nonfiction

“A young woman who was severely
traumatized by the murder of her
parents must deal with the release of their killer.”
from with full malice
find a connection between Candace and Rowland, learn that they
attended the same New Jersey high school. But the sleuths will
have a tough time staying ahead of a determined killer who seems
to be systematically eliminating each name from the list.
Fanning supplies the multifaceted Lucinda (Mistaken Identity,
2010, etc.) with another fast paced mystery that nicely displays
both her strengths and weaknesses.
HUSH MONEY
Greaves, Chuck
Minotaur (304 pp.)
$24.99 | May 8, 2012
978-1-250-00523-6
Greaves’ ebullient first novel asks who
killed a beloved horse and how—and shows
some interest in human casualties as well.
Because Jared Henley, the founder’s
grandson who usually carries water for
horsey Pasadena dowager Sydney Everett,
is off on vacation somewhere, Henley & Hargrove’s director of
litigation, Russell Dinsmoor, persuades Jack MacTaggart, who’s
Of Counsel to the firm, to step in when Hush Puppy, Sydney’s
Holsteiner stallion, dies suddenly and the pencil-pushers of Metropolitan
Livestock Insurance decline to pay her claim. And no
wonder, since Sydney made a tidy profit from the conveniently
timed death of her injured horse Creole some years back, and veterinarian
George Wells tells Jack that Hush Puppy’s death looks
equally squirrelly. Jack tears himself away from the lawsuit he’s filed
against the even less sympathetic insurer Hartford Allied on behalf
of leukemia-stricken trash collector Victor Tazerian long enough
to involve himself with Tara Flynn, stable manager at the Fieldstone
Riding Club, and unearth an unholy paper trail leading right
back to Henley & Hargrove. He can only wonder what Russ Dinsmoor
would say about the whole mess, since Dinsmoor is as dead
as Hush Puppy, brained by someone who evidently thought he
knew too much about a densely layered scam involving blackmail,
off-the-books medical research and serial equine murder. Don’t
let all the legal shenanigans put you off: Jack, a highly unselective
wiseacre, has a lighthearted anecdote for every occasion, including
attacks on his own august person. An auspicious debut.
Jack would be welcome back in the winner’s circle any
time. (Agent: Antonella Iannarino)
WITH FULL MALICE
Hill, Brenda
Five Star (320 pp.)
$25.95 | Apr. 11, 2012
978-1-4328-2572-0
A young woman who was severely traumatized
by the murder of her parents must
deal with the release of their killer.
Between the time she was orphaned
and the time she became a food critic at a
local newspaper, Madison Young was raised by her grandmother
and homicide detective Dexter Quinn, who acted as a surrogate
father. Her past comes rushing back when her editor insists
that she go to a murder scene. The murdered man was a paroled
sex offender who was killed execution style. The only witness
describes seeing an older woman who vanished. Haunted by the
murder, Madison does some research that reveals a number of
criminals, either never convicted or paroled early for heinous
offenses, who have been murdered all over the country, often
in the vicinity of witnesses who recalled seeing an older person
nearby. When her parents’ killer is paroled, Madison is so
shocked that she ends up in the hospital in a coma. Recovering,
she realizes that if she is ever to have a normal life she must face
the fears that have kept her a prisoner since her parents’ deaths.
Madison goes to Dexter with her suspicion that there may be a
group of vigilantes who are killing criminals they think deserve
to die and her fear that her own grandmother may be involved.
The premise of Hill’s third (Beyond the Quiet, 2009, etc.)
is certainly arresting, and the story holds your interest, even
though some of the complications seem pretty unlikely.
BLIND GODDESS
Holt, Anne
Translated by Geddes, Tom
Scribner (352 pp.)
$15.00 | paperbackJun. 5, 2012
978-1-4516-3476-1
Politics and drugs make uneasy bedfellows
in this first case for Hanne Wilhelmsen,
the Oslo police inspector most
recently seen on these shores in 1222 (2011).
Nobody much cares about Ludvig
Sandersen, the dead addict found virtually faceless at the side of
the River Aker. But it’s a different matter when attorney Hans
E. Olsen is killed. Suddenly, or as close to suddenly as this slowmoving
tale allows, Hanne and police attorney Håkon Sand, her
old friend, are able to connect the two murders and even develop
a plausible theory that links them both to a vast drug-smuggling
operation. But their higher-ups don’t find their theory nearly
so plausible. Neither do the judges who hear their petitions to
lock up used-car salesman Roger Strømsjord and shady lawyer
Jørgen Ulf Lavik. And no wonder, since the two suspects the
Oslo police have already locked up—drug user Jacob Frøstrup
and Dutch student Han van der Kerch—have died while in
police custody. Hanne and Håkon are left to ask the same questions
over and over: Why was Peter Strup, that ornament of the
local bar, so determined to wrest van der Kerch’s defense away
from Karen Borg, the civil attorney Sandersen’s confessed killer
asked for How can they crack the coded message Frøstrup
found before he died How high does the chain of corruption
and coverups reach And how can the police prove what they
mostly know perfectly well
Fans of Henning Mankell’s majestically lumbering police
procedurals will relish every twist in the long road to resolution.
Less patient readers should look to Hanne’s later adventures.
THE SILVER STAIN
Johnston, Paul
Creme de la Crime (256 pp.)
$28.95 | May 1, 2012
978-1-78029-018-8
Johnston, best known stateside for
his violent tales of futuristic Edinburgh
(Water of Death, 2001, etc.), hauls Athens
investigator Alex Mavros out of mothballs
and packs him off to a fraught
movie project in a Cretan village where
a lot more than film is being shot.
According to imperious director Luke Jannet and his assistant
Alice Quincy, rising star Cara Parks won’t make a move without her
own Greek-American assistant Maria Kondos. But Maria’s apparently
made a move without Cara. Surveillance tapes nobody’s yet
bothered to look at show her walking away from Heavenly Blue,
the Chania hotel where the film crew is staying, shortly after receiving
a call from the cell phone registered to Vasilios Dhrakakis, the
corrupt mayor of nearby Kornaria, and vanishing. Would missingpersons
specialist Alex (The Golden Silence, 2004, etc.) please leave
his home and live-in lover, social worker Niki Glezou, right this
minute and return with them to Chania, where they’re filming the
World War II epic Freedom or Death Despite his aversion to flying,
Alex agrees, and in no time at all he’s surrounded by drug dealers,
technical advisors who act as if the war never ended, intrigue going
back two generations, hints that the father he never knew may be
involved, and more. By the time Alex recovers Maria, her rescue
seems only a footnote to a variety of crimes, from abduction to
smuggling to murder.
More earnest action/adventure than mystery despite
criminal misadventures in which absolutely everyone ends up
implicated, and a stirring demonstration of how “Crete really
did get to people, even within hours of their arrival.”
RIZZO’S DAUGHTER
Manfredo, Lou
Minotaur (288 pp.)
$24.99 | Mar. 13, 2012
978-0-312-53807-1
In Manfredo’s tender and terrific latest,
a burned-out cop can’t quit because
he’s also a devoted dad.
NYPD Det. Sgt. Joe Rizzo (Rizzo’s Fire,
2011, etc.) suspects he’s been on the job too
long. It’s not that he’s lost effectiveness. In
terms of sheer professionalism he’s probably as good as ever, maybe
even better. It’s just that time and bitter experience have rubbed
off the gloss since the days when he loved being a cop, replacing
it with a pervasive existential heaviness best expressed by Rizzo’s
mantra: “There is no right. There is no wrong. There just [obscenity]
is.” For a while now Rizzo has been promising his wife Jen that
resignation is just around the corner, a plan that seems eminently
feasible until suddenly it isn’t. Carol Rizzo, their youngest daughter,
announces—in terms as strong as Rizzo himself once used—that
she too has opted for blue. Long-suffering Jen is terrified. Rizzo
understands that and shares some of her very sensible anxiety
while taking a certain guilty pride in his daughter’s decision. Carol’s
choice, however, means that seasoned, savvy Rizzo must stay on
in order to protect his beloved child as much as possible. But how
much will that be
Good cops, bent cops, tormented and demented cops,
cops of every description inhabit Rizzo’s world, all of them
utterly believable and intensely interesting. For readers
compiling a short list of crime fiction, here’s an essential.
SEPTEMBER SONG
Murray, Colin
Severn House (256 pp.)
$28.95 | May 1, 2012
978-0-7278-8110-6
The war is long over, but the skills Tony
Gérard picked up working with the Resistance
continue to serve him well on the
mean streets of London.
Tony does a little accounting for friends
and some odd jobs for Les Jackson of Hoxton
Films. He’s been keeping an eye on one of Jackson’s young
actors, the trouble-prone Philip Graham—but apparently not
closely enough, for Graham has become involved in the drug trade
and has some dangerous criminals after his hide. Jazz-loving Tony
has meanwhile taken a shine to Jeannie Summers, a sexy singer
whose piano-playing, drug-using husband is arrested for murdering
two thugs. So not only does Tony have to try to get Graham out of
trouble but he’s beset by Jeannie’s pleas to help her husband. Even
his boss has begged him to help his former wife, who’s dying of
cancer, find the daughter she gave up for adoption. Although the
various gangs who control London’s neighborhoods generally do
their best to avoid conflict, suddenly Tony finds himself in trouble
with several of them as he attempts to track down some missing
merchandise and come up with satisfactory solutions to his three
interrelated problems.
Tony’s second appearance (No Hearts, No Roses, 2011) bolsters
its tense tale with plenty of down-and-dirty atmosphere.
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
A Mystery
Parks, Brad
Minotaur (336 pp.)
$24.99 | $11.99 e-book | Mar. 13, 2012
978-0-312-66768-9
978-1-4299-4999-6 e-book
No one’s supposed to hate the girl next door.
Nancy Marino is sweet-natured,
genuinely friendly, endlessly selfless, the
quintessential nice girl. How can you possibly
not like her So when she meets sudden death, struck by a
800 | 15 april 2012 | fiction | kirkusreviews.com | | kirkusreviews.com | mystery | 15 april 2012 | 801