci-fi phantoms that once sprung from the imagination of Michael Crichton have become realities in this tale of spying, trolling, hacking, identity theft and other spookily disembodied privacy violations. ... The denouement is left incomplete so that this story can be revisited." JANET MASLIN

NY Times Book Review ****

"That keening voice you hear in The Scarecrow belongs to a Michael Connelly you may not know--not the best-selling author riding high on his 20th novel, but the newspaper guy who started out covering the crime beat for the South FL Sun-Sentinel and went on to become a top crime reporter for The Los Angeles Times. ... The damage done by this electronically savvy killer is nothing compared with the slaughter of the nation's newspapers, which Connelly compresses into the grim fight for life going on at The Los Angeles Times." MARILYN STASIO

CRITICAL SUMMARY

McConnelly introduces characters from one series into other novels or series, and veteran readers will find enduring, familiar faces in The Scarecrow. A compelling and suspenseful thriller, it is also a sharp if unobtrusive commentary on the death of our nation's newspapers, as well as a "frighteningly plausible" examination of the sinister nature of computer technology (New York Times). "Reading it will make it impossible for you to ever again think that when you do something online, no one's watching," noted the St. Petersburg Times. The dual perspective (McEvoy's and the killer's) adds depth to the narrative, if some cliched characters and missing details marred critics' reviews. Because The Scarecrow ends with the beginning of Connelly's next book, readers anxious about the ending don't have long to wait.

RELATED ARTICLE: BOOKMARKS SELECTION

****

The Manual of Detection

By Jedediah Berry

Jedediah Berry's work has been published in Best New American Voices 2008; his first detective novel defies the tropes of the genre.

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THE STORY: In a city where it never stops raining, the various crimes that plague the citizenry are directed to a single, massive detective agency. Charles Urwin was a mere clerk there, until his boss, master detective Travis Sivart, went missing. Now Urwin, reluctantly, and perhaps mistakenly, promoted to detective, must investigate Sivart's whereabouts with only the help of a narcoleptic assistant and the Manual of the title. But the situation grows more complicated when Urwin discovers that Sivart's brilliant casework was not all it was cracked up to be. To make matters worse, a mysterious criminal taunts the city's denizens in their dreams.

Penguin. 288 pages. $25.95. ISBN: 1594202117

Guardian (UK) ****

"The book jacket mentions Chandler and Douglas Adams, Terry Gilliam, David Lynch and Jorge Luis Borges, while US critics have tossed in Kafka and Paul Auster. And Berry's debut detective novel is indeed imaginative, fantastical, sometimes inexplicable, labyrinthine and ingenious." PETER GUTTRIDGE

NY Times Book Review ****

"[This] first novel by Jedediah Berry lives up to the eerie packaging, reading like something lifted from Ray Bradbury's Dark Carnival and dropped into a Kafka setting. ... Unwin's uncanny adventures make for a memorable trip." MARILYN STASIO

San Francisco Chronicle ****

"Berry sets up a neat literary game and plays it through to the end with a great deal of wit and aplomb. A handsomely designed book, The Manual of Detection is a distinctively surreal whodunit." MICHAEL BERRY

Wall Street Journal ****

"The Manual of Detection, let it be stressed, more closely resembles G. K. Chesterton's hallucinatory The Man Who Was Thursday or Jorge Luis Borges's mystery ficciones than it does the adventures of Sam Spade. ... The Manual of Detection might not follow the detective-fiction manual, but there is nothing mysterious about the appeal of this inventive, outrageous and often amusing dream-within-a-dream." TOM NOLAN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

The comparisons used by critics in describing The Manual of Detection--Borges! Chesterton! Bradbury! Kafka! Lynch! Gilliam!--may seem overblown. But this list of literary (and cinematic) heavy hitters may not be hyperbolic praise so much as the only means available to explain how a book that initially seems to be a private eye novel can also be a work of absurdist art, "a surreal transmogri-fication of a genre" (Wall Street Journal). The critics might not have been able to categorize it, but they were also unable to put it down. However, as more than one reviewer pointed out, this may not be the best book for those who like their gumshoes straight, no chaser.

****

Dark Places

By Gillian Flynn

Sharp Objects (**** SELECTION Jan/Feb 2007), Gillian Flynn's debut novel, won Britain's Dagger Award and was an Edgar Award finalist.

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THE STORY: In 1985, when Libby Day was seven, her family was killed in their Kansas farmhouse. Coached by adults, Libby testified that she saw her older brother, Ben, butcher her family, and he was sent to prison for life. Twenty-five years later, Libby--with a quickly disappearing trust fund--is approached by the Kill Club, a society obsessed with famous murders. She agrees to investigate her family's deaths for the club members--none of whom believe her brother was the murderer--and to profit from their interest in her story. As Libby reconstructs the events surrounding the tragic murders, she starts to address the shocking truths about her family's deaths.

Shaye Areheart. 368 pages. $24. ISBN: 0307341569

Chicago Sun-Times ****

"Sure, we want to learn who the real killer is, but at some point (early on), we find that what really has us turning the pages isn't a need to know more about the murders so much as an aroused curiosity about Libby's soul returning to life, about how she is slowly facing herself and her two worlds--the world that could foster such a crime, and the world she manufactured to survive its fallout." RANDY MICHAEL SIGNOR

Cleveland Plain Dealer ****

"Flynn also evokes [Truman Capote's In Cold Blood] in the way the town revises history to believe something always had been suspicious about the Day family, and about troubled, teenage Ben in particular. ... The slick plotting in Dark Places will gratify the lover of a good thriller--but so, too, will Flynn's prose, which is ferocious and unrelenting and pure pleasure from word one." PAULA MCLAIN

NY Times Book Review ****

"Love her or loathe her, Libby Day won't be forgotten without a fight. ... If there's a conscious theme here, it has to do with children who cause 'something to happen, something that got bigger than they were' and the chaos that follows when no responsible adults are around." MARILYN STASIO

Entertainment Weekly ***

"Alas, it would be easier to feel for Ben if his plight were just a tiny bit less horrible. ... As this propulsive and twisty mystery unfolds, malefactors multiply, and they skew heavily young and female." JENNIFER REESE

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Critics agreed that with the publication of Dark Places, Flynn's success with Sharp Objects was no fluke. Here she crafts a compelling protagonist--a troubled, self-proclaimed liar who embarks on a painful journey of self-discovery and redemption. Many reviewers praised Flynn's sophisticated narration: the novel alternates between Libby's adult voice and those of her brother and mother on the day of the murders. If a few too many female villains and some clumsy plotting mar the flow, never mind; most readers will enjoy this "soul quest, the tale of a woman's coming to terms with herself and with the consequences of her selfish, childish, fearful choices"--and will look forward to Flynn's next offering (Chicago Sun-Times).