Crimefile:Reading a new Chief Insp Wexford novel by Ruth Rendell is similar to slipping into a well-loved dressing gown or donning a pair of well-worn slippers. The familiarity is there, and the inspector is as curmudgeonly warm as usual.
All the trappings are here: wife, daughters, Mike Burden, the town of Kingsmarkham, and the style of the investigation is slow and stubbornly plodding. A body is found in the woods and, a little while later, another in a disused house only yards from the first one.
There is no shortage of suspects, even though the bodies have been hidden for quite a number of years. And things get a little bit risque, for there is a sub-plot concerning female circumcision. Rendell never fails to come up trumps, and her millions of admirers will eagerly consume this offering as they have all the others.
Stalin's Ghost features Martin Cruz Smith's series Russian detective Arkady Renko - enough said. Renko is a wonderful creation, and the novels that he has featured in have all been winners. Here he is out to prove that a man hailed as a war hero is bogus, and is in fact killing off his comrades in order to hide his feet of clay. The snowy Russian landscape is beautifully described, the characters are believable, and the plot is cleverly laid bare. To complicate things, Renko's girlfriend, Eva, has left him for the so-called hero, and his adopted son, Zhenya, has also become involved and is in great danger. I'd highly recommend this one.
It seems like only a few months since I was reviewing Michael Connelly's Echo Park, and now he has another novel in the shops. This is a Harry Bosch book, so it can't all be bad, but the writing is a bit rushed, there's too much explication, and the plot is a little sloppy. A body has been found on the Mulholland overlook, and it turns out to be the remains of a medical physicist with access to some highly toxic substances. When Harry investigates, he finds that a quantity of a deadly radioactive chemical is missing. If it is in the hands of terrorists, they could cause mayhem countrywide. With the help of an old girlfriend, Harry gets on the trail of the perpetrators of the crime, and in the end nothing turns out as it seems. A bit of a disappointment, though, this one. Is Connelly writing too many books too quickly?
The Woods, by Harlan Coben, is also a disappointment; like many crime books nowadays, it is much too long, and this padding takes from the dramatic tension and the pace of the story. There's just too much in it.
Some 20 years before the book opens, four teenagers at summer camp walked into the woods at night. Two were found murdered and the other two were never seen again. One of the two who disappeared was the sister of Paul Copeland, now the county prosecutor of Essex, New Jersey. When a homicide victim is found with evidence linking him to Copeland, the well-buried secrets of the man's past begin to unravel. Is the body one of the young people who disappeared? And could his sister be alive after all? As I've said, the story gets somewhat bogged down in other events, and the reader would have to suspend his or her incredulity when the climax is reached.
Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai, but has lived in America since 1989. He is an award-winning poet and holds a PhD in Literature from Washington University. A Case of Two Cities is the fourth in the critically acclaimed Chief Insp Chen series set in contemporary China.
The exotic locale alone would make the books worth reading, but Qiu spins nicely complicated tales to hold his readers' interest. In this one, Chen is given the task of leading an investigation into corruption in high places, going even as high as the Party itself. His task takes him from Shanghai to the US, and a reunion with his counterpart from the US Marshall's service - Insp Catherine Rohn. In his trail he leaves a couple of dead bodies, but eventually he succeeds in stemming the corruption. Again, I would recommend this one.
In Tami Hoag's The Alibi Man, we meet up with one Elena Estes, formerly a child of wealth living in privileged Palm Beach and engaged to one of its most sought-after bachelors. She turned her back on that life and became an undercover cop, but again had to give that up due to a tragic mistake. Now she works at a stable, exercising the horses. Riding out one morning, she discovers the body of a friend in the local canal. The policeman in charge of the case is her new lover, but, disregarding his admonition to stay away, she begins to investigate the killing. She discovers links to the Russian Mafia, and also to a group of powerful Palm Beach bad boys known for giving one another alibis when needed, a group that includes her former fiancé. The Alibi Man is a fast-moving thriller that holds the interest right to the end and gives us an intrepid heroine that lets nothing stand in her way.
Pulp Fiction, edited by Otto Penzler and introduced by Harlan Ellison, is a compendium of pieces from American pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, and features people who went on to become some of the best-known names in crime writing - people such as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, James M Cain and Leslie Charteris. The pieces vary in quality, but when they are good, they are very good. This is one for those who are interested in the origins of hard-boiled American crime fiction.
Vincent Banville is a writer and critic
Not in the Flesh By Ruth Rendell, Hutchinson, £17.99 Stalin's Ghost By Martin Cruz Smith, Macmillan, £17.99 The Overlook By Michael Connelly, Orion, £17.99 The Woods By Harlan Coben, Orion, £17.99 A Case of Two Cities By Qiu Xiaolong, Sceptre, £17.99 Pulp Fiction Edited by Otto Penzler, Quercus, £17.99 The Alibi Man By Tami Hoag, Orion, £12.99