Review by New York Times Review
I CAN TELL you in just two words Why ALEX (MacLehose, $24.95), a thriller by the fashionable French author Pierre Lemaitre, was such a sensation in Europe. Partisan politics. Just kidding! The two words are - sadistic sex. Lemaitre's plot is laid out with mathematical precision: a beautiful woman is kidnapped, stripped naked, thrown into a cage and subjected to the systematic torture of a brutal captor. But just as ravenous rats are about to overrun her cage, she manages to escape and assume a fresh identity - as the emblematic female avenger who seems to be all the rage these days. If this sounds a bit like "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," it's because Stieg Larsson did much to validate sadomasochism as a plot device, and thriller writers jumped all over it. That novel and its two sequels are certainly fueled by the dynamic character of Lisbeth Salander, but her narrative also has a graphic sexual context, and it goes like this: A helpless child who is abused by her father and raped by her courtappointed guardian grows up and takes revenge on her father by sinking an ax in his head - but not before being beaten, shot in the head and buried alive. The punishment she dishes out to her guardian makes that ax in the head feel like a kiss. Revenge narratives go all the way back to the Greeks, but it's the vagina dentata component that sets a specimen like "Alex" apart, as Lemaitre adapts Larsson's blueprint with moves of his own. The rats are a particularly effective touch. Like the original atrocity that scarred her in mind and body as a girl, the femme fatale's method of payback is excruciating. The ending is also dark and ironic the way the French like their noir fiction. In Frank Wynne's assured translation, there's even a raffish quality to the prose. (A hotel receptionist is described as "a young man with his hair gelled into a side flip as though he'd just been slapped.") But in the end, it's still a formula, one that manipulates women as if they were the avatars in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" - and it has already worn thin. SOME SOLDIERS come back from war, put down their weapons and walk straight into their old lives. Some don't. Those are the ones George Pelecanos is writing about - is writing for - in THE DOUBLE (Little, Brown, $26). Spero Lucas, the young Marine veteran we memorably met in "The Cut," returned from Fallujah thinking he could appease his inner warrior by working as a private investigator back home in Washington, D.C. That belief is shaken when he finds himself inclining toward extreme violence to resolve his cases. A slow and painful death actually seems too good for Billy King, "a goatish figure, more Minotaur than man," who preys on lonely women, and Percy Malone, a "spidery" villain who pimps high school girls. But Lucas is an honorable man, and he frightens himself. It's astonishing all the good stuff Pelecanos can pack into one unpretentious book: meaty substance, multiple story lines, vital characters, choice dialogue and all those descriptive details (about what people are wearing, driving and listening to on their car radios) that make the story so rich. What really stays with you, though, are those visits Lucas makes to veterans' hospitals ("No one would ever film a Budweiser commercial here") and those quiet talks he has with the forgotten soldiers he calls brothers. FIRST-TIME AUTHORS HAVE a tendency to throw everything into the pot. Barry Lancet does that very thing in japantown (Simon & Schuster, $25) when he gives the personal life of his private eye too much prominence in an otherwise sophisticated international thriller. Jim Brodie is already stretched thin, running an antiques business in San Francisco and managing a detective agency in Tokyo. But with his expat history and familiarity with Japanese language and culture, it's only natural that the San Francisco cops would consult him about the blood-soaked kanji ideograph found at the scene of a multiple murder. And we're with him all the way when he flies to Tokyo on the trail of a sinister gang of assassins. Having lived and worked in Japan for more than 25 years, Lancet brings an impressive breadth of knowledge to the historical aspects of the mystery and a sharp sense of immediacy to its action. WHAT WONDERS THERE are in America's own backyard, if we only think to look. That's what the Norwegian writer Vidar Sundstol does in the land of DREAMS (University of Minnesota, $24.95), a murder mystery translated by Tiina Nunnally and set against the harsh landscape of the Lake Superior shore. This region was settled by hardy Scandinavian pioneers, and Lance Hansen, a police officer who works for the United States Forest Service, is proud to be descended from such stout stock. ("What dreams those people must have had.") But the murder of a Norwegian tourist shocks him into thinking about other victims and other acts of violence that might have been lost to history. There's a wintry bleakness to Hansen's brooding about the past, which is more interesting than the case he's working and more compatible with the austere setting. Hansen is a good cop and a decent man, but the extraordinary choice he opts for at the novel's end makes it certain that he'll not be having pleasant dreams for a very long time.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 6, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Pelecanos fans who found in The Cut (2011) a return to the classic crime-fiction style of the author's terrific Nick Stefanos novels will be doubly pleased with The Double: not only does it deliver another straight-ahead, head-banging, yet still character-focused crime story, but it also heralds the return of Spero Lucas, the Travis McGee-like knight errant who helps out clients who have lost something and keeps 40 percent of the take (McGee kept half). This time Spero comes to the aid of a fortysomething D.C. woman with bad taste in men; her latest wrong choice has robbed her of a valuable painting and her self-respect. Spero agrees to get the former back, and perhaps even a touch of the latter, but he quickly discovers that his antagonist, a sociopath who loves humiliating his victims more than he covets their possessions, will present a formidable obstacle and require the kind of Old West confrontation that Spero loves in spite of himself. In a kind of homage not only to John D. MacDonald (especially The Deep Blue Good-by) but also to Charles Willeford and Don Carpenter (all three are mentioned in the acknowledgments), Pelecanos reinterprets and updates the theme of the charismatic sociopath who revels in draining the souls of his willing victims, bringing a heightened sensitivity and social consciousness to the story without losing the visceral terror that drives the narrative. Those who know their crime-fiction history will love the references to earlier masters, but, finally, it's Pelecanos with a new series up and running hard that's the real cause for celebration here. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Pelecanos' television credits first for The Wire and currently for Treme have extended the reach of his fame; to capitalize on that, Little, Brown is planning an extensive multimedia publicity campaign,--Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Reviewed by Patrick Millikin Pelecanos's novels have always kept one eye toward the recent past-a constant touchstone being the 1970s. The decade's popular culture, its fashion, film, music, and automobiles inform novels such as Hard Revolution, King Suckerman, and What It Was, which are set during one of the most tumultuous periods in the nation's history. In a way, all the novels that Pelecanos has written have been influenced by the Vietnam War. Now Pelecanos, a producer of The Wire and Treme who's also written for both HBO shows, has given us a new series that brings us right up to the present. With Spero Lucas, introduced in 2011's The Cut, Pelecanos has created one of his finest, and most complex, protagonists. An Iraq War combat veteran, Lucas has seen more than his share of death, but, unlike many of his returning peers, he has found work that allows him to tap into the heightened levels of adrenaline that were awakened overseas. His primary gig is as investigator for D.C. defense attorney Tom Petersen, who gives him a difficult case at the outset of this sequel to The Cut. A client, Calvin Bates, faces the death penalty for the first-degree murder of his mistress, Edwina Christian, whose body has been discovered in a nearby wooded area. Inconsistencies in the case, including physical evidence at the crime scene, have Lucas convinced that the story might not be as cut-and-dried as it appears. In the meantime, Lucas has found himself another side job, the retrieval of a stolen painting called The Double from a young divorcee's condo. His usual terms apply: 40% of the stolen item's value, in cash, no questions asked. The trail leads Lucas to a trio of thugs working together on various criminal enterprises: a Russian Internet scammer, a sociopathic lothario preying upon vulnerable women, and a young ex-con and former tweaker. As Lucas follows the various strands of his investigation, he finds himself enjoying the hunt, the prospect of violence that will result as he lures his quarry into the open, and the inevitable confrontation. Indeed, the painting itself becomes an apt metaphor for Lucas's life: the "civilized," outward identity and the darker shadow self, containing a primal warrior side that, as Pelecanos writes, he doesn't fully understand. While several of his most trusted friends, fellow Marines, have been able to leave the violence in them behind, Lucas has been unable to do so. Further complicating matters is a gorgeous, unavailable married woman, with whom Lucas has fallen into a passionate affair. At the background of the novel is Lucas's own family, his mixed-race siblings, his Greek-American parents. Pelecanos puts the race issue out there, but doesn't focus on it; the Lucases are simply a family, and a loving one. With respect for D.C.'s past on one side, and a vibrant, youthful new protagonist looking squarely into the future, this is the start of a remarkable series. Longtime Pelecanos diehards will be more than satisfied, and new readers will find themselves jonesing for more. Agent: Sloan Harris, ICM. (Oct.) Patrick Millikin is the editor of the Akashic anthology Phoenix Noir . (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
An Iraq War veteran, Spero Lucas takes work from a D.C. defense attorney who needs help securing reasonable doubt for his client; at the same time Spero freelances by retrieving stolen property, in this case an expensive painting, for a standard 40 percent recovery fee. As he hunts for the thieves, Spero also finds time for a torrid affair with a married woman. But longtime readers know the details of a Pelecanos thriller are never the primary focus; it's the music his characters listen to, the clothes they wear, and where they stack up on the manhood spectrum that matter more, beginning with his main character: Pelacanos's title is the name of the missing painting, but it also refers to Spero himself, a man portrayed as thoughtful and humane but who will work for criminals and has killed (in combat and out) without compunction. VERDICT In his second book (after The Cut) featuring private investigator Spero Lucas, Pelecanos juggles multiple narratives without sacrificing the austere narrative style he's perfected. Though the author doesn't break new ground thematically, this sequel brings his ambiguous hero into sharper focus, making him a character readers will want to know better.-Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ (c) Copyright 2013. 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
The second in a series featuring a new investigator represents an update for the veteran mystery novelist. Pelecanos (The Cut, 2011 etc.) has long rotated protagonists rather than settling on a signature hero. His latest is Spero Lucas, who differs from his predecessors in terms of generation, experience and bloodline. And perhaps code of morality as well. A young veteran from the Iraq War, he has become a defense attorney's special investigator at least partly for "a replication of what he'd experienced there every day: a sense of purpose and heightened sensation." He's also a digital native who knows that "the secret most investigators keep is that the bulk of their modern day work is done via computer programs." He comes by his Greek name via adoption, as part of a loving, mixed-race (but dysfunctional) family, and he tends to associate the music that Pelecanos and his previous protagonists favor with his late father. What remains constant throughout the work of the novelist is the deep knowledge of local Washington, D.C. (where this and most of his novels are set), popular culture (from music to sports to literature and beyond) and the human heart. Here, the murder Lucas begins to investigate soon seems like an afterthought, and the romance with which he becomes obsessed seems more like fantasy (though revelatory of his character) than reality. The title (fittingly enough) has a double meaning, referring both to a stolen painting Lucas tries to recover and the adversary he finds himself facing (one of them insists that the two of them are very much alike). He seems to scoff at the very notion of "literary fiction, whatever that was," while praising "a good story told with clean, efficient writing, a plot involving a problem to be solved or surmounted, and everyday characters the reader could relate to." A few more loose ends than usual, but this is a novel Spero Lucas would appreciate. Cult favorite Pelecanos deserves an even wider readership.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
