crime mystery

Hangman

annette — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Hangman, the nineteenth entry in Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series, has a double mystery. Who killed young party-hearty nurse Adrianna Blanc, found hanging at a construction site? And what happened to Theresa McLaughlin, an old acquaintance of Decker, who has disappeared after a tense confrontation with her hit man husband? The former case is an official LAPD matter, which means Decker gets a helping hand from fellow cops Sergeant Marge Dunn and Detective Scott Oliver. The investigation into Terry McLaughlin's whereabouts, however, is more of a personal matter, especially since her fifteen-year-old son Gabe is now staying with the Lieutenant and his wife.

The details of the police work seem very authentic. The focus is on following up on realistic leads rather than on the heroics of the lawmen and women. We get a good picture of how cops proceed in a murder case and the toll it takes on the police and their families, as well as a glimpse at the reactions of the victim's friends and relatives.

While the crime investigation was intriguing, the most interesting sections are those concerning Gabe and his struggle to adapt to his new parent-less state. (His father makes contact on several occasions but decides his son will be better off with the Deckers.) It's amusing to see how Gabe, who went to a Catholic school in New York, reacts when he is suddenly thrust among the Orthodox Jewish Decker clan and begins attending a religious school with seventeen-year-old Hannah Decker. The Deckers must also adjust to having this young musical prodigy in the house.

Hangman is an engaging mystery that humanizes its police protagonist and avoids the “supercop” clichés we've seen too many times. Both fans of the series and new readers will find it hard to put down.

Written by: Karen Duda, January 7th 2011

Law of Attraction

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Allison Leotta

Touchstone Books

As far as my taste in reading material goes, I tend to avoid genre books, particularly cookie cutter thrillers and mysteries as many most often lack originality, societal observation, and genuine writing skill. Alison Leotta’s novel Law of Attraction, however, manages to be the exception to the rule, creating a mystery that adheres to the genre standards but also manages to transcend them through tackling the heavy hitting topics of domestic abuse and power struggles within heterosexual relationships.

The novel’s protagonist Anna is an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Washington DC; many of the cases that come across her desk are domestic violence cases in which she observes women suffering through the cycle of abuse at the hands of their husbands and boyfriends. Anna seems to identify readily with the women she helps, and through a series of flashbacks it is slowly revealed that Anna’s own mother was a victim of domestic violence.

Among her cases is Laprea, a woman who seeks legal help to escape abuse at the hands of her boyfriend D’marco, only to continually drop the charges and let him into her life. The day after Valentine’s Day, a bloody Laprea enters Anna office seeking to press charges, sure that this time she is done with D’marco. At the same time, Anna also reconnects with Nick, a former law school classmate who has long been holding a torch for Anna. Sparks fly between the two until it is revealed that Nick is D’marco’s lawyer. Things get messy when Anna begins an impassioned relationship with Nick. While their relationship initially seems to be an idyllic one, Nick is quickly shown to be a man of questionable character when he cajoles Laprea to change her testimony and claim D’marco’s innocence. Things take a turn for the worse when shortly after Nick’s release Laprea’s bloody body is found in a trash bag.

While Law of Attraction has all the ingredients of a typical genre thriller, it somewhat transcends the genre. Leotta’s obvious writing skill is apparent and the characters and scenes are more richly developed than is commonly seen in other thrillers. Many of the legal details and scenarios throughout the course of the book ring true, which can be credited to Leotta’s employment as a federal sex crimes prosecutor. The novel’s exploration of domestic violence and the psychological implications of it are also handled well by Leotta. Much like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, this subject matter elevates the novel as it provides valid societal observation and insight, often into the inequalities that frequently exist in heterosexual relationships.

While Law of Attraction may be more a fun thriller than a substantial work of literary merit, it is nonetheless a joy to read. Those readers who often pass over the thriller genre may find Law of Attraction to be more cerebrally stimulating.

Written by: Adrienne Urbanski, October 12th 2010

The Red Riding Trilogy

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Julian Jarrold, James Marsh, Anand Tucker

Channel Four Film

Movies about rape, murder, and child abuse should not be photographed this beautifully. Channel Four Film’s Red Riding Trilogy, shown as a miniseries in the UK but as three movies in the U.S., is one larger story connected by characters, place and the unrepentant horror of Yorkshire, in the northern England. In the north, as the characters say, they do what they want.

The three films are set in three years, 1974, 1980, and 1983, respectively. The first, 1974, directed by Julian Jarrold, focuses on Andrew Garfield’s Eddie Dunford, the new crime reporter for the Yorkshire Post, and his investigation into the disappearance of three young girls, the most recent found with wings sewn into her back. The second, 1980, directed by James Marsh, focuses on Paddy Considine’s Peter Hunter, a Manchester detective brought to Yorkshire to review the police’s handling of the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer. The third, 1983, directed by Anand Tucker, has two focuses: the first is on David Morrisey’s Maurice Jacbson, a corrupt detective having second thoughts, and the second is Mark Addy’s Eddie Pigford, a local boy turned lawyer who returns home to close his mother’s affairs and gets tangled up in the crimes, and becomes an unlikely hero. Characters appear and reappear in each story, changing in significance depending on who is seeing them.

The overarching mystery of the films is intriguing, if not original. Much of the joy from watching them comes from witnessing the characters move the pieces into place. As I watched 1983, I gasped out loud at certain parts. Waiting between the movies was legitimately frustrating, as I wanted to know what would happen almost more than I could stand, even though I knew it couldn’t be good. However, 1980 felt a bit disconnected from the other two. The timeline, fractured by the style of the movie, made some parts of all three hard to follow, but 1980 was all over the place. Ultimately, the story carried beyond the confusion.

The direction is amazing. All three parts are incredibly vivid, with powerful, dreamlike scenes haunting me well after the credits. All three employ dreamlike touches, with slow motion, flashbacks, time skips, and nontraditional camera angles. The movies looked like 1970s horror movies, and this gave the whole proceedings an eerie undertone. 1974, in particular, is gorgeous, and that beauty is used in such wonderfully unsettling ways. 1980 is a bit more straightforward, to mirror Peter’s traditional views. 1983, though, loses a bit of its power by having two main characters, diluting the style choices to very different men.

The entire cast is incredible. The standout is Andrew Garfield, who carries 1974 with ease, giving Eddie the believability of a cocky young investigative reporter and runs the gamut of emotions, making his ending both shocking and inevitable. Paddy Considine carries the conflicted nature of 1980’s Peter Hunter like a second skin-does actor carry sorrow better? Mark Addy is a pleasant addition to 1983, but isn’t around enough to make a big impact. David Morrisey’s Maurice Jobson has the strength to hold his character’s honor while doing terrible things, and still make you pity him. There were few female characters, but Rebecca Hall, as the mother of one of the lost girls in 1974, makes a strong impression. Secondary characters, including Sean Bean, Sean Harris, Richard Sheehan, and Daniel Mays, are wonderful. No one fits a false note.

If you like thrillers, horror movies, or mysteries, you aren’t going to do any better than the Red Riding Trilogy.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, June 6th 2010

A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Paul Theroux

Harcourt

Here’s the thing about reading a book that’s set in the place you live: it obliges you to scrutinize the setting, the authenticity of the dialogue, and the accuracy of the story in a way you may not have done otherwise. This effect becomes magnified when the place in which you live is not the place you are from, and when your own situated existence in that un-rooted place resembles that of the author’s. Aside from one’s desire for realism and reflexivity in the story, the reading provides a way of sorting out or reinforcing one’s own position as possessing superior knowledge of, having become better acclimated to, or garnering more acceptance as a foreigner in that place. It is for these reasons that I urge you to take some aspect of my repugnance toward A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta with a grain of noon.

Paul Theroux’s seemingly self-aware writing of this noir-esque novel is navel gazing, thinly disguised. The narrator, Jerry Delfont, is loosely based on the author himself: a travel writer who has wound up in Calcutta with an acute case of writer’s block, or the double entrendred “dead hand.” Delfont receives a handwritten request from a wealthy American expat, the businesswoman cum philanthropist Merrill Unger, who is in need of his assistance to clear up a delicate matter involving her son’s friend (implied to be the son’s lover), Rajat, and the body of a dead boy. More mysterious than the mystery itself is the untidy explanation as to why exactly Mrs. Unger would call upon a travel writer to do a detective’s job, but this is giving too much inquiry to something so banal. There are far better things to take issue with here.

I don’t know Theroux’s history with the City of Joy, but he got several elements plainly wrong, like the timing of Durga Puja and monsoon, the turns of phrase in Banglafied English, and the ins-and-outs of Shakta philosophy, mythology, and tantric practice. Since it is pretty standard for Western authors to have a baseless preoccupation with the Oriental exotic, and so I was expecting these kinds of errors from the jump, even this wasn’t my primary source of disappointment. That came from the wretched writing (which becomes all the more wretched with Theroux’s attempts at the erotic) and the utterly predictable plot, whose saving grace could have been its setting, were it not for the obvious artifice of its description, its appearance a kitschy vehicle for an otherwise bland story.

A Dead Hand seems to be an exercise in giving mention to the things that amuse and repulse the handful of tourists who make their way to Calcutta, and from the looks of it, Theroux is quite taken with himself for producing such a book. (There is even a moment in the narrative where Delfont has a drink with the actual Theroux in what superficially comes across as self-deprecation, but is tinged with egoistic megalomania.) Unfortunately, he might be the only one so taken.

Written by: Mandy Van Deven, February 26th 2010

Red Rover

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Nik Houser

As Red Rover opens, a faithful dog and a clever cat are surveying an empty playground’s scents and sights. There has been a kidnapping in the small Massachusetts town of Hope Falls. Baby Adam has been stolen away, apparently by some animal. Who is better suited to solve this crime and return Baby Adam to his rightful place than Hope Falls’ animal residents?

Mr. Caraway’s helper dog Goldie, a black Labrador retriever named by his blind master, may have once been a stray. He’s missing all memories other than his painfully present nightmares. Medusa is the hoity-toity Himalayan cat to whom Countess Lenotchka’s entire estate was willed, as well as a member of the oppressive Purity Association’s board of directors, sworn enemy to all pets without a pedigree. Despite her sarcastic commentary, Medusa proves that even cats have hearts when the unlikely pair join forces to find Baby Adam.

What starts with a temporary alliance to put a crime to rights becomes an Odyssey through all the frightening unknowns Hope Falls has to offer: bloodthirsty birds of prey; the cruel head of Animal Control, Edgar Fergut, and his pal Gill Grimes from the dump, the Lost Hills Animal Sanctuary said to have been a site for genetic experimentation years ago, and many more sinister obstacles. Goldie and Medusa track down and interrogate every animal whose scent could be found at the crime scene, before being forced to seek answers up in the Lost Hills, out at the strangely quiet Animal Control facility, even deep in the woods from the Oracle.

The novel’s main female character, Medusa, is grossly outnumbered by male characters, but manages to remain edgy and mean even as she primps and preens. Never one to make a choice to please anyone but herself, the cat is even labeled a bitch (one of this reviewer’s least favorite words for females who refuse to please) by her male companion at one point. Depending on your perspective, the character of Medusa is a delightfully strong, stubborn female, or a tired silhouette of the anger that can arise from a lifetime of being omitted and objectified.

No matter your particular brand of feminism, Houser’s inventiveness and sense of timing will keep you laughing even as you shake in your boots. Nik Houser’s fiction has been featured in numerous journals and even the anthology Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: 20th Annual Collection. Meet good dogs and bad dogs in this hackles-raising suspense mystery from a rising master of horror, sure to make animal enthusiasts and dog catchers alike sit and stay.

Written by: Sen Haines, January 6th 2010