Burke's crime novels usually feature Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux, but in recent times he has branched out to include a new protagonist, Billy Bob Holland, an ex-Texas Ranger turned lawyer.
In Bitterroot, the third novel in the series, he has Billy Bob visit an old friend of his, Doc Voss, in Missoula, Montana. Voss is an embittered Vietnam veteran, a man whose penchant for violence lies only slightly buried beneath the surface. When his daughter, Maisey, is gang-raped by some bikers and her attackers are subsequently horribly dispatched, Voss is the obvious suspect and is arrested. Billy Bob. however, believes his friend to be innocent of the crimes and sets out to prove it.
What follows is a typical James Lee Burke convoluted and intricately plotted novel, with layer upon layer of deceit being uncovered, dark deeds reaching out of the past like octopus tentacles to snare the good and the bad alike. Burke writes an intense, breathless prose that eminently suits his tales of dark passion and disturbed emotions. And quite often his villains bleed more starkly into the narrative than the putative good guys. In Bitterroot the grotesque Wyatt Dixon looms larger in the cast list than any of the other characters, more so, even, than the hero, Billy Bob Holland himself.
Fatal Voyage. By Kathy Reichs. Heinemann. £16.99 in UK
This is Reichs's fourth novel to feature Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for the state of North Carolina.
A well-rounded and much more believable character than, say, Patricia Cornwell's rather two- dimensional Kay Scarpetta, Tempe, as she is known to her friends, is here engaged in sorting through the debris of a plane crash when she is menaced by a coyote that has apparently stolen a severed foot from the wreckage. She manages to retrieve the foot, records it, and places it with the rest of the mangled remains.
Soon it turns out that the limb is the only remaining clue to a horrible murder, and Tempe is accused of tampering with the evidence and is banned from the investigation. In danger of losing her job and her reputation, she sets out to solve the crime and clear her name. The question is, are the plane crash and the killing connected? Reichs cleverly juggles with both strands of her narrative, laying down clues and red herrings galore.
Fatal Voyage is a most satisfying crime novel, combining a sympathetic heroine with sound plotting, believable dialogue and fine descriptive writing. What more can one ask?
The Untouchable. By Gerald Seymour. Bantam Press. £10.99 in UK
When you read Seymour, you know you're in the hands of a professional. A master of the adventure-cum-crime-cum-espionage novel since his dΘbut with the best-selling Harry's Game, in The Untouchable he is once again at the top of his form.
He is not much for introspection where his characters are concerned: it is the story that matters, and this one zings along like the whir of a bullet heading straight for the target.
Albert William Packer is the London crime boss par excellence, the Untouchable both to the law and to those outside it. Determined to expand his drug empire abroad, however, he makes the one fatal mistake of his career by going to Sarajevo to buy heroin from the gangster warlords who rule the city. In these war-torn, ravaged streets, Packer is far from home and is vulnerable. Hot on his heels is one Joey Cann from the British Customs and Excise unit that has so far failed to trap him. Engaging in a deadly game of hide and seek, the two men play out their fate, until an enigmatic conclusion is reached in the stark milieu of a minefield. Intellectual it ain't, but entertaining it most assuredly is.
Darkness in My Hand. By Frederic Lindsay. (Hodder & Stoughton, £17.99 in UK)
if one is asked to name an Edinburgh crime novelist, the name Ian Rankin immediately comes to mind, but Frederic Lindsay is coming up fast behind, and it may well be a dead heat when they both reach the winning post.
Like Rankin's Rebus, Lindsay's Jim Meldrum is an officer in the Edinburgh police force. After a rather distraught dinner with his ex-wife and her new husband, he wakes up the next morning in a hotel room in the company of an attractive woman, and with aching ribs and bruised knuckles. She maintains they have spent the night together, but refuses to give him any further information about herself. Later that day a battered body is discovered in the room next to the one in which our hero woke up. The victim is identified as James Philipson, proprietor of an agency of high-class call girls. Fearing that he may have been involved in the dead man's violent demise, Meldrum still conducts the investigation with his usual integrity, even though a solution may lead to the ruination of his career.
Our author weaves a fine web of intrigue, as he seeks to extricate his protagonist from the mess into which he has got himself. Tough, knowing, and bearing a nice waft of astringency, Darkness in My Hand is well worth seeking out.
The Bones in the Attic. By Robert Barnard. HarperCollins. £16.99 in UK
Again, with Barnard, we're in the hands of an expert crime writer. With the best part of 30 novels behind him, he knows what's what, and this latest one shows off his expertise to the full.
His nominal protagonist is Detective Charlie Peace of Leeds CID, who is looking into the discovery of the skeleton of a small child in the attic of an upmarket house in the city. But it is the person who came across the remains, up-and-coming radio star Matt Harper, who eventually turns out to be the main man in the investigation. Harper remembers the summer of 1969, when he had lived with his aunt only a few streets away from the house where he made his grisly find. In an effort to uncover the secrets of the past, he tracks down the members of a gang of local kids to which he'd once belonged. Soon he begins to tease out the skeins of a mystery that unravels bit by bit, until a grim and gruesome conclusion is reached.
Once again, another fine crime novel by a master of the genre.
Michael Painter is a writer and critic