David Thayer

Wellington Leg: Today ONE MORE BITE OF THE APPLE dedicates the page to Patry Francis, author of the THE LIAR’S DIARY. Patry is battling cancer and today marks the release of the paperback edition of her book. Hats off to Susan Henderson, Laura Benedict, and Karen Dionne of Backspace for organizing this event.

Karen posted my review at Backspace.

THE LIAR’S DIARY

Nothing disturbs the fabric of small town life faster than an outsider, an interloper who ignores the community’s mores to flaunt their individuality. Ali Mather is a new music teacher at the local high school. Jeanne Cross, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, mistakes Ali for one of the students. Her youthful appearance and apparent indifference to the admirers in her wake set tongues wagging in the lunchroom.

Jeanne is put off but fascinated by the new arrival. Her life is defined by traditional boundaries; she’s married to Gavin, a handsome doctor, and is the mother of a teenage boy, Jamie. Over time Jeanne and Ali develop a relationship, not quite a friendship at first, due to Ali’s odd behavior and manipulative nature. Ali is having an affair with one of the teachers, breaking up a marriage in the process.

Gavin and Jamie are drawn to Ali, creating anxiety for Jeanne. Her marriage is on the rocks, but Jeanne is stoical until the man involved with Ali commits suicide; her friend is ambivalent about her responsibility, leaving Jeanne to wonder what sort of person Ali really is.

Patry Francis balances her narrative on Jeanne’s slow awakening to the realities of her life. Ali’s character is the catalyst for Jeanne, but this is Jeanne’s story as she finds her marriage to Gavin untenable. The scandal surrounding Ali shakes Jeanne to the core, exposing her to the harsh demands of Gavin and the truth about Jamie’s conflicted relationship with Ali.

The diary of the title belongs to Ali although in a subtle way it is the chronicle of Jeanne’s life. After Ali is murdered Jamie becomes the prime suspect. He is a confused boy obsessed with an older woman, a suspect who appears defenseless under interrogation.

The truth is more complex. THE LIAR’S DIARY delves into the fabric of Jeanne’s suburban ideal, into beauty and ugliness, the corrosive effect of secrets and lies. Jeanne finds courage not so much in a happy ending, but in the struggle to understand the life disintegrating around her.

A few years back a small tribe of writers found their way to Publishers Marketplace where Michael Cader had chopped down some trees to make a clearing in the forest. Patry Francis was one of the early arrivals; her success demonstrates that talent and grit are recognized. Even after the adults began arriving at PM the kids talked among themselves through blogs and emails. It was fun and kind of amazing as we found other people with similar dreams. Here’s looking at you, kid, across the ozone.

Crime fiction can be stretched and pulled in many directions, toward the literary, toward the pulp. Kate Atkinson delivered CASE HISTORIES a few years back, a reluctant crime novel that introduced Jackson Brodie the thinking PI. One of the many pleasures of the book was the author’s fresh view of the baroque world of good and evil; Atkinson has a dangerous sense of humor, one that leaves the reader not quite sure which side of the great divide she stands on.

ONE GOOD TURN takes the parable of the Good Samaritan on a fast tour of Scotland where criminal enterprises are a cottage industry. Jackson Brodie is back from France, a tourist in Edinborough. His girlfriend, Julia, is appearing in a stage production, one of those fringe theater undertakings that friends and loved ones are required to attend. Jackson senses a certain detachment in Julia, an insight akin to noticing a tornado has touched down in your garden. If this were the good old days and ONE GOOD TURN was at the local drivein, patrons would be standing on the roofs of their cars begging Jackson to wake up.

Jackson’s state of mind is crucial to this narrative because we spend vast amounts of time in Jackson’s head fretting about Julia. There are other things to occupy him: mysterious Russian maids, a dead body that vanishes in a tidal pool, a deranged killer bumping off witnesses to a road rage incident, a feckless writer, and the utterly brilliant housewife, Gloria.

ONE GOOD TURN never quite finds a unity of purpose with social satire competing for the lead followed by a crime story wrapped in the doom of failed relationships. The top of Jackson’s emotional range is confusion. He’s a man lost in an array of choices presented by financial independence but isolation is his default position.
There are excellent character studies to be found here although Martin Canning, himself a crime writer, is too much of a caricature, victimized so often and so freely that his presence on the page wears thin. Events offstage embroil point of view characters in criminal conspiracies. Thus the innocent Gloria meets the wily Tatiana while Gloria’s husband, Graham, beeps toward oblivion in ICU. Graham’s misdeeds have set off much of the story’s action catalogued by the author through witty observation.

Kate Atkinson loves misdirection, ensnaring the reader in set pieces that seemed disjointed but have a purpose. Great swathes of this novel are fun to read, others are frustrating. ONE GOOD TURN is to crime novels what Doris Day movies were to comedy if Doris stepped out of character to launder money rather than iron shirts.

They say the state of Texas has a logic of its own. Everything is a little different in Texas, a little bigger, a little edgier than most places. Your reporter was once pulled over by a member of the DPS, the Texas Rangers. On a long stretch of highway between Fort Worth and Austin he picked me. He said I wasn’t “drivin’ friendly.” When he saw my New York drivers license he hitched his gun belt and laughed. “Boy,” he said. “You got yourself an attitude.”

The folks in Harry Hunsicker’s THE NEXT TIME YOU DIE have an attitude that makes social interaction a spectator sport with enough guns, knives, fists, and boots to satisfy a need for mayhem the size of the Texas Panhandle. Lee H. Oswald is a PI in Dallas and no, he’s not the guy who shot Kennedy, he’s only a namesake. Hank and his partner, Nolan, have enough firepower to invade Honduras, but they don’t have to look for trouble. A Baptist preacher with a drinking problem asks Hank to locate a missing file. What follows from that simple premise resembles a range war from Big D to East Texas and back again. While the bullets fly Hank manages to get involved with bad girl Tess, a boyhood friend, and a power struggle to control crime in wide open Dallas.

I always avoid spoilers and in this case it wouldn’t matter because I never quite caught the wave or understood what was happening. People in this novel shoot first and ask questions only in response to other questions most of which result in a hail of gunfire. Hank endures much for old times sake and I admire that in a PI. He carries a Browning Hi Power and from what I could tell, he doesn’t drive friendly. In fact for a good portion of the story he’s behind the wheel of a Bentley an automobile bound to raise eyebrows in the small towns where Hank finds the source of all the trouble.

Harry Hunsicker has an eye for detail and knows his turf. He pays homage to the old school of tough guy heroes updated with a female partner who’s as tough as Hank and a better shot. You get the feeling that if Miss Marple happened by, she’d have a six pack of Pearl and a double ought under her pink cardigan and live grenades in the bed of her pickup. Welcome to Dallas, ma’am, and pass the ammunition.

At some point we borrowed the word noir from the French and we’re showing no signs of giving the word back. The term migrated from film to books and while Hollywood drifts further from its roots, books are coming full circle. THE DARKEST PLACE draws on the classic elements of fiction rooted in the emotional juxtaposition of bad things happening to people in bad places. Nothing is more threatening in vintage noir than the hero’s own weakness.

THE DARKEST PLACE is set on Long Island’s East End close to the glamor of the Hamptons yet far removed from the playground of the wealthy. It’s winter and it’s cold: young men are dying, their bodies floating in scenic bays and private lakes. The local cops are pushing the idea that the boys are victims of bad judgment, swimming while drunk despite the weather. Like many theories this one begins to unravel as the body count rises.

The plot serves as a platform for the author to explore the thematic notion of grief and loss. Tommy Miller is a local boy with a bum knee and a need to prove himself. Deke Kane lost his son to drowning and the metaphor of sinking beneath the waves defines Kane and his state of mind. Private Investigator Reggie Clay is conflicted about his line of work while his boss, Ned Gregor, demands a kind of moral rigor that makes the business of crime solving more complicated than it would be otherwise. Into this world of broken men comes Colette Auster. She is not conflicted about seizing the main chance and understands human weakness the way a botanist undertands plant life.

To make this novel work the author has drawn from literary sources larger than the genre. The film noir was influenced by the German directors like Fritz Lang in look and feel, THE DARKEST PLACE creates a mood and atmosphere more reminiscent of Kafka than Raymond Chandler. This puts the internal conflicts of the characters at odds with the story’s events as each of them suffer consequences while questioning the reality of cause and effect. Colette’s character remains aloof, serving as a ground for the charged emotions of the others. At times the perilous disconnect between perception and reality creates frustration rather than tension, forcing the reader to judge for themselves whether or not the novel’s action meshes with the characters’ response. The author has something larger in play, and he has the skill and passion to push the narrative beyond the ordinary.
As crime novels go THE DARKEST PLACE blurs the focus on plot to explore the damaged psyches of the principal characters. The story’s climax fits with the novel’s construct that loss robs its victims of the human ability for self preservation, creating a vulnerability that is more compelling than any external threat. Daniel Judson respects the conventions of crime fiction while infusing his story with raw despair, delivering on the promise to find the place where the physical trumps the metaphysical, where death, so seductive in grief, is no longer welcome.

THE BETRAYED is David Hosp’s second novel, a follow up to last year’s DARK HARBOR. He sets his new book in Pelecanos country, Washington DC, and one of the principal characters is Detective Darius Train, an African-American cop from the streets. But Hosp and Pelecanos have different agendas; THE BETRAYED is a thriller although it blurs the lines at times between thriller and procedural. The story is set off by the murder of a Washington Post reporter as seen through the eyes of her fourteen year old daughter Amanda. The victim is from one of the wealthiest families in the country, which establishes the intrigue of DC power politics.

Detectives Train and Cassian are assigned the case. The victim’s sister arrives from California, and becomes the novel’s central character. Sydney Chapin is determined to learn the truth about her sister’s murder, and as the story progresses becomes involved with Cassian. Hosp brings the romantic element into the story with skill and plausibility, no mean feat in the thriller game. He avoids the pitfalls of bestowing superpowers on his characters, forcing them to work toward resolution, making them believable throughout the story.

He’s equally adept at using the setting to good effect and ups the ante with a powerful senator as a possible suspect in the murder. The rough spots occur in the opening chapters where the cops are introduced, complete with a screaming boss. It takes a while for the thriller to emerge from the procedural where the author hits his stride. The story takes root in the science of eugenics and Hosp weaves this aspect of the plot into the climax and resolution.

David Hosp deserves kudos for avoiding the hyberpole that render many thrillers nonsensical. There are many reasons to turn the pages, and the story has complexity and character development in lieu of obvious plot points. THE BETRAYED exhibits fine intelligence, characters to care about, and a strong backstory, a welcome addition to the thriller genre.

In the second Paddy Meehan novel Glasgow’s finest have a more prominent role than usual. Paddy is riding in the night car when she arrives at the scene of a domestic dispute. The cops are there interviewing the husband at the door. An injured woman in the background raises concerns until money changes hands. Everyone is bought off including Paddy. When the woman turns up dead the bribe becomes a curse; the fifty pound note has the man’s fingerprints, the sole proof he was at the scene of the murder.

Paddy is an excellent character, alternating between bravery and cowardice, as she attempts to put things right, hang on to her job, and expunge her guilt over the bribe. She is confused by her own ambition, struggling to come of age as an adult while sharing a bed at her parents’ house with her sister. The subplot involving Kate, a woman who has made off with a quantity of cocaine, ties in with the main story at the appropriate time.

Denise Mina doesn’t push Paddy off the edge in this one, preferring instead to have her protagonist grow up in the process of untangling a nasty mess. The main villain remains aloof from the story, but the minor ones provide plenty of angst. The Dead Hour elevates the crime novel to fine art.

If you’re wondering what’s become of fine writing and a strong story David Lawrenece’s Cold KIll will help ease your mind. Set in London’s Notting Hill Gate and Holland Park the novel follows Detective Sheila Mooney and her squad as they pursue a serial killer. When a man walks into the station and confesses to the latest killing he presents the cops with the question, is he the killer or someone equally dangerous, if innocent?

Christmas is approaching, the temperature’s falling, and darkness comes early as the story moves from various points of view to pull the reader into the swift moving current of this detailed procedural. The set up is familiar to fans of British cop sagas and Lawrence leaves the formula intact, preferring to add depth of description and characterization rather than twist the established order into some new shape and form. There were starlings roosting in the Holland Park woodland, their feathers fluffed because of the frost on the wind. In among the trees the scene of the crime team had pitched a four sided blue PVC screen…a crowd of hard edged shadows moved on the blue backdrop.

Lawrence brings those hard edged shadows to life with skill and a poet’s eye. Non UK readers will stumble here and there on some of the slang, and punctuation fans will receive a tutorial of the use of the much maligned colon. Why have US and UK rules of usage diverged over the years? I don’t know: if I knew, I’d tell you. After reading Cold Kill you won’t care.

After several novels featuring Swedish detective Kurt Wallander, Henning Mankell brings Linda Wallander into the mix as a police officer in training. Linda becomes the focal point of a complex murder case whose roots are in the Jonestown massacre decades ago. Without spoiling the plot there is a very plausible reason why strange forces collide in Skone Sweden and the story gains momentum as Linda and her father begin putting things together.

Along the way Mankell explores a range of emotional issues including Linda’s frustration with her father, the nature of friendships, and the power of parents over their children. The novel centers on the Wallander household and Linda’s struggle for independence. Kurt Wallander is not the easiest man in the world to get along with, he has a quick temper and a domineering streak to go with his skills as a cop. Linda pieces together a family history as she prepares to join the force; her mother is a mystery to her. After a friend vanishes, Linda is embroiled in another family’s bizarre history.

Before the Frost opens slowly and builds tension in an analytical fashion. There are enough indicators of bad things coming to keep the pages turning. The payoff is a thriller that draws power from the characters presenting the univeral conflict of parent and adult children.

Portland Maine is the setting for Patrick Quinlan’s debut thriller Smoked. Smoke Dugan is living in Portland, but Smoke is not the average AARP member. He stole a lot of money from a bent nose down in Queens. A former bombmaker, Smoke is seeing Lola Bell, a tough young woman whose past is as murky as his. When the boys in Queens dispatch Cruz, their top assassin, life in Portland takes on the charm of Beirut in the 1980s.

Quinlan takes the setup and lets fly with a variation on the no bad deed goes unpunished theme. The book’s opening scene sets the tone as Lola is almost raped by a pair of model agency hustlers. The POV is divided between Smoke, Lola, Cruz, and a few minor characters, all of whom manage to be compelling or bizarre, each of them dedicated to the task of wreaking havoc. Smoked is well written, tight, tense,and well paced. Overtones of early Lehane carry suggestions of Prayers for Rain or A Drink Before the War in the subtext of retribution’s fatal inevitability.

This is a standout work from St. Martins Press, released a few weeks ago, and available in stores. Kudos all around.

At some point in Bob Dugoni’s debut thriller it becomes clear that main character David Sloane is a man with a past.  Sloane doesn’t know what that past is, or who he is, until men close to the president of the United States try to kill him. The story opens with Sloane winning a court case, he’s the jury master of the title, but a mysterious package arrives. A close friend of the president is dead and official Washington launches the coverup.

Fans of courtroom dramas may be disappointed with the turn of the story. This is a political thriller, not a legal one, a complex plot with roots in oil diplomacy between the US and Mexico. The story is presented from mulitiple points of view, a technique that elevates tension but requires the reader to keep many characters, both good and bad, straight in their minds. This is a big novel, one best read in long stretches to keep the players fresh as the story emerges.

Tess Gerritsen has commented often about prose in the thriller. She’s taken her lumps despite her EDGAR nomination for Vanished. Bob Dugoni will take his too because the prose is umpolished at times although the problems could have been fixed with some simple editing. Critics pound on Robert Crais for some of the same problems, but he keeps working and selling, and so will Bob Dugoni. The Jury Master jumped onto the NYT’s Bestseller list twice last month, and the author is on tour this spring. TWB got behind this book with a successful campaign, so it can happen.

The International thriller conference is June 29 through July 2 in Phoenix. Yes, it will be warm. I think Bob Dugoni is planning to attend, so fans will have the opportunity to meet him.