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Past
Partners Picks:
Reviews of First Crime Novels of Interest to the Collector
Call us at (212) 243-0440
or email us at partners@crimepays.com
for availability and price information.
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Phone: (212) 243-0440
Fax: (212) 243-4624
Email: partners@crimepays.com
 Edgar Best 1sts for Sale
 Partners'
Picks
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Jar
City by Arnaldur Indridason
St. Martin’s
Yet another fabulous
crime novelist from the far north! Welcome to Reykjavik, where murder
is usually squalid, pointless and obvious – but not this time. Detective
Inspector Erlendur is called to a small, neat apartment where an elderly
man lies dead, apparently murdered. As the investigation reaches into
the victim’s past, a disturbing pattern of intertwined damage, violence
and death is revealed. Dark, moody and intense, this is a uniquely
Icelandic mystery; the crime at its core is possible only in a
small and isolated place. Winner of the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic
Crime Novel and the author’s first novel to be translated
into English, Jar City is a stunning debut and a police
procedural that transcends the genre. The American edition is the
first hardcover edition.
SIGNED
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The Historian by Elizabeth
Kostova
Little, Brown
Yes,
it’s about Dracula, but you won’t find any cheesy horror effects or
creepy soft-core porn in this superbly elegant debut that spans
the centuries but opens in Amsterdam in 1972. A sheltered young woman,
the daughter of a famous scholar, is idly rifling through her father’s
study when she discovers some mysterious books and papers that appear
to document her father’s decades-long search for Dracula’s tomb. In
response to her urging, he starts to tell her his story – which began
in the 1950s – but shortly thereafter, he disappears. As her efforts
to find him grow increasingly frantic, taking her from one dusty library
to another, she stumbles across the work of her father’s long-missing
mentor, whose own obsessive search for the tomb began in the 1930s.
Told in three different voices – the daughter’s, her father’s, and
the elderly professor’s – The Historian sent chills down our
spine because, as with all book-lovers, what really thrills us is
the discovery of an extraordinary new writer. Very simply: This one
knocked our socks off.
SIGNED
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Identity Theory by Peter Temple
MacAdam/Cage
Ever stumble across an author whose work
is new to you and wonder how you could possibly have missed his (or
her) books all your life? Peter Temple is just such a find! He’s a
very popular Australian crime novelist and three-time winner of the
Ned Kelly Award. We are extremely pleased to introduce his outside-Australia
debut. Identity Theory is a muliti-layered espionage thriller
which follows three damaged people whose lives have been shaped by
events beyond their control. First, there’s Con Niemand, an ex-mercenary
whose body-guard job goes violently south, salvaging only a video-tape
showing what appear to be American soldiers eradicating a tiny African
village. Then there’s John Anselm, a former journo whose days as a
hostage in Beirut ended his reporting days forever. He works for a
shady surveillance/information retrieval firm in Germany, permanently
in the shadows… Add Caroline Wishart, a London tabloid reporter with
a reputation for stories than rent-boys and insipid scandals, who
wants to tackle REAL NEWS…and you have one explosive cocktail!
SIGNED on a laid-in page.
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As
Simple As Snow
by Gregory Galloway
Putnam
A
stranger comes to town and somebody leaves home: Greg Galloway’s first
novel encompasses both elements of the famous plot reduction in a
mystery that continues to resonate long after the last page. Anna
Cayne is the newcomer to Hamilton High, a Goth sophomore in love with
words, puzzles, codes and ghost stories. Her hobby is to write the
epitaph of everyone in town – in short, a 21st century
Wednesday Addams... The narrator is, by his own account, completely
unremarkable in every way but the two become friends until Anna vanishes
(need we say mysteriously?). His search for her triggers more questions
than it answers, while revealing more than he wants to know about
his family and friends. Sound a little odd for a mystery? Well, it
is – but we really really like it!
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Skinny-Dipping
by Claire Matturo
HarperCollins
“I,
Lilly Rose Cleary, have a nearly endless capacity for driving myself
crazy.” Thus begins one of the sharpest and funniest legal mysteries
to come along in years. The excursions into trial-related chaos are
worth the book price in themselves (Lilly defends a kayak-whiplash
case), but Matturro presents a fast, funny story in which screwball
humor abounds without getting in the way of a clever, twisty plot.
One of the great pleasures is the main character: not your standard
self-described (in the first three pages, character set in stone forever
after) hapless heroine, Lilly has quirks that creep up on the reader
– she is both crazier and more real than 99% of the accidental detectives
out there.
Note to the “stupid publisher tricks” file: although set in Florida,
Skinny Dipping bears no relationship to Carl Hiaasen’s latest hardcover,
Skinny Dip.
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The Ghost Writer
by John Harwood
Harcourt
What
a stunner this author’s first novel is, with its layers and layers
and layers of interwoven secrets. Stuck in a grimly dusty town
in the Australian Outback, Gerard Freeman takes refuge in his mother’s
stories about her idyllic English childhood in a house called Staplefield.
But then she abruptly stops telling the stories, and Gerard – now
a killingly lonely and literary teen – strikes up a passionate pen-pal
relationship with the irresistibly elusive Alice, an English orphan
living in a house that sounds remarkably like…Staplefield. Laced
through the Alice-and-Gerard saga are a series of elegantly creepy
Victorian ghost stories, written by Gerard’s elegantly creepy Victorian
great-grandmother. The stories get more menacing as they seem,
increasingly, to mirror Gerard’s search for the truth about Alice
and the green dream of Staplefield. Gorgeous, and like nothing
we’ve read before.
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The Hundredth Man by Jack Kerley
Dutton
Mobile,
Alabama is the setting for this author’s first novel, a complex
police/forensic procedural that explodes into action on the first
page. Kerley has recombined serial-killer-thriller DNA into something
new and exciting: You got your exploding corpse, serial killer, alcoholic
pathologist, psycho-brother-in-prison, dumb acronyms, disrespect for
authority, good cop-bad cop, lost causes, heroic gestures and much
much more… Detective Carson Ryder and his friends, enemies and family
are characters we want to see again – SOON!
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Darkly
Dreaming Dexter by
Jeff Lindsay
Doubleday
Let’s
say you’re a cop – a good cop – and you adopt a little boy.
Then when the adorable tyke gets big enough to interact with the world,
the neighbors’ pets start disappearing… What’s a loving father to
do? With the cheerfully pragmatic amorality we associate with Patricia
Highsmith, Jeff Lindsay gives us Dexter, living by Harry’s Rules:
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1. Act sane.
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3. Be sure.
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2. Stay focused.
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4. Only kill the bad ones.
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So
Dexter grows up, gets a job as a blood spatter tech with the Miami
cops, and quietly pursues his calling. In this outrageously original
and appallingly humorous first novel, Jeff Lindsay turns the
genre upside down, inside out and makes it cry for its mama – because
it will never be the same.
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Dirty
Sally by Michael Simon
Viking Books
Make
way for a new series starring a Texas cop with noir flair! Austin,
Texas 1988: the oil boom is over and the seamy excesses which go unnoticed
during the good times are threatening to eat the city alive. Homicide
detective Dan Reles is struggling to deal with the death of his partner
and solve a vicious run of street crimes when he comes up against
that most powerful of forces – the entrenched Texas power elite. Simon
has created a nuanced and believable hero in Dan Reles, and his debut
novel packs a big kick straight out of Chandler territory!
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The 6th
Lamentation by William Brodrick
Viking Press
If
your idea of the spooks-n-spies genre involves muscle-bound heroes
swashbuckling their way through thickets of cardboard-foreign bad
guys, meet Father Anselm. A British monk, Anselm has been ordered
to cope with Eduard Schwermann, a suspected Nazi war-criminal who
has suddenly claimed asylum at Anselm’s priory. The decidedly middle-aged
Anselm is a reluctant sleuth (a former lawyer, he’s earned a bellyful
of knowledge about the world’s evils), but he unhappily agrees to
investigate Schwermann’s past – an investigation that leads him to
ugly, complex truths about Nazi-occupied Paris, the French Resistance,
and the Vatican’s own history.
Brodrick
was in fact a monk before becoming a lawyer, and he brings a detailed
knowledge of both careers to this fascinating debut. But it’s
his precise eye for detail and his all-too-clear grasp of the nature
of treachery that catapult him into the ranks of Alan Furst and John
le Carré. The espionage drought is now officially over.
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Confessions of a Deathmaiden
by Ruth Francisco
Mysterious Press
What
an interesting book. Frances Oliver, the “deathmaiden” of the title,
works in today’s Los Angeles as a sort of midwife to the dying, helping
to ease their passage into “the next reality.” When one of her patients,
a small boy, makes that passage just a little too quickly, Frances
can’t let go of her suspicions, even though her employer – the cult-like,
politically embroiled Society of Deathmaidens – wants her to move
onto the next case. With its driven, martial-arts-trained heroine,
its action-packed plot involving organ-donors and creepy docs (plus
a side-trip into the Mexican jungle), Confessions reads like Coma
as narrated by V.I. Warshawski’s gutsy if peculiar younger sister.
But Francisco’s elegant, lyrical prose and her matter-of-fact handling
of the book’s Twilight Zone-style premise make this debut novel a
classy and highly original package. We will be very, very interested
to see what Francisco does next.
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Since the Layoffs
by Iain Levison
Jake's
modest dreams become fantasy after his employer, a local tractor factory,
is relocated to some desperate third-world cheap-labor economy. All
he wants to do is get his cable restored and pay off his bookie. But
with no job and – let’s face it – not a lot of prospects,
he takes the best offer going, killing his neighbor’s wife.
Levison has the ability to tell a fantastic story without completely
losing reality – his characters make logical choices and the
ensuing violence is portrayed with brutal matter-of-factness. There
is real insight as well as a finely tuned sense of anarchy operating
here. Following on the heels of the author’s
critical smash, A Working Stiff’s Manifesto –
a non-fiction account of the 42 jobs he held after leaving college
– this blackly funny first novel is a gas and
a half.
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Easter Island
by Jennifer Vanderbes
Ohhh
did we love Easter Island, the extraordinary debut novel
by Jennifer Vanderbes. At its heart is the mystery of Easter Island
itself and its gigantic stone statues, created hundreds of years ago
in a feat of engineering second only to the great pyramids. But who
carved them? For what purpose? And why were the statues toppled and
left to crumble into dust?
Neither
of the two young women who come to Easter Island is aiming to solve
that particular mystery. Elsa, who arrives in 1912 with her disabled
sister and distant, silent husband is seeking only survival; her father's
death has left the sisters destitute and given Elsa little choice
beyond a loveless marriage to a British naturalist with a passionate
desire to venture beyond the boundaries of the 'civilized' world.
Some 60 years later, Greer shows up, and though airplanes, air-conditioners,
and 20th-century politics have come to Easter Island, in
many ways nothing has changed at all. That's just fine by Greer, a
disgraced academic hoping to bury herself in botanical study. Bridging
the two stories is the ghost of a doomed German warship captained
by the famous Graf Spee and the exquisite, elusive proto-sex symbol
of all time: the world's first flower. This book is about as far from
the traditional mystery as Easter Island is from anywhere in the world,
but we don’t care and neither will you. We predict awards for
this one.
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Wiley's Lament: A Novel
by Lono Waiwaiole
Wiley
is a moral end-of-the-roader, jacking drug dealers and playing poker
to meet expenses, when he learns that his estranged daughter Lizzie
has been killed in a sleazy airport motel. The death of his only child
sends Wiley after the kingpin of Portland’s sex industry, Lizzie’s
sometime lover and Wiley’s lifelong best friend. Enter a rogue
federal agent and an assortment of desperados extreme even for the
darkest crime fiction – Wiley’s world is sordid on its
best day, so how come we care so much what happens next? Is it because
we learn to tell the bad guys from the really bad guys? Waiwaiole's
characters grab your attention like a drowning man grabs a life-preserver,
and his muscular prose never distracts from the action or calls attention
to itself. Don't expect to put this author's first novel down
until you’ve read the last page!
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Tropic of Night **
by
Michael Gruber
Five Thumbs Up for a thriller that really thrills! Author’s
first novel blends anthropology, scholarship, voodoo and violence
in a story that will keep you spellbound from the opening scene to
the last page - and beyond. Jane Doe leads an unremarkable existence
on the fringes of Miami's under- class until her past begins to catch
up with her... A career ethnologist, her far-flung researches
into shamanism had taken her from the Russian steppes to West Africa,
where her work attracted a predator so powerful that she fakes her
own suicide and retreats into total anonymity... The tautly
constructed plot is complemented by a compelling cast of characters
and superb writing in this imaginative and original debut.
** Hot off
the presses: Michael Gruber is the writer who actually wrote the books
published under the name of Robert K. Tanenbaum, including the legal
series featuring Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi. It's a long story
and stranger than much of the fiction which passes through our doors,
but suffice it to say we are satisfied that Tropic of Night is indeed
Mr. Gruber's first novel.
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The Ticket Out
by Helen Knode
Ann Whitehead has an attitude - and a problem.
Her job as an LA film critic bores her way past tears: she can't enthuse
over Harry Potter, the new David Lynch project leaves her cold, and
Tom Cruise is a "human prophylactic". When the body of an aspiring
filmmaker appears in Ann's bathtub, she seizes the chance to investigate
the young woman's death, along with the mysterious film the girl was
working on when she died. The author's first novel brings a
crackling intelligence as well as a veteran insider's take on the
Industry to her wise-cracking protagonist, a tough cookie who can
both amuse and appall. It is no coincidence that the author of this
fast-paced newcomer to LA noir has worked as a film critic;
it is, however a happy circumstance that she is married to James Ellroy,
who says this is better than his first book. We think it's
a tight contest, but you decide!
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Death of a Nationalist
by Rebecca C. Pawel
In
this author’s first novel, Carlos Tejada is a good man
on a very bad team. It’s 1939, and Franco’s fascist army
- fighting under the "Nationalist" banner - has just won Spain’s
bloody civil war. A true believer in the Nationalist cause, Tejada
has come back to Madrid, where his job as a police detective centers
around mopping up the last, desperate vestiges of Republican (read
"Communist") resistance. When a fellow cop is killed, Tejada’s
automatic response is to blame the Reds and shoot a few as payback.
But stray bits of evidence prompt him to poke around, and what he
discovers leads to uncomfortable questions about the cause for which
he was prepared to die.
The
first in what promises to be a fascinating series, this debut novel
reminded us of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451. The history
and sense of place are beautifully rendered, but it’s Tejada’s
growing moral quandary that leaves us eager for the second installment.
We know where he’s going, and we want to find out what price
he’s going to have to pay to get there.
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The Barbed-Wire Kiss
by
Wallace Stroby
Harry
Rane is the straight-on hero of author Stroby's first novel.
He's a reasonable man and a grieving widower, cut loose from his former
job as a state trooper and minding his own business. When his oldest
friend comes to him with a problem involving the proverbial drug-deal-gone-bad,
he sets out to put things right with as little fuss as possible. Not
possible - Bobby has tangled with the wrong guys, specifically midweight
mobster Eddie Fallon. To complicate the picture, Fallon is now married
to Harry's high-school sweetheart who had skipped town almost 20 years
before under decidedly cloudy circumstances. The plot elements might
sound familiar, but Stroby has a way of making his characters come
alive that is completely fresh and compelling. It's as if one of your
oldest friends (or a sibling or adult child) came to you ten minutes
ago with a problem that, with only a little luck, you might be uniquely
equipped to solve. Marvellous!
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Dark Fields
by Alan Glynn
Author’s
first novel
and the closest thing to a nightmare state we have ever encountered
between the covers of a book. Eddie Spinola is the classic underachiever,
a twenty-first-century slacker whose life seems to be stuck on 'pause'.
When he encounters his ex-brother-in-law-and-drug-dealer by chance
on a Manhattan street, he unknowingly steps into a dark slipstream
of events that play out like headlines from the day after tomorrow.
Described by the publisher as a 'pharmaceutical Faust', we feel this
sound bite falls short in conveying the thrilling pace, lucid dreaming
and sheer scariness of Glynn's Dark Fields.
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The Eyre Affair
by Jasper Fforde
A delightful first novel that is
already causing quite a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, The
Eyre Affair is a bibliomystery set in an alternate universe. The
year is 1985, Wales is a Soviet Republic, dodos are available in home-cloning
kits, the Crimean War is 131 years old and the ending of Jane Eyre
has been stolen by the archfiend Acheron Styx. Thursday Next, a LiteraTec
promoted to Section 5, is the heroine of this heady brew. Time runs
funny in Thursday's world and we can't wait for her next adventure
- kind of a literary fractured fairy tale for all you former Rocky
and Bullwinkle fans. This is the first American edition (the British
is the true first) and already into multiple printings here! One to
a customer!
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In the Bleak Midwinter
by Julia Spencer-Fleming
First
novel and winner
of the St. Martin's/MWA Malice Domestic prize in 2001. Author's
first novel is a welcome return to the traditional mystery as
well as an atmospheric upstate New York thriller drawn on a small-town
canvas. Newly ordained Clare Fergusson is the first female priest
of Miller Kills' small Episcopal church. When a newborn baby is abandoned
on the church steps with a note that consigns the infant to two of
Clare's parishioners, she calls the cops. Recounting the plot will
not convey the surprising combination of unlikely elements that grace
this sure-footed and elegantly paced first outing. Starred review
in Publishers Weekly.
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Open Season by C. J. Box
NY: Putnam 2001
Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett.is a newcomer
to his assignment and has already made some embarrassing blunders:
ticketing the governor for fishing without a license and allowing
a local poacher to grab his gun during a tussle. When that same poacher
turns up dead behind Joe's house, Joe launches an investigation –
against the advice of his old mentor – and unknowingly puts
the lives of his pregnant wife and two daughters at risk. This is
a special book, with a hero for our times. From the opening sentence
to the closing line, Box transports the reader to the modern frontier
where guns are a way of life and big business may flex its muscles,
but a lone man can make a stand. Compelling characters, clean prose
and some great lines ("..things are going to get real Western around
here") make this a writer to watch! An outstanding first novel,
already into multiple printings.
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Corpse
de Ballet
A Nine Muses Mystery: Terpsichore
by Ellen Pall
NY: St. Martin's 2001
Sleek and sophisticated,
Ellen Pall's first mystery in a series based on the nine muses
is a wonderfully detailed excursion into the backstage world of a
NYC ballet company. When successful (but bored) romance novelist Juliet
Bodine agrees to help a choreographer friend with a new ballet based
on Dickens' Great Expectations, her eye for the odd detail
leads her to believe that the accidents and incidents plaguing the
company are a prelude to murder. The witty dialog and insightful handling
of talent and ego add verve and dash to the theatrical mystery familiar
to the readers of Ngaio Marsh.
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The One that Got Away
by Naomi Rand
NY: HarperCollins
2001
Emma Price is forty, pregnant, mother of
a 10 year old son, broke, and about to dump her faithless husband
– she is also a terrific addition to the pantheon of female
investigators. A disparate series of deaths appears to have no common
thread, but when Emma returns to her old job as an attorney's investigator,
her babysitter is murdered – and Emma takes on the case.
Brooklyn neighborhoods and the New York club scene are realistically
rendered and details of family interactions are well-observed, but
the ambiguity and confusions of daily life take center stage in this
first novel. The One That Got Away is a surprising and
sometimes disconcerting read, but ultimately satisfying.
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Sleep with the Fishes
by Brian M.Wiprud
Xlibris 2001
Sid 'Sleep' Bifulco sang for the Feds,
did his time and is out to enjoy the proceeds of his crimes as a simple
fisherman in the quiet backwaters of the Delaware Valley. But is it
easy? Hell, NO! This fast and furiously funny debut
mystery is populated with the wackiest cast of eccentrics we've
seen since Carl Hiaasen introduced Skink or Don Westlake's Dortmunder
pulled his first caper. And there are more plot twists than little
fishes in the sea. The author is aiding and abetting us in our shameless
hucksterism by lettering and drawing a comical sketch in each copy
of a Special Limited Edition lettered A-Z. Welcome to a wicked new
comic talent! And Beware the Red Shoes…
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FLINT by Paul Eddy
NY: Putnam 2000
First American Edition, true first English language hardcover.
Flint, by Paul Eddy,
is the author's first venture into fiction. Eddy's career as an investigative
reporter for the London Times (he has also coauthored nonfiction
books on topics ranging from espionage to terrorism to war) has provided
him with real-life models for his relentless protagonist, Grace Flint.
Narrated in conversational prose that is by turns breezy, halting,
speculative, and exhilarating, Flint reads like an after-hours,
insider's account related by a hard-bitten veteran reporter in a smoky
bar in Tangiers. The plot is as unpredictable and compelling as the
best of John le Carré's George Smiley epics, the characters are carefully
illuminated by their actions and speculations about each other, and
the violence is as inevitable and matter-of-fact as the thunderclap
following lightning. Author’s first novel
is a thriller of keen intelligence. Read
our interview!
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STREET LEVEL by Bob Truluck
NY: St. Martin’s 2000
Motoring through the seamy, refreshingly
non-Disney regions of Florida, the story revolves around an ex-con
P.I. who can’t resist the woeful tale of a gay sperm donor whose
deposit goes missing – and the ramifications (or progeny, if
you like) when money meets, um, mommy. Hired by the expectant father,
Duncan Sloan tracks the possibly-pregnant thief while less legitimate
lowlifes (hired by her greedy relatives or his equally greedy ones,
or possibly the donor’s jealous lover) want to cash in on what
could be a very lucrative blackmail operation. Winner of the St. Martin’s/PWA
Contest for Best First Private Eye Novel; with St. Martin’s
track record for choosing hot new authors, this is one writer to watch.
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HOUSE OF LEAVES by Mark Z. Danielewski
NY: Pantheon 2000
House of
Leaves is difficult to describe. At the core (perhaps) of this
first novel is a house that is larger
inside than it is outside. When award-winning photojournalist Will
Navidson and his companion ex-model Karen Green move into the modest
house on Ash Tree Lane with their two
small children, their efforts toward normal domesticity are shattered
by this discovery. Walls move, doors appear, and a vast labyrinth
opens before them. Will decides to investigate and film the phenomenon;
a mysterious old blind man dies while compiling the Navidson Record,
a document describing the making of the film and annotating all of
the interpretations which have sprung up to explain it; an apprentice
tattoo artist discovers the manuscripts and continues the work. Haunting,
scary, wicked, funny, puzzling, beautiful -- and, ultimately -- the
most elegant love story we have ever read.
This
book is not for everyone. But for people who love books, we think
every collector will want a copy of the hardcover edition* for the
sheer beauty of the publisher's art embodied here. House is 700 pages long -- Danielewski and Pantheon
have succeeded in creating a fascinatingly interactive and attractive
physical object. The typography reflects the pace of the narrative,
ranging from densely packed notations, some in mirror image, to spiraling
print with but a handful of words on a page. Each time the word 'house' appears it is printed in blue ink…we could
go on and on. House
rocks!
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RUN by Douglas E. Winter
NY:
Knopf 2000
RUN is a seriously frightening
read. First-time novelist Winter has found the perfect voice and vocabulary
to deliver a thriller about gunrunning in America: over the top/business
as usual; hyperbolic/matter-of-fact; adrenaline and cordite, blood
after midnight. Narrated in a single stream of consciousness by "I'm
not the good guy" Burdon Lane, the novel takes place over a single
weekend, rocketing up and down the Eastern seaboard between Washington
and New York City; by the book's final pages you're not sure if there
are any good guys…anywhere. It's a violent ride and a whirlwind
crime spree that may skip a few beats in logic but overwhelmingly
succeeds in painting a devastating portrait of our insane national
love affair with firearms: capitalism at its deadliest.
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Birdman by Mo Hayder
NY: Doubleday 2000
First American edition precedes the British edition, thus true first.
Quite possibly this startling first novel
will set a new standard for thrillers, due in no small part to Hayder's
canny delivery of both a fresh new voice and the seasoned maneuvering
of a veteran craftsman. Cagier than the criminals he pursues, London's
young Detective Inspector Jack Caffery hunts for a slippery serial
killer the tabloids have nicknamed 'The Millenium Ripper' but whom
Jack privately calls 'Birdman'. Murdered women are found horrifically
mutilated and the killer's timetable shrinks as his compulsion grows.
Not solely for fans of Thomas Harris, Birdman goes beyond what one
expects from the genre -- and Hayder's exploration of character leaves
you breathless for more Jack Caffery.
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A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss
NY:
Random House 2000
Rave reviews and high expectations usher
this engrossing first novel onto the literary scene. We think
discriminating readers will find much to savor from scholar-turned-novelist
Liss: perfectly pitched dialog, exquisite character detail, intelligent
humor and a wealth of historical scenery, all of which set the stage
for a plot worthy of Shakespeare. Snared by curiosity deepened
by a guilty conscience, Benjamin Weaver, a renowned pugilist now turned
honest "thief-taker," reluctantly returns to his Jewish roots
to investigate the accidental death of his estranged father, a stern
patriarch much more concerned with stock jobbery than parenting.
Ben bears witness to the fevered years of London's fledgling stock
market and the political machinations of an earlier age, with insiders
no less insidious, dealers no less devious, and losers no less desperate
than those of the most lurid Wall Street Journal expose.
Liss, whose doctoral research fuels this tale, wisely leaves his footnotes
at home and delivers a refreshingly modern thriller with its footing
firmly in the past.
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The
Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison
NY: St. Martin's 1999
"They called it taking four." So begins
Eliot Pattison's utterly compelling first novel, referring to the
Buddhist belief that a suicide will be reincarnated as a lower life
form — arguably an attractive alternative to a life sentence
in a Chinese forced-labor camp high in Tibet's Himalayas. A headless
corpse is discovered by a prison work gang comprised of dissident
monks and a disgraced former career police investigator from Beijing,
Shan Tao Yun. Shan is pressed into service by the area military commander
to solve the mystery surrounding the body and normalize the situation
in preparation for an American tourist delegation's imminent arrival.
His task is complicated by intrigue in an international mining camp,
fear for the safety of the monks he has grown to admire, and the resurgence
of a legendary demon. While the whirlwind plot sweeps you along
at a breakneck pace, what remains long after you put the book down
is the power and poetry of Pattison's writing, his absorbing illustrations
of a completely different mode of experiencing life, and his compassion
for the players in an all-too-easily-ignored reality on the roof of
the world.
*Selected Best First Mystery of 1999 by
MWA!
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Big
Trouble by Dave Barry
NY: Putnam 1999
Miami Herald humorist Dave Barry gives
us his first mystery novel just in time for the dour days of autumn.
Ad Exec Eliot Arnold struggles with the BIG FAT STUPID CLIENT FROM
HELL while his son Matt prepares to "assassinate" fellow students
with a water gun by playing the game Killer. Meanwhile, in Coconut
Grove, Arthur Herk is almost killed by two hit men from New Jersey
for embezzling and decides to make amends by buying a rocket launcher.
Sounds crazy? Just wait till you meet Puggy, a toad tougher than a
watchdog and a hallucination in the form of Elizabeth Dole. You won’t
want to miss what Elmore Leonard called "the funniest novel I’ve
read in fifty years."
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