At Risk by Stella Rimington

Protagonist: Liz Carlyle
Setting: London and East Anglia
Rating: 4.5

Going into this novel, all I knew was that author Stella Rimington was former director-general of Britain's MI5 Security Service, the first woman to head the agency. I didn't expect much in the way of writing. Fortunately, I was wrong.

In her first book (she's now written five) Rimington has crafted a taut, well-written spy thriller with a strong female protagonist, Liz Carlyle, a 34-year-old agent-runner for MI5. Liz is a no-nonsense type of person, who puts personal relationships second to her work.

In this first book, post-Sept. 11, Liz and her colleagues are on the hunt for an "invisible" -- "the ultimate intelligence nightmare: the terrorist who, because he or she is an ethnic native of the target country, can cross its borders unchecked, move around that country unquestioned, and infiltrate its institutions with ease." There are actually two terrorists who have teamed up. For what purposes, we don't know immediately. What helps elevate this beyond a typical spy thriller are the well-drawn characters, including the two terrorists. In alternating chapters, we get their viewpoint, and a glimpse into what drives them.

Most of the procedural aspects also ring true and, except for a slightly over-the-top denouement, the story seems a realistic one. If you're looking for a smart spy thriller, stop right here.

Mayhem in the Hamptons

For the second year in a row, the BookHampton stores in the Hamptons have sponsored some of the most notable mystery authors from New York City and Long Island at a series of talks at their three stores.

One of the most interesting of those this weekend was entitled, "What Did I Do: Choosing a Victim," with authors Nelson DeMille, S.J. Rozan (in photo), Alafair Burke, Linda Fairstein, Tasha Alexander and Andrew Gross speaking on how they pick their victims, as well as the villian. The authors acknowledged that, these days, their victims are often sympathetic people. Burke explained that, as a reader, she was tired of the victim just being "victim number 7 -- and they had no tie to the life that was lost. It was always important to me that the loss of life would be depicted."

Linda Fairstein, a former prosecutor, said she hated "flat stick characters."
"I want the flesh and blood of characters, and what that had to do with the killing," she said. "Juries don't like 'bad' victims," such as prostitutes, so as a lawyer, it was her job to "learn their life." In fiction, she does the same: "It's always important for me to create that character fully."

Even when the victim is not a good person, the authors agreed that character had to be fleshed out. Said Rozan: "You don't need to have great sympathy for the victim. You just need to understand who he is, you have to establish humanity."

In the British tradition, DeMille said, you had a murder in the library and "38 people wanted the victim dead....But if someone like a drug dealer is killed, no one else cares about him, but the detective does. That's his job."

Villians are just as important.

For Alexander, in writing the villian it's "more interesting to have a villain who's been pushed and pushed. You get a reader not to sympathize, but to understand."

Said Gross: "Good guys are static. They provide the moral lens you look through. Bad guys are the ones who create the energy of the book. That's the character the readers will be turning the page for."

And, the authors agreed, God help the writer who picks an animal as a victim. DeMille spoke about a novel in which his hero killed three dogs. "I had so much bad reaction," he said. "But all the murder and mayhem in the book -- no one noticed."

Books set in the Hamptons

Lately, it seems the Hamptons has been attracting more than celebrities and Wall Street types. Crime fiction authors, too, find these East End towns of Long Island attractive. And so murder comes to the Hamptons.

Chris Knopf brings us wise-cracking, former boxer and former engineer Sam Acquillo in The Last Refuge (see review here), Two Time, Head Wounds and Hard Stop, with a spinoff series featuring Acquillo friend and lawyer Jackie Swaitkowski in Short Squeeze. Knopf, who has a home in Southampton, creates lovely images of Little Peconic Bay. But that natural beauty is in opposition to the thugs and killers who also populate the books. Knopf's Hamptons is not that of the rich and famous who crowd it during the summer, but of the blue-collar worker who lives there year-round.

In that vein, but much darker, are Daniel Judson's noir thrillers (not a series, but all set in the Hamptons): The Bone Orchard, The Poisoned Rose, The Darkest Place, The Water's Edge and The Violet Hour (see review here). His Hamptons are almost unrecognizable: deserted, dark streets late at night, haunted characters and bad guys galore -- the body count can get quite high in a Judson book.

Amagansett by Mark Mills, published in 2004, also focuses on the working-class, especially the fishermen of Long Island. This standalone is set in the summer of 1947, and much of it deals with fishing traditions and the hard life of these men, who must also battle those wanting to place restrictions on their livelihood. There is, of course, a mystery here. The book opens with two fishermen pulling in a net, only to find a beautiful -- and dead -- woman tangled in the net.

Each author writes in a very different style, but they all capture the Hamptons in a real-life way.

Dark Mirror by Barry Maitland

Protagonists: DCI David Brock and DI Kathy Kolla
Setting: London
Rating: 4.6

A beautiful graduate student, Marion Summers, suddenly suffers a seizure in the reading room of London Library, and dies. The cause: arsenic. While arsenic is no longer readily available, a few of the suspects do have access to it. Even stranger: Marion had been studying the pre-Raphaelite painters, who did use arsenic in their paints and for medicinal purposes.

Did Marion kill herself? Although it seems to be a suicide, Kathy Kolla thinks not, and she continues investigating the many suspects: Marion's research tutor, her stepfather, her lover and a strange stalker. This is a strong modern police procedural, but also a good British traditional story, with echoes of the Golden Age mysteries.

We also get strong characters in Brock, who has insecurities about his current relationship with Suzanne, who has a personal interest in the case, and in Kathy, as we watch her first tentative steps in a new relationship. This is the 10th book in the series, but the first I've read. There's enough backstory that I never felt lost.
I'm only wondering why it took me long to read a book in this series. If you like British traditional mysteries (and I love them), I highly recommend this book.

The Black Book by Ian Rankin

Protagonist: John Rebus
Setting: Edinburgh
Rating: 4.6

How can you not like a book in which the first line of Chapter 1 is: "It all happened because John Rebus was in his favourite massage parlour reading the Bible."

Much happens to Rebus in this book, the least of which is a nice relaxing massage. He's thrown out by his live-in girlfriend, Dr. Patience Aitken, so he moves back into his own flat. But because he's been renting it to students, Rebus ends up on the couch. Even a small storage room is being used -- his brother, a former drug dealer, has just moved into the apartment, as well.

Professionally, one of his detectives, Brian Holmes, is beaten up badly while he's unofficially investigating a 5-year-old murder and fire at the Central Hotel. Rebus gets hold of Holmes' black book, filled with notes of the investigation, and starts to look into it himself, bringing more problems his way. Not only is Rebus dealing with the bad guys on the outside, but within his own department there are those who are out to discredit and thwart him.

This fifth book in the series also introduces Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke, an important character in the series. And Morris Gerald Cafferty, a major antagonist throughout the books, plays a big part in the book. I've liked the previous books, but with this one, the Rebus series seriously starts to ramp up.

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

Protagonist: Andrew Marlow
Setting: Washington, D.C.
Rating: 3.5

While the story revolves around painter Robert Oliver, his voice is mute during much of the book, and the story is told through three narrators -- principally, Marlow, his psychiatrist; Kate, his ex-wife; and Mary, his former girlfriend. Marlow is a detective of sorts: Oliver has tried to destroy a painting of Leda and the Swan in the National Gallery. Shortly after, he was taken to a psychiatric hospital, where, after a few words, he doesn't speak to Marlow again. In trying to find out why Oliver attacked the painting, Marlow learns Oliver is obsessed with a female painter from the Impressionism era -- Beatrice de Clerval (we learn more about Beatrice in old letters written between her and a relative, interspersed between the narratives).

Kostova, who wrote the bestseller The Historian, gives us a more subtle, and unfortunately less interesting, story. For hundreds of pages, we get the story of Kate and Robert (how they met, how they married, how the marriage dissolved). Then we get hundreds of pages about Mary and Robert and their romance. While the author is establishing Robert's pattern of obsession, we unfortunately get very little of the mystery. The real story is suspended until the last hundred pages.

While The Historian captivated me, The Swan Thieves suffers from the curse of the second book -- it just doesn't live up to its promise.

A Finer End by Deborah Crombie

Protagonists: Det. Supt. Duncan Kincaid and Sgt. Gemma James
Setting: Glastonbury
Rating: 4.0
This seventh book in the series is quite a departure for Crombie, as it includes a lot of woo-woo. It opens with a different type of mystery -- why is Duncan's cousin, Jack Montfort, going into trance-like states during which he writes in Latin? Is the spirit of a dead Glastonbury monk possessing him? Is it related to a lost monks' chant? Monfort enlists the help of a group of people to solve this puzzle. But when one of them is attacked, he calls in Duncan, who travels to Glastonbury with Gemma.
Glastonbury is one of those places that attracts those who believe in everything from New Age to the old gods. This is true, in real life, as well. Glastonbury Abbey is where legend has it King Arthur and Queen Guinevere are buried. And Glastonbury Tor, which plays a big part in the book, is known for being home to the King of the Fairies. Crombie does paint a very vivid picture of Glastonbury, and uses those beliefs to give us characters connected to the paranormal -- a teenaged pregnant girl whose baby may be special, and a painter who is taken over by some sort of spirit when painting.

As far as Duncan and Gemma's personal lives, there is much going on, and it's always a pleasure to see where Crombie takes this storyline. I enjoyed that part of the book, but deducted points for all the use of woo-woo, which just became a bit too beyond belief after awhile.

Interview with Steve Hamilton

Steve Hamilton's latest book, The Lock Artist, just blew me away. Below, he answers my questions on what it was like writing this book:

Although you've written crime fiction before, including a 7-book series, The Lock Artist seems to have gained you a whole new set of fans. Did you expect this, and what drove you to step away from a series to write this standalone?

Well, I’d actually already taken a break from the series (with Night Work in 2007), so any normal and sane person would have gone back to the series for the next book. But I just had this other idea in my head that wouldn’t go away. And for me the only way to get past that was to dive right in and find out where the story would lead. If I had known it would be two solid years of really being lost, I might have thought twice about it! (But it all worked out, I guess!)

I know why I loved The Lock Artist – it was Michael’s voice, and the fact I really came to root for him, even while he was breaking into homes and safes. How did you come up with this character, a criminal that people would love?

All I knew about him at the beginning was that he had a trauma in his past, that he couldn’t speak, and that he had this special talent for opening locks. As I got into the story, though, I realized that he was really a lot more like a young me than I could have ever imagined. I mean, not with the muteness or the locks, but just the general feeling of being an alien who doesn’t even know why he was put on this earth. When he’s digging that hole and he’s looking up at Amelia, he can’t communicate with her. In Michael’s case, he literally can’t say the words, but believe me, I couldn’t have said the words either. Not when I was that age. So I hope I was able to make him feel like somebody you should root for, because he was just a kid trying to fit in.

Do you always write in first person, and why?

For fiction, it just seems to work out that way. I like to sort of pretend to be the main character and tell the story like I’m sitting down with you over a drink. Whenever I’ve tried third person, I just feel disconnected from it. On the few screenplays I’ve worked on, however, it feels totally natural to be outside everything, looking down on the characters. So that’s how it seems to break down for me now. Prose fiction is first person, screenplays are third person.

In The Lock Artist, you alternate chapters, going back and forth between the past and the present. Why did you use this device?

I did more rework on this book than maybe all the others combined, so it’s hard to go back and remember exactly what I was thinking, but I believe it was originally a worry I had that after finally becoming a safecracker, Michael would spend the rest of the book just going from one heist to another – and that that would become sort of repetitive. That’s why I split the timeline, but as it turned out, the heists were more about the different crews he was working with, and those were so different I really didn’t have to worry about the repetition. But by then I was seeing how the split timeline was working in other ways I had never anticipated – going from becoming a safecracker at home to being a safecracker out on the road, then back again. That back and forth leading to both the middle and the end… And it’s all sounding kind of complicated now, I know. But it’s really not! I mean, I hope it’s not. I hope you just pick up the book and start reading, and it just goes.

The character Michael makes it look easy to pick locks. Is it really that easy? And how much research did you do into lock-picking and safecracking while writing this book?

Cheap locks are easy to pick, good locks are very hard. I got to learn so much from a great lock guy, and then eventually I got to work with one of the best safecrackers in the world. He’s not a criminal, mind you. He’s a totally legal safecracker and that’s all he does. He keeps flying off to new places around the world to open up safes. He was so generous and he really helped me understand what it feels like to open up a safe with nothing but your sense of touch. It’s an incredibly hard thing to do, and only a few people in the world can even come close.

For those of us who haven't read the McKnight series, can you tell us a bit about that series and those characters?

Alex McKnight is a retired Detroit police officer, living in a cabin in a town called Paradise, Michigan. It’s way up at the top of the Upper Peninsula, on the shores of Lake Superior, one of loneliest places I’ve ever seen. He’s a very solitary character, but he’s also a very loyal friend and total sucker for somebody in need, so he’s constantly finding himself right in the middle of other people’s troubles.

You’ve said that you plan to continue the McKnight series, but will you continue to write more standalones? And do you have a working idea right now for one?

I’m working on the next McKnight book now – I think I’ll always want to go back and see what he’s up to next. But at the same time I know I’ll want to keep trying new things, too. It’s all about that next thing that comes into your head. You’ve got to find out where it goes because it won’t leave you alone until you do.

Finally, what authors do you like to read?

I’ve always loved crime fiction and there are so many great authors in the field right now. I can name a few dozen of the usual suspects (Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Lawrence Block, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Harlan Coben, please stop me), but some other authors who don’t get the recognition they deserve would include Ken Bruen, Denise Mina, Steven Sidor, and Tom Piccirilli. It’s amazing to me how you can do work that’s so different and so original and still be on the same crime fiction shelf!

Shroud for a Nightingale by P.D. James

Protagonist: Chief Supt. Adam Dalgliesh
Setting: Heatheringfield, England
Rating: 4.1
Scotland Yard is called in after two nurses are horribly poisoned at Nightingale House, a nursing school. There are lots of motives and several suspects, although not much to connect the two deaths. Then Dalgliesh learns that one of their patients also recently died, and his instinct tells him that this death, too, is connected. In this fourth book in the series, we see James begin to flesh out her characters (including Dalgliesh, finally!) and we see a plotline that ties back to something in the past, a device we are to see James use over and over in subsequent novels.

This story also takes place in a hospital setting, something James knew very well as a hospital administrator for years. In fact, some of the hospital descriptions can get a bit tedious. But then there are other great descriptions like this that make you appreciate James so much: "On another wall was a smaller shelf holding an assortment of china cats of different sizes and breeds. There was one particularly repulsive specimen in spotted blue, bulging of eye and adorned with a bow of blue ribbon; and propped beside it was a greetings card. It showed a female robin, the sex donated by a frilly apron and flowered bonnet, perched on a twig. At her feet, a male robin was spelling out the words 'Good luck' in worms. Dalgliesh hastily averted his eyes from this abomination and continued his tactful examination of the room."

The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

Protagonist: Michael
Setting: Michigan, New York and Los Angeles
Rating: 5.0
Teenager Michael is a good kid basically, with a few quirks -- he hasn't talked since a childhood incident left him traumatized (and we don't find out what that is until the last 50 pages of the book) and he has two special skills. First, he's a very good artist. Second, he can pick any lock, a self-taught skill. This second skill lands him in trouble when he agrees to help high school buddies with a prank -- and that one bad decision leads him further and further into a life of crime, as he becomes an invaluable "boxman," someone who can open any safe. But even as his options narrow, Michael hopes for an escape from his life of crime. Although Michael doesn't speak, it's his voice that tells the story, in a compelling first-person narration. If you read this book, give yourself a few hours. You won't want to put it down.

Kissed a Sad Goodbye by Deborah Crombie

Protagonist: Gemma James and Duncaid Kincaid
Setting: Isle of Dogs, East End of London
Rating: 4.6
The body of Annabelle Hammond, director of an old family firm of tea merchants, is found on the Isle of Dogs in the Docklands area. Aggressive in business and in her personal life, she had, as one character says of her, "a talent for getting what she wanted, sometimes ruthlessly so." Engaged, Annabelle nevertheless had an intimate affair with street musician Gordon Finch, and she may also have had a relationship with his father, Lewis, a well-known developer. In turn, Lewis Finch and Annabelle's father, William, were once childhood friends, but no longer speak to each other.

Amid this web, Crombie also interweaves the history of the Docklands, and flashbacks to when William Hammond and Lewis Finch were evacuated during World War II as children. At the heart of these books is the continuing relationship between Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid. In this one, Gemma finds herself attracted to another man, as Duncan comes to terms with being a father to 11-year-old Kit. This is the sixth in the series, and my favorite so far (although I do have another seven in the series to read).

Magic City by James W. Hall

Protagonist: Thorn
Setting: Miami, Fla.
Rating: 4.0
The reclusive Thorn leaves his home in Key Largo to visit Miami for a few days in this novel. He's prepared to show his commitment to girlfriend Alexandra, taking care of her father Lawton, who has dementia, while she's in police training for a few days. But on the first day, two men try to break into Lawton's house, looking for a photo taken in 1964, during the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston fight. The photo is important enough for several people to lose their lives, and Thorn is caught in the middle as he tries to find out why.

Hall can write evocatively, especially when depicting Miami, both 1960s and present-day. Every once in a while, he throws in a description of a neighborhood, and not the ubiquitous South Beach we get in every TV depiction of South Florida, but the real neighborhoods in which people live. Writing about the mostly Hispanic Hialeah, he says: "The farther north they traveled, the more congested the neighborhoods grew. Every store sign and billboard was in Spanish, tobacco shops and Latin supermarkets and cafeterias with serving windows that opened onto the sidewalks, drawing groups of leathery men in guayaberas with their paper cups of cafe cubano. Thorn recalled that Hialeah was a Seminole phrase meaning "high prairie." Though as far as he could see, the only spaces that might qualify as prairies were the vast asphalt parking lots."

But where Hall falls short is in his over-the-top plotting and even more over-the-top characters. In the end, these were drawbacks for me, especially when one of those OTT characters is the main protagonist. A shame, because I really liked spending time in Hall's South Florida.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Protagonists: Skeeter, Aibileen, Minny
Setting: Jackson, Miss., 1962
Rating: 5.0
During one of the most turbulent years in Mississippi during the Civil Rights struggle, 22-year-old Skeeter returns home and, wanting to be a writer, strikes on an idea: write about the lives of black maids, "the help." She does this with the aid of maids Aibileen and Minny. They have to do it furtively, though, since such a project could turn dangerous. Everyone who had read this book before me told me it was great -- and everyone was right. The dialogue, the story, the tension, the history -- all were done wonderfully.

I don't want to say much, so as not to spoil the book, but one note of caution -- if you listen to it on audiobook (as I did) be careful when driving. It's hard to see the road through the tears.

(Audiobook narrated by Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer and Cassandra Campbell)

Unnatural Causes by P.D. James

Protagonist: Supt. Adam Dalgliesh
Setting: Monksmere, England
Rating: 4.0
No, this is not a new book. This is the third in a series (I'm reading those P.D. James books I haven't read yet). In this novel, there's no rest for Dalgliesh, even on vacation in Monksmere (Suffolk). While Dalgliesh is visiting his aunt Jane, writer Maurice Seton's body is found floating nearby in a dinghy, his hands cut off. Not only is this gruesome, but the death mimics what would have been the opening chapter of Seton's new book -- suggested by another writer who lives in the community. Then the postmortem shows that Seton's death was of natural causes, despite the chopped-off hands. Dalgliesh, of course, still suspects murder. James gives us a clever plot, but what's most interesting about this early book is that James begins to develop Dalgliesh. We see Dalgliesh, a widower, struggle as to whether he should give up the single life he enjoys for marriage to Deborah Riscoe (who we met in the first book), and we get a snatch of his poetry.

Keeping it Short

As part of a reading challenge for February, I tackled two books of short stories this month. Now, short stories are not my favorite -- I usually feel as if they leave something wanting, a sort of reading lite.

The challenge didn't entirely convert me, but I did read some wonderful short stories. The best of writers do know how to write short while also fleshing out plot, characterization and setting in just a few pages.

Mysterious Pleasures, edited by Martin Edwards
Rating: 4.4
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Crime Writers' Association in 2003, the group put out this collection, including some original short stories written just for this anthology. While I didn't enjoy every single story (some just fell flat), I'm very glad to have read this book. It introduced me to some writers who I've now added to my TBR list. And there were some excellent short stories in this anthology. In "One Morning They'll Hang Us," Margery Allingham's Albert Campion solves a case before even visiting the crime scene. Reginald Hill, in "The Game of Dog," has Peter Pascoe and his dog joining a group of dog-walking men at the pub -- and wondering whether a pub game led to murder. Ruth Rendell's "When the Wedding Was Over" sees Michael Burden get married, while Chief Insp. Wexford solves a minor mystery. There's also an offering by the late Dick Francis, "The Gift," which revolves around an alcoholic sports writer who might have the story of his life. Editor Martin Edwards (himself a mystery writer) has assembled a collection that offers us some of the very best mystery writers. If, like me, you want a taste of short stories, this is a good place to start.

A Good Hanging by Ian Rankin
Protagonist: Det. Insp. John Rebus
Setting: Edinburgh
Rating: 4.8
I could read Rankin's short stories all day -- he's that good. What I also like about this collection is that they add to Rebus' characterization and that, taken together, they read as one story -- just a story of one Rebus case after another. The title story is about a student hanging during the Edinburgh Festival. In order to solve the crime, Rebus must attend a Shakespeare play which holds a vital clue. In "Not Provan," it seems a guilty man will go free at trial -- unless Rebus can break his alibi. And in "Sunday," we see Rebus on a free Sunday, a seemingly ordinary Sunday, as he does laundry, makes coffee, cooks a steak ... then we learn it's not just any other Sunday. If you've somehow skipped the Rebus short stories (and there's another collection of them in Rankin's The Complete Short Stories), I highly recommend them.

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

Protagonist: Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar
Setting: Cambridge, England, 12th century
Rating: 5.0
It’s hard to combine history with a mystery thriller – and, in fact, some people have taken issue with some of the historical details of this novel – but for my part, this was a gripping, entertaining read. It’s the year 1170, and the King of England has asked his cousin, the King of Sicily for help. Children are being murdered in Cambridge, and the populace has blamed the Jews, shutting them in a castle. But Henry Plantagenet is anxious to clear the Jews, for they are the money lenders, and therefore very valuable in raising tax revenue. The King of Sicily sends a team of three to help – Simon of Naples, a highly skilled investigator, Adelia Aguilar, a sort of coroner, or “mistress of the art of death,” and Mansur, a Saracen and eunuch sent to protect Adelia. When a young boy Adelia has befriended is kidnapped, the hunt becomes even more frantic.

Into this mix throw in a bit of romance (which could get dicey, but adds to the novel’s enjoyment here as Adelia debates with herself marriage versus her career as physician) and a substory involving the Crusades. There are also several plot twists, even after the killer is found out. All in all, a highly enjoyable Medieval mystery.

The Complaints by Ian Rankin

Protagonist: Malcolm Fox
Setting: Edinburgh
Rating: 4.7
Insp. John Rebus has retired, so from Rankin we now get a different type of cop: Malcolm Fox, who works for The Complaints and Conduct, the cops who investigate other cops. He and his team have just finished a case involving veteran officer Glen Heaton, meaning The Complaints has stirred up some more anger. Fox is also dealing with his sister, who is being physically abused by her live-in boyfriend, when he's asked to start investigating another cop who worked with Heaton, this time as part of an online child pornography group. Before Fox can even begin, he gets a call from that same officer, Jamie Breck, with news that his sister's boyfriend has been killed. Although Breck is one of the main investigators and this might appear a conflict of interest, Fox's boss tells him to continue investigating Breck. He does -- and finds Breck to be intelligent, charming, very likable. Can he really be a pedophile? And what about all the coincidences starting to build up?

The novel is all about rights and wrongs, as we try to figure out just which cop is bent -- and which is honest. As Fox mulls:

He wondered: did it bother him that the world wasn't entirely fair? That justice was seldom sufficient? There would always be people ready to pocket a wad of banknotes in exchange for a favour. There would always be people who played the system and wrung out every penny. Some people -- lots of people -- would keep getting away with it.

'But you're not one of them,' he told himself.

Rankin gives us a great story, a great protagonist and more than enough reason to believe there's life after Rebus.

There's a good interview with Rankin about this book and future plans at macleans.ca.

Red Bones by Ann Cleeves

Protagonist: Jimmy Perez
Setting: Shetland Islands
Rating: 5.0

This has one of the best opening scenes ever (but to tell you more would be to spoil it). Insp. Jimmy Perez is back. This time his sidekick is Sandy Wilson, a young detective and not the sharpest knife in the block. But Sandy is instrumental, as much of the story revolves around his family. An archaeological dig in Whalsay, on land owned by his family, becomes the site of two deaths -- maybe murder? -- after a set of bones is uncovered by the archaeological team.

Cleeves writes a well-plotted mystery, but I like her books as much for the setting -- the Shetland islands, remote and beautiful -- and characters that feel like real people. This is the third in a quartet, and like the other books, it deals with long-hidden secrets and the insularity of the islands. One of the young archaeologists captures it well when she says: "Once the fog rolls in you feel as if the world outside doesn't matter at all. People here lose any sense of proportion. Tiny incidents that happened years ago fester and take over their lives."

13 Steps Down by Ruth Rendell

Protagonist: Mix Cellini
Setting: Notting Hill, London
Rating: 4.8
In this psychological thriller, Rendell gives us Mix Cellini, a troubled young man who is obsessed with a beautiful model, Nerissa Nash, to the point of becoming a stalker. He's also obsessed with Reginald Christie, a serial killer from the 1940s and '50s. He reads all he can about the notorious doctor and, one late night, even believes he sees Christie's ghost outside his flat. Cellini is also deeply superstitious, especially when it comes to the number 13, which also happens to be the number of steps leading to his flat, the attic room of an old ramshackle Victorian. Cellini's landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, is an elderly spinster who spends her days and nights immersed in books and who has her own obsession, a doctor she once had a "relationship" with -- even if it was 50 years ago and the relationship didn't extend beyond tea and cakes at her house. Then there is the beautiful Nerissa, who has fallen in love with her family's neighbor, a young man she doesn't even know that well and who doesn't seem to notice her. As the novel progresses, Cellini becomes even more and more unhinged. As a reader, you know it'll all end badly -- but we don't know how or why. It's a story that unwinds slowly, continuing to surprise us, even on the last page.

Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias

Protagonist: Daniel Jacobus
Setting: Berkshires and New York City
Rating: 3.7
At the Grimsley Competition for young violinists at Carnegie Hall, a rare and valuable Stradivarius violin is stolen, even though it had been in a locked room and guarded by two security guards. Daniel Jacobus, a blind, reclusive and crotchety former violinist who now teaches, is a suspect -- he dislikes the competition and the group that hosts it, the Musical Arts Project Group. As he tries to help solve the theft -- with Nathaniel Williams, the investigator for the company that had insured the violin, and Yumi Shinagawa, a 19-year-old student fresh from Japan -- a MAP member is murdered, and Jacobus is a suspect in the murder, as well. The story is written by someone who has been a violinist, composer, conductor and teacher -- so there's much insight into the world of music, and the fierce competition that is sometimes seen. And Jacobus, for unlikable as he can be, is a compelling protagonist. For a debut novel, Devil's Trill is good. But there are still some annoying quirks. For example, the author tries to be too cutesy with puns. It's not just one character who loves musical puns -- but just about every character. After awhile, it grates, and actually lowers the enjoyment of what otherwise is a good mystery.

Trivia: The Devil's Trill is indeed a real-life sonata, by Giuseppe Tartini. There are various versions on YouTube -- all the more enjoyable for having read the book. Here's one performed by Elias himself.