Review by New York Times Review
TO QUOTE a line that's sure to make hearts flutter: "We're almost completely cut off here." In THE BONES BENEATH (Atlantic Monthly, $25), "we" is a party composed of Mark Billingham's supersleuth, Inspector Tom Thorne; a skeleton staff of police officers and crime scene investigators; and two murderers. "Here" is a mountainous island off the coast of Wales, said to be the resting place of 20,000 saints. And being "cut off" from civilization is fair warning that the characters in this thriller are likely to revert to savagery. The big plot hurdle here is accepting the premise that criminal justice authorities would allow a psychopath like Stuart Nicklin to take a prison furlough - and dictate the conditions of it - in order to lead the police to the grave of a 15-year-old boy who had been one of his earliest victims. But once the odyssey is underway and we're on a battered boat en route to Bardsey Island, all's right again with the world. The Island of Tides, as the dour locals know this remote outcrop of cliffs and crags, makes a dramatic backdrop for the violent showdown between the high-strung detective and his nemesis, a sadistic monster who can manipulate just about anyone into doing just about anything. The bleak setting also evokes the proper air of mystery and menace for a back story set at Tides House, a now-defunct social experiment in reforming delinquent kids like Stuart Nicklin and Simon Milner, the boy he psychologically enslaved and then murdered. Thrillers usually stand or fall on the strength of their villains, and Nicklin can certainly make your skin crawl with his cruel mind games. But Billingham takes just as much care with victims like young Simon, the boy Nicklin befriended and betrayed so long ago, and poor Jeffrey Batchelor, the convicted killer he insists should go along on this current macabre outing. Or, most chilling in the telling, Nicklin's sadistic treatment of his own mother, a tragic figure who lives and dies in a few remarkable scenes that you'll wish you could forget. FOUR YEARS is much too long to go without a wonderfully loopy Martha Grimes mystery featuring her Scotland Yard detective, Superintendent Richard Jury, and his eccentric friends - and their dogs. A forlorn Staffordshire terrier named Stanley makes an appearance in vertigo 42 (Scribner, $26), as do a winsome stray named Joey and some unnamed pit bulls victimized in a cruel dogfighting racket operating under the radar in London. Hurting an animal is like betraying a friend to Grimes, who draws on literature to develop her themes of friendship and loyalty and extend them to Jury's murder case. Not that anyone considered the death of Tess Williamson anything but an accident when it happened 17 years ago. (She had vertigo. She slipped. She fell. She broke her head.) But asimilar "accident" had occurred a few years earlier, when a 9-year-old girl named Hilda tumbled into an empty pool during a birthday party at Tess's home. Children are fair game to an ironist like Grimes, who gleefully reports that Hilda was an obnoxious child, "mean or hateful or awful," according to those who attended that party. In matters of fidelity, she would never measure up to Stanley or Joey or even those poor pit bulls. ERICA WRIGHT SEEMS to have gone shopping before plotting out her first crime novel, THE RED CHAMELEON (Pegasus Crime, $25.95), which introduces a female private eye with Kinsey Millhone's bold-as-brass attitude, Jane Whitefield's genius at disguise and Stephanie Plum's enviable predicament of having two boyfriends. That said, there's still something very appealing about Kathleen Stone, a quickchange artist who can slip into the persona of Katie, Kat, Kitty, Kathy, Kate, Katya - or her personal favorite, 15-year-old Keith - at the drop of a hat or, more likely, the switch of a wig. The hairpieces are an original touch and smartly supported by Kathleen's close relationships with her Brighton Beach wigmaker, a cranky Russian artiste named Vondya Vasiliev. Kathleen's first case looks promising, until the author makes a few rookie mistakes, like casting her heroine as a murder suspect. But this new P.I. has got a smart mouth on her, and plenty of wigs to help her find her own true character. YOU'LL NOT LEARN from me whether Jason Goodwin followed through on his stated intention of making THE BAKLAVA CLUB (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26) the final book in his series set in Istanbul during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. But it can certainly be said that should the author continue the series, which features a charismatic eunuch named Yashim as resident sleuth, it won't be the same. Actually, life hasn't been the same at Topkapi Palace since the young sultan moved his court to Besiktas and his mother, Yashim's patron, was left in the deserted harem. Goodwin has wisely shifted focus from the moribund palace to the city streets, teeming with visitors from all over the world, including revolutionaries like the three Italian nationalists who set the incendiary plot in motion. With all the noisy guns and rockets going off, some of us may yearn for the good old harem days when poison, knives and silk garrotes were in style.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 22, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
Detective Inspector Tom Thorne is, as usual, put out. Infamous serial killer Stuart Nicklin is once again playing mind games, claiming he will lead police to the corpse of a 15-year-old boy he murdered when they were both in an experimental program for adolescent offenders on remote Bardsey Island, located off the Welsh coast. What's more, Nicklin will only do so if Thorne accompanies him; Nicklin also requests that fellow prisoner Jeffrey Batchelor, a former college professor incapacitated by depression over his crime and the brutality of prison life, be present to ward off any police brutality, since Nicklin murdered a police officer when he was arrested. Thorne is right to be suspicious. Inhospitable conditions and inclement weather, along with Nicklin's offensive running commentary, all conspire to make the trip a nightmare. And that's well before Nicklin's scheme to exact revenge on Thorne is set into motion. In the twelfth series entry, Billingham makes the most of his bleak, rugged setting while creating an atmosphere of chilling menace as flashbacks reveal the full extent of Nicklin's sadism and Thorne's vulnerability.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Billingham's chilling 12th novel featuring Det. Insp. Tom Thorne (after 2013's The Dying Hours), serial killer Stuart Nicklin offers to lead the police to the remains of one of his first victims-a 15-year-old boy who vanished 25 years ago while both Nicklin and the teen resided in a therapeutic community for youthful offenders on remote Bardsey Island, off the Welsh coast. But the offer comes with several conditions; in particular, Nicklin wants his nemesis, Thorne, who captured him five years earlier, to head the expedition and another convicted murderer, Jeffrey Batchelor, to accompany them, on the pretext of protecting Nicklin from retaliation for the female officer killed during his arrest. Astonishingly, the authorities agree, setting in motion a meticulously plotted chain of events far more disastrous than the detective fears. Though newcomers may find both Thorne's opaqueness and the occasional misdirection a tad off-putting, Billingham certainly knows how to make those pages turn even while your stomach churns. Agent: Sarah Lutyens, Lutyens & Rubinstein Literary Agency (U.K.). (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this 12th series entry (following 2013's The Dying Hours), the good news is that Tom Thorne has been reinstated to his rightful place on the Murder Squad. But that comes with a catch. In this case, he's delegated, along with a gaggle of forensics investigators and local constabulary, to accompany two prisoners (one a formidable and outrageous serial murderer named -Stuart Nicklin, who was captured by Thorne years before) to a remote, forbidding, and bewitching isle off the Welsh coast. All of this is ostensibly so that Nicklin can help recover the body of an early victim, and all the details and personnel have been chosen at his personal behest. Thorne can't help but hope there's a limit to his fine fortune. In a former life Billingham was a stand-up comic and obviously took away from that experience crucial lessons about grabbing and holding his audience's attention as he here portions out new characters and cliff-hanger situations to keep his readers turning page after harum-scarum page. VERDICT Any fans of Ian Rankin and John Harvey unfamiliar with this series should have the good luck to hop aboard. [See Prepub Alert, 1/6/14.]-Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO (c) Copyright 2014. 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
DI Tom Thorne escorts a convicted serial killer to a remote Welsh island with predictably eventful results.Twenty-five years after teenage car thief Simon Milner disappeared from Tides House, a facility for young offenders on Bardsey Island, his mother still doesn't know what happened to him. Now she has a chance at the closure she craves. Stuart Nicklin, a notorious murderer who put in his time at Tides House along with Simon, says he killed the boy he befriended and that he knows where he buried him. Since the topography of Bardseya real-life island reputedly home to the graves of countless saintsis tricky, Nicklin can't just tell the coppers the location of Simon's last resting place; he has to lead them to it, and he insists on taking along both Thorne, who put him away, and a more recent friend, history teacher Jeffrey Batchelor, who's been imprisoned along with Nicklin for killing the young man who jilted Batchelor's teenage daughter, which led to her suicide. The staff of Long Lartin prison takes all possible precautions in transporting the two prisoners to Bardsey, but Thorne knows that something will go terribly wrong, and of course, he's right. Like the manipulative Nicklin, Billingham (The Dying Hours, 2013, etc.) delights in toying with his audience, and most readers' nerves will be shredded long before the sadistic import of Nicklin's deep-laid plot finally becomes clear.Thorne's 12th is a tour de force of suspense that dares you to guess the secrets of a magician who's made his intentions perfectly clear from the very beginning. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
