Review by New York Times Review
With the possible exception of James Patterson, genre authors aren't robots, so you have to marvel at the strategies they use to keep their series heroes on their toes. James W. Hall's loner sleuth, who goes by the prickly name of Thorn, has long flourished in the backwaters of the Florida Keys, tying bonefish flies and composing poetry in his modest shack on a secluded lagoon. Now here he is in SILENCER (Minotaur, $24.99), held captive on Coquina Ranch, a private hunting preserve in the pinelands north of the Everglades where "beer-drinking good ol' boys with their cheeks full of chaw" go to bag themselves a Watusi bull, a blackbuck antelope or some other helpless exotic beast. Initially, Thorn is so far out of his comfort zone that he spends much of the book down in a pit. But with plenty of time for reflection, he begins to grasp the nature of the evil threatening this rugged territory, first colonized by ranchers and farmers and now pock-marked with "run-down Dairy Queens, R.V. parks, abandoned sugar mills and roadhouse bars with no signs out front." Despite his ordeal, Thorn takes the opportunity to admire the harsh beauty of the surviving wilderness and spend quality time with the men and beasts that thrive there. To be sure, the pair of murderous brothers who execute the plot's most barbarous acts of violence belong to a savage subspecies of villain that roams freely across genre boundaries. But other figures seem firmly planted in this wild landscape: Earl Hammond, the patriarch who is murdered when he tries to restore the original traditions of Coquina Ranch by turning over 200,000 acres to the state; his two grandsons, each with an opposing view on the proper disposition of the family heritage; and, most memorably, Claire Hammond, a Connecticut girl who took to the terrain and transformed herself into a true frontierswoman after marrying into the clan. As vividly as they wear their regional colors, these characters have one thing in common with their counterparts on the coast: a love of the land so fierce it breeds both righteous eco-warriors and plundering thieves, often in the same family. Whenever Robert Crais feels the need to refresh himself, he can always activate Joe Pike, a saturnine former soldier who performs id-like functions for Elvis Cole, the Hollywood private eye who is Crais's regular series hero. Pike calls the shots in THE FIRST RULE (Putnam, $26.95), a pumped-up thriller that takes its title from the guiding principle of Russian mobsters: namely, that personal relationships mean nothing in their business. Or, as one federal agent remarks: "Mom, Dad, the brother, Sis - those people do not matter." But personal relationships mean everything to Pike, a no-nonsense action figure who brilliantly wages his own clandestine war on the hit men who killed one of his former operatives and the man's entire family, including the nanny, during a home invasion. Working with select members of the elite brotherhood of mercenaries he once led and using maneuvers he learned in the Marines, Pike proves more efficient than the feds and more ruthless than the mobsters. His code of honor may be simplistic - you stand up for your guys, no matter what - but it allows tough men to have tender feelings without becoming unmanned. Why stop at adapting genre conventions when you can reinvent the whole genre? That seems to be Charlie Huston's modus operandi in SLEEPLESS (Ballantine, $25), a traditional police procedural neatly tucked into a stunningly original work of speculative fiction. Parker Haas is a young, idealistic, thoroughly likable cop working undercover in the narcotics division of the Los Angeles Police Department. His assignment is to track down any illicit traffic in a rare drug - the antidote to a disease from which his own wife and infant daughter suffer - before the dope dealers and manipulative pharmaceutical corporations corner the market. This job would be difficult enough in any big city panicked about, let's say, the local supply of swine flu vaccine. But it's positively perilous in the nightmarish environment Huston conjures up. In his apocalyptic vision, 10 percent of the world's population is unable to fall asleep - and is dying on its feet. In Los Angeles, which is under martial law but continuing to turn out movies ("People still liked a good picture"), the walking zombies have become addicted to computer games, losing themselves in an alternate universe in which "total insomnia becomes a virtue." The perverse humor of all this aberrant behavior is lost on Huston's hero, who clings to his belief in the basic goodness and dignity of humanity, even when his own eyelids start to burn. Sometimes, the best way for a writer to prepare new ground is to turn around and see what the old ground looks like. Elly Griffiths draws us all the way back to prehistoric times in her first crime novel, THE CROSSING PLACES (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25), a highly atmospheric mystery set in the desolate salt marshes of England's Norfolk coast. Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist who lives there in contented solitude, agrees to date the bones of a child found buried in the mud. She identifies both the bones and the ornaments found in the grave as 2,000-year-old Iron Age artifacts, relics of a "time of ritual slaughter and fabulous treasure hoards." While this doesn't help the police detective investigating a more recent homicide, it does make a detective of the antisocial Ruth - who, like many an academic, badly needs a little adventure and romance in her life. Hall's characters share a love of the land that breeds eco-warriors and thieves - often in the same family.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 14, 2010]
Review by Booklist Review
Frank Meyer served with Joe Pike in a dozen venues. Like all mercenaries, he was accustomed to violence but seemingly had put that life behind him with a wife, a young son, and a nine-to-five job. Or maybe not. Frank Meyer and his family were slaughtered along with their nanny by a group of heavily armed men. When Joe Pike learns what happened, he resolves to find out why and who and then to take revenge. The dead nanny a Serbian immigrant may be the key. She and her nephew were staying with the Meyers, and there is no sign of the nephew. Pike enlists his partner, private investigator Elvis Cole, in the hunt, and they soon team up with the nanny's sister, an edgy prostitute working for the Serbian Mob and the mother of the missing child. Pike's goals and those of his Serbian ally, who only wants her child back, are much different. Pike wants the Mob and its leaders. Crais, whose last Joe Pike novel, The Watchman (2007), hit the New YorkTimes best-seller list, likely has another on his hands here. After years as second banana to Cole, Pike has claimed center stage for his own.--Lukowsky, Wes Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
When garment importer Frank Meyer and his family are executed in their Los Angeles home at the start of bestseller Crais's adrenaline-fueled second thriller to feature PI Joe Pike (after The Watchman), LAPD detectives soon connect Meyer to Pike, who knew each other from their days as military contractors. Pike is convinced that Meyer, who left soldiering to start a family, wasn't dirty, even though his murder is the seventh in a series of violent robberies where the victims were all professional criminals. Determined to clear his friend's name, Pike discovers that Frank's nanny and her family have ties to Eastern European organized crime. With the help of PI partner Elvis Cole (the lead in Chasing Darkness and eight other books), Pike engages in a dangerous-and not always legal-game of cat and mouse with some of the city's most dangerous crooks. Pike emerges as an enigmatically appealing hero, whose lethal skills never overshadow his unflappable sense of morality. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
When Frank Meyer, his wife, and their two sons are murdered in a brutal home invasion, it's personal for longtime family friend Joe Pike. "Frank the Tank" was one of Joe's guys back in their mercenary days, and Pike wants revenge. But he also wants to be sure Frank was clean, since this was the seventh in a string of attacks that targeted people involved in illegal activities. Calling on partner Elvis Cole for detective work and old contacts from his past, Pike discovers a troubling connection between Frank and the Serbian mob, and specifically with Michael Darko, a gangster of great interest to ATF Agent Kelly Walsh. As he designs and executes a scheme with nonstop action, Pike offers himself as bait to two deadly rivals. Verdict Not a word is wasted in this suspenseful, hair-raising page-turner that also reveals the humanity of Pike, generally a stolid and silent character, as he mourns his friend's death. Crime master Crais (Chasing Darkness; The Two-Minute Rule) is at his best here. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/09.]-Michele Leber, Arlington, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Joe Pike cuts a wide swath through L.A.'s Serbian mob in his quest to avenge an old member of the team he headed. Years before he became a partner in Elvis Cole's detective agency (Chasing Darkness, 2008, etc.), Pike was a mercenary whose sharpshooting skills brought him into contact with a wide range of people, many of whom didn't survive the encounter. Now he's grieving because inoffensive garment importer Frank Meyer, a family man who shared some of the darkest scenes in Pike's checkered past, has been executed along with his wife, two sons and nanny. It's the seventh home invasion the LAPD has recorded in recent months, but none of the victims seem randomly chosen; in every earlier case, they had caches of drug money or product that made them natural prey. So the LAPD assumes Meyer has been continuing to lead a double life. Pike doesn't. Partly to clear his old mate's name, but mostly for revenge, he methodically sets out to hunt down the killers. Crais knows that the story of the lone vigilante going up against a powerful criminal organization is so familiar that he needs to supply new complications. These include a ten-month-old baby, a sweet series of deceptions and double-crosses, and a bulldog ATF agent who threatens to lock up Pike under the Homeland Security Act if he kills the man he's looking for. Not to worry, though: There'll be plenty of opportunities for Pike and his allies to ventilate lesser fry. Crais plants each twist carefully and detonates it expertly, but the main draw here is the triumphs of a killing machine licensed to avenge his old friend by emptying his sidearm at every target in sight. Righteous vengeance, a reckless pace, a stratospheric body count and just enough surprises to keep you turning the pages. The pleasures may be primitive, but they're genuine. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
