Review by New York Times Review
I'M always stumped when someone asks me to find them "a good mystery," because I might recommend a serial killer thriller like Jo Nesbo's fiendishly clever novel THE SNOWMAN (Knopf, $25.95) to someone hankering for a civilized British detective story like Peter Lovesey's STAGESTRUCK (Soho Crime, $25). So let's play favorites - but pick your poison first. FAVORITE BOOK The final exit of a beloved sleuth is the focal point of my choice: THE TROUBLED MAN (Knopf, $26.95). Henning Mankell makes it clear that his brilliant if chronically depressed Swedish detective, Kurt Wallander, has solved his last case. In the course of investigating a political conspiracy that dates back to the cold war, Wallander comes to realize "how little he actually knew about the world he had lived in" and how inadequate his efforts to fix that broken world have proved. Although it accounts for his perpetual mood of despair, that insight also makes him a hero for this age of anxiety. FAVORITE NEW SLEUTH George Pelecanos's new protagonist. Spero Lucas, is not only younger and friskier than most private eyes, he's also untainted by the cynicism that goes with the profession. Making his first appearance in THE CUT (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown, $25.99), Lucas brings his lusty appetites and taste for danger to a vivid narrative about gang wars in Washington, D.C. The big question: Can Pelecanos keep his young hero from flaming out? FAVORITE DEBUT NOVEL/FAVORITE ACTION THRILLER Sebastian Rotella scores twice for TRIPLE CROSSING (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $24.99), which begins on the San Diego-Tijuana border and sends good guys from both sides of the fence to combat drug smugglers and terrorists in the badlands of South America. FAVORITE COZY That would be A TRICK OF THE LIGHT (Minotaur, $25.99), Louise Penny's mystery starring Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and set in the enchanting village of Three Pines. FAVORITE REGIONAL MYSTERY In SHOCK WAVE (Putnam, $27.95), John Sandford drags Virgil Flowers away from an all-girls volleyball tournament and dispatches him to Butternut Falls, where a bomber is intent on keeping out a big-box store. FAVORITE SUSPENSE NOVEL Cara Hoffman takes on rural poverty, domestic abuse and teenage violence in her first novel, SO MUCH PRETTY (Simon & Schuster, $25), which watches a family of urbanites come to grief in upstate New York. Runner-up is another novel on the same theme: BENT ROAD (Dutton, $25.95), in which Lori Roy observes the breakdown of a family that has moved to Kansas to escape racial tensions in 1960s Detroit. FAVORITE MYSTERY WITH A SOCIAL CONSCIENCE A tie between THE END OF THE WASP SEASON (Reagan Arthur/ Little, Brown, $25.99), by Denise Mina, and THE BOY IN THE SUITCASE (Soho, $24), by the Danish authors Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis. Mina's gritty Glasgow procedural features a female cop who takes pity on a 15-year-old killer because she's witnessed the neglect that can produce such damaged children. The criminal mistreatment of children is also the focus of the Danish thriller, which follows the efforts of a nurse to identify the 3-year-old boy she rescues at the Copenhagen train station. FAVORITE NOIR Antiheroes don't get much darker than the protagonist of James Sallis's moody existential mystery, THE KILLER IS DYING (Walker, $24), a hit man who wants to make one last clean kill before he dies. But I have to go with the rogue Scott Phillips introduces in THE ADJUSTMENT (Counterpoint, $25). This prince of a fellow made a killing pimping and working the black market as an Army quartermaster in Rome during World War II. But peacetime life in Wichita is so dull it takes all his ingenuity to come up with a new way to make a dishonest living. FAVORITE SUPERNATURAL MYSTERY Michael Koryta easily takes top honors for two eerie novels, THE CYPRESS HOUSE (Little, Brown, $24.99), a 1930s gangster story with spooky undertones, and THE RIDGE (Little, Brown, $24.99), a ghost story set in an old mining region of Kentucky. FAVORITE HISTORICAL MYSTERY If the category were narrowed to World War II-era novels, it would be a tossup between FIELD GRAY (Marian Wood/Putnam, $26.95), the darkest of Philip Kerr's Berlin stories, and David Downing's POTSDAM STATION (Soho, $25), with its horrific scenes of Berlin falling to the Red Army. But in an open field, top honors go to C.J. Sansom for HEARTSTONE (Viking, $27.95), a Tudor mystery that captures the chaotic state of England in the aftermath of Henry VIII's ill-conceived invasion of France. FAVORITE PERFORMANCE BY AN OLD PRO That's a tough one in a year that saw top-drawer work from Michael Connelly in THE FIFTH WITNESS (Little, Brown, $27.99). James Lee Burke in FEAST DAY OF FOOLS (Simon & Schuster, $26.99) and Thomas Perry in THE INFORMANT (Otto Penzler/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27). Sue Grafton earns special mention for keeping Kinsey Millhone engaged and endearing through her 22nd alphabet mystery, V IS FOR VENGEANCE (Marian Wood/Putnam, $27.95). But for sentimental reasons, I'm going with Lawrence Block's nostalgic novel, A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF (Mulholland/ Little, Brown, $25.99), set in New York in the 1970s, when Matt Scudder was still a working cop and crime was still "the leading occupation" in his Hell's Kitchen neighborhood.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 4, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
When the badly mutilated body of high-class prostitute Sarah Erroll is discovered in a wealthy Scotland suburb, Detective Sergeant Alex Morrow is called onto the case. But the seasoned investigator has little time to pursue clues before there's news of yet another violent death. This time, it's millionaire banker Lars Anderson, who hanged himself from an oak tree in front of his family's mansion. Are these merely two random acts, or could there be a connection? Detective Morrow thinks the timing is suspicious, and sure enough, there's a link. Sarah Erroll and Lars Anderson were lovers, but that's but one thread in a tangled web of dirty dealings and double lives. Heavily pregnant with twins, Detective Morrow finds herself belly-deep in family dysfunction, from Lars Anderson's morose, narcissistic wife and neurotic daughter to Morrow's own wayward brother, in desperate need of help for his troubled son. Scottish novelist Mina, author of the celebrated Garnethill series, is a master of psychological suspense, but her latest offering is a bit long on psychology and short on suspense.--Block, Allison Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Mina's stellar follow-up to Still Midnight, Det. Sgt. Alex Morrow, who's five months pregnant with twins, looks into the murder of Sarah Erroll, who was kicked to death in her childhood home in an affluent Glasgow suburb. The discovery of more than 600,000 euros in the house suggests robbery wasn't a motive. Detective Chief Inspector Bannerman, a much reviled colleague of Alex's, fixates on Kay Murray, who's not only a former caregiver for Sarah's recently deceased mother-and whose teenage sons are thought to fit the two killers' basic profile-but also Alex's long ago friend. Despite their history, Kay soon sees Alex-and all police-as the enemy out to railroad her sons. Delving deeper into Sarah's life, Alex connects her to Lars Anderson, a London banker in dire financial straits who recently committed suicide. The gulf between social classes and the disintegration of families both inform this memorable police procedural. 5-city author tour. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Scottish crime vet Mina brings back prickly Detective Superintendent Alex Morrow for a second downbeat thriller (after Still Midnight). Now pregnant with twins, Morrow is called to a dilapidated manor on the outskirts of Glasgow where a young woman has been stomped to death. Perplexingly, an untouched fortune in cash waits hidden nearby. After learning that her childhood friend Kay recently worked in the home, Morrow grows suspicious (albeit reluctantly) of Kay's teen sons. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away in Kent, disgraced financier Lars Anderson hangs himself, leaving behind an emotionally ruined boy of his own. As Mina gradually reveals the connection between the deaths, she also explores how psychological brutality, particularly toward children, is a horrific crime of its own. VERDICT Mina exhibits her usual thoughtful flair for tough female protagonists and morally complex suspects and victims. Fans of Scottish crime fiction are probably hooked already, but introduce this author to readers of George Pelecanos and Henning Mankell. [Five-city tour.]--Annabelle Mortensen, Skokie P.L., IL (c) Copyright 2011. 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
DS Alexandra Morrow's second murder investigationit's far too lumpy to call a caseis even more death-haunted than her first (Still Midnight,2010, etc.).Three recent deaths, none of them suspicious, cast a long shadow over the Strathclyde Police Department. One is that of demented old Joy Erroll, whose daughter Sarah is kicked to death only days later in the home she shared with her mother. The second is the hanging of Sir Lars Anderson, an obvious suicide after the spectacular bursting of his bank's bubble. The third is the death of Alex's father, an unloved man whose passing severs the last link between Alex and her delinquent teen nephew John McGrath. Five months pregnant and chafing under the obtuse supervision of DCI Grant Bannerman, the colleague whose promotion has vaulted him ahead of her, Alex is in anything but the mood to look into the callous murder of Sarah Erroll, dead at the hands (and feet) of a pair of home invaders who somehow managed to overlook the 650,000 she had stashed away. She'd be even less enthusiastic if she knew that the investigation would bring her up against Kay Murray, the most prominent of the endless parade of cleaners and caretakers who saw Sarah's mother through her last days; Nadia, the dry-eyed party girl who explains how she showed Sarah how she could bump up her wages dramatically; and Sir Lars' son Thomas, a precocious 15-year-old whose life is immeasurably complicated by a phone call from a woman identifying herself as "Lars Anderson's other wife."Not exactly a model of plot construction, but that's not why you read Mina, who takes you so deep inside her troubled characters that long after you turn the last page, you wonder if you'll ever get out again.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
