Review by New York Times Review
There are eerie echoes of Barbara Vine in THE EXECUTOR (Putnam, $25.95), Jesse Kellerman's stunning novel of psychological suspense: the clinical dissection of a mind that refuses to examine itself; the disintegration of moral boundaries when such a mind develops a fixation; the macabre humor of people who think too much; and, most unnerving, a certain playful cruelty about matters of life and death. At first, Kellerman seems to be taking an easy satiric poke at that pathetic specimen of academic life, the perennial student. After six years of graduate study at Harvard, Joseph Geist has yet to produce the dissertation on free will that will earn him his degree in philosophy. His funds have dried up, his girlfriend has tossed him out of her apartment, and all he has to his name are a duffel bag of rumpled clothes and a half-bust of Nietzsche, bought at a flea market in East Berlin. Ejected from the warmth of the academic womb, he answers an ad in The Harvard Crimson for a "conversationalist" and finds himself being paid to chat about philosophy with Alma Spielmann, an elderly Viennese woman parched for intelligent dialogue. Enchanted by his patron's lively mind, Geist accepts her invitation to move into her large Victorian home and, despite the discrepancy in their ages and her frail health (not to mention her addiction to soap operas), believes he has finally found his Platonic soul mate. At this point, it seems relevant to note that "Geist" translates from the German as "mind," while "Alma" is Spanish for "soul." But it also seems appropriate to question Geist's veracity as a narrator. For all his idyllic renderings of the life of the mind he now enjoys with Alma, Geist is too fearful to examine it realistically. And when her grasping nephew puts a bad thought in his head, he hasn't the intellectual fiber to challenge its premise. "Language ought not to be waved around like a loaded gun," Geist declares, pledging his commitment to cool, logical deliberation. But once he embraces that bad thought, he's so lost to logic, so driven by circumstance, you begin to wonder if free will is nothing more than a cosmic joke. Readers unfamiliar with Adelia Aguilar's adventures as "mistress of the art of death" are quickly brought up to speed in A MURDEROUS PROCESSION (Putnam, $25.95), the fourth in a high-spirited series of romantic suspense novels by Ariana Franklin set in 12th-century England. In brief: Adelia was a foundling, raised in Sicily by a Jewish doctor and his Christian wife, also a doctor. She was trained in autopsy at the Salerno School of Medicine, then summoned to England by King Henry II, along with the Arab eunuch who accompanies her everywhere. The mistress of a bishop, she's in constant peril of being burned as a witch for her heathen healing methods. Once these and other particulars of her complicated biography are dispensed with, Adelia is free to take to the road, where excitement and danger live, as personal physician to the king's 10-year-old daughter, Joanna, bound for Sicily to be married to King William II. This arduous journey is made even more perilous by the secret presence of a madman in the royal entourage, bent on revenging himself on Adelia for taking the life of his lover. But even his murderous mischief pales when compared with the barbaric cruelties exacted by the church on heretics and other social misfits, or even with the day-to-day ordeal of life in a dark, superstitious age. Declan Hughes isn't just another gruff voice in the barking crowd of noir crime writers. His characters have depth, his scenes have drama, and his sentences have grace. If only this gifted Irish writer didn't feel compelled to follow the American genre practice of writing for maximum horror, CITY OF LOST GIRLS (Morrow/HarperCollins, $24.99) is burdened with a serial killer who couldn't coax a victim into his car if he had a three-ring circus in the back seat. But the characters who count - a famous Hollywood director who returns home to Dublin to make a movie about its historic red-light district, as well as the women he mistreated and the friends he betrayed - are substantial figures with considerable heart. Ed Loy, the private eye who keeps this series on the up-and-up, is no cliché either. Although he comes with his own sad history and battles the bottle to forget it, Loy has a strong work ethic, doesn't take himself too seriously ("Maybe I am broody. Is that a sin?") and has the wit to appreciate a good comic-book store. FREEZE FRAME (Poisoned Pen, $24.95) finds Peter May's clever sleuth, Enzo Macleod, taking on the fourth of seven cold cases he accepted on a bet with the author of a book about famous unsolved crimes. The formula is a neat one, going back to the golden age of detective fiction, when stout men in club chairs puffed on after-dinner cigars as they pondered brain-teasing puzzles involving timetables and exotic poisons. May treats the conventions with all due respect; but this being the 21st century, he also contrives to have Macleod hop into bed with the lady in the story, the daughter-in-law of a professor of tropical medicine who was murdered 20 years earlier in his island home off the coast of Brittany. Nothing has been moved from his study, which still awaits someone to decipher the cryptic messages the professor left for his son, who died before he could read them. Although May obviously (and justifiably) prides himself on his grasp of the plot mechanics, something must be said for his vivid settings, which remove the story from the library and send it out into the wide, wide world. The narrator of Jesse Kellerman's latest suspense novel is paid to chat with an eccentric old woman.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 18, 2010]
Review by Booklist Review
Prolific May's fourth book in the Enzo Files series (Blacklight Blue, 2008) finds the forensic scientist on one of the small Channel Islands, which are more like his home country of Scotland than his current home in Southern France. Enzo uses a deft combination of cutting-edge forsenic technology, his own insight, and traditional detecting to solve his latest cold case, which involves an elderly man dying of cancer, shot in his own study, whose will stipulates that nothing in the study be touched until his son arrives home to receive a secret message. But the son dies soon after the father, and when Enzo arrives, the room has sat virtually untouched for nearly 20 years. Enzo is a fascinating character in his own right, and his complicated personal life only adds to the appeal. Readers new to the series may not be entirely sure why Enzo is dedicated to solving a series of cold cases, but since the majority of the book and the entirety of the mystery stands alone, anyone who enjoys forensic mysteries should be able to leap right in.--Moyer, Jessica Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
May's excellent fourth Enzo McLeod mystery (after 2008's Blacklight Blue) takes the Scottish forensics wizard, who impulsively bet his daughter's boyfriend he could solve seven cold cases, to the Ile de Groix off the coast of Brittany, where he may finally meet his Waterloo. The quaint island is the site of the notorious 1990 slaying of tropical disease specialist and entomologist Adam Killian in his study. For two decades the crime scene-and the cryptic hints Killian supposedly left to identify his killer-have remained as undisturbed as an insect frozen in amber. Can Macleod, distracted by personal dramas that involve his sometime lover, Charlotte, and a menacing stalker, decipher the message-and stay in one piece? With its intricate plot, compelling characters, and bombshell denouement, this unsettling Enzo Files installment is a must-read. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Eighteen year ago, a man ordered his daughter-in-law to preserve his study as he had left clues to help his son to identify his killer. An hour later, the man is shot to death, and his son dies shortly thereafter. The police identify a local suspect but lose the case in court. Having boasted that he could solve seven cold cases written up in a best-selling book, forensic specialist Enzo Macleod travels to a small island off the Brittany coast to crack this fourth crime (after the cases solved in Extraordinary People, The Critic, and Blacklight Blue). VERDICT The author of the much acclaimed "China Thrillers" surpasses himself here in misdirection, placing clues in plain sight and leaving the reader anticipating the fifth entry in this outstanding series. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 11/1/09; large print: ISBN 978-1-59058-695-2.] (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
