Review by New York Times Review
So these two guys walk into a bar . . . and find themselves in George Pelecanos's great shaggy dog Story, WHAT IT WAS (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown, $35; paper, $9.99). Derek Strange, the African-American private eye from one series of Pelecanos novels, and his drinking buddy Nick Stefanos, the featured character in yet another Pelecanos series, get to talking about the summer of 1972, which burned itself into the collective memory of their Washington neighborhood as the summer when Robert Lee Jones (known on the street as Red Fury, after the car he bought for his girlfriend) went on a legendary killing spree. Punching in some appropriate jukebox tunes, Strange proceeds to spin this breathless yarn, which Pelecanos says he wrote "in a fever" last summer. When the story opens, 26-year-old Strange is fresh off the police force, establishing himself as a newly minted P.I. (Cue "Mr. Big Stuff.") And already he realizes that he's "in the midst of something, a music, dress, and cultural revolution that was happening with his people, in his time." All he has to do is survive the casual violence of his world and live down the fashion fads of stacked shoes, bell-bottom pants and loud-print rayon shirts. Red Jones ("tall and proud, tight bells, tall stacks, big old Afro") begins his rampage by shooting a pathetic junkie named Bobby Odum and walking off with a pretty ring and two tickets to a Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway concert - which he immediately gives to Coco Watkins, the long, tall, "finely postured" girlfriend who drives that red Fury. The case officially belongs to Strange's old police partner, Frank Vaughn (wears Robert Hall suits, drives a Dodge Monaco, plays Sinatra; must be white). But Strange becomes a player when Maybelline Walker drives up to his office in a Warwick-blue Firebird convertible and hires him to retrieve that pretty ring. Pelecanos is crazy for details, so all these particulars - the colorful names, the flashy clothes, the sexy cars and soulful music - add to the big picture he's continually drawing of crucial moments in America's changing history, as viewed from the streets. Red Jones succeeds dramatically in his aspiration to become a legend in his own time, mowing down a high percentage of the criminal populace and "leaving behind a trail of fire." As for Derek Strange, at this point in his young life his ride is only a "triple-black" 1970 Monte Carlo, but he's "working his way up to a Cadillac." You can't help wondering if Jan Costin Wagner's psychological suspense novel, silence (Pegasus Crime, $25), might have been even creepier in the original German. Disturbing enough in Anthea Bell's suggestive translation, the story, set in Finland (where the author, a former journalist, has a home), opens in the summer of 1974. That's when a cunning pedophile invites an impressionable young man named Timo to participate in a stalking that ends in the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl they find riding her bicycle along a country road. After looking on in horror, Timo packs up and runs off. Thirty-three years later, we find him in Helsinki, a successful real estate agent with a wife and two children and a weekend house on a lake. But when another girl riding a bicycle goes missing from the same spot, Timo's cozy life starts to come apart. The narrative is constructed along the lines of a roman policier and features a strong working relationship between the retired detective who failed to solve the original case and a younger colleague, Kimmo Joentaa. But the book's dark matter has more to do with the obsessive thoughts of troubled minds. Just as Kimmo can't stop brooding over the death of his wife, Timo can't escape the alter ego he has suppressed for more than three decades. And that way, as we know, lies madness. John Burdett's hallucinatory novels set in Thailand tend to open on surpassingly gruesome crime scenes. True to form, VULTURE PEAK (Knopf, $25.95) lures us to an exclusive neighborhood in Phuket and treats us to the sight of three corpses freshly harvested of all their marketable body parts. Someone is obviously doing a roaring trade in human organs, and it falls to Burdett's hippie Buddhist cop, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, to put an end to it. By delivering 1,764 eyeballs to Dubai (where the sun is brutal on corneas), Sonchai meets the masterminds of this operation, twin sisters who seem to be on loan from a James Bond movie. Though not for the faint of heart, the "surreal, exotic, rich" - and quite crazy - world Sonchai inhabits is a classic head trip. Ray Lovell, the private investigator who narrates Stef Penney's woolly novel, THE INVISIBLE ONES (Putnam, $25.95), isn't much of a detective, and his habit of spying on his estranged wife is nasty. But his Gypsy origins qualify him to look into the whereabouts of Rose Wood, a Gypsy girl who married into the secretive Janko clan and has been missing for seven years. Ray can't break through the hostility of the inscrutable Jankos, and if JJ, a 14-year-old member of the clan, didn't help with the narrative chores, we'd still be in the dark about Rose, who is said to have deserted her husband after delivering a child with a genetic disorder. Penney fleshes out her story with a tentative romance and a near-death experience for Ray, a trip to Lourdes for the Janko family and a heap of Gypsy lore for the rest of us. But the best reason to keep reading is JJ, whose engaging voice cuts right through the novel's vagaries. George Pelecanos is crazy for details: colorful names, flashy clothes, sexy cars and soulful music.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 5, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
Can a dedicated detective ever really quit working? Finnish detective Ketola had every intention of enjoying a quiet retirement, until the discovery of a crime-scene model in the dusty archives prompts him to recall an unsolved case from his early years on the force. A few weeks later, a young girl goes missing from the same place depicted in the model and in the same way as the earlier victim. Detective Kimmo (Ice Moon, 2007) enlists the help of Ketola, although, as usual, Ketola investigates in his own unique style. Throughout the main story, Wagner weaves in the account of a man who witnessed but managed to bury his involvement in the original crime. The combination of investigator and criminal viewpoints is reminiscent of Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer stories, while the depressed detectives Ketola and Kimmo, widowed and divorced, respectively, will remind Scandinavian crime fans of Mankell's Kurt Wallander and Indridason's Erlendur.--Moyer, Jessica Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Heavy on Nordic melancholy, Wagner's slow-burning second novel featuring Finnish detective Kimmo Joentaa (after 2007's Ice Moon) focuses on a possible link between a cold case and a present-day crime. In 1974, the body of 13-year-old Pia Lehtinen, who disappeared while riding her bike in Turku, was found after several months in a lake. Now another girl, 14-year-old Sinikka Vehkasalo, has gone missing, her bike and sports bag found near a cross erected in Pia's memory. Joentaa and his team soon exhaust their scant leads and turn, unofficially, for advice to a recently retired police colleague, who's convinced it's the work of the same killer. Meanwhile, scenes from the life of Helsinki estate agent Timo Korvensuo, whose connection to Pia's death-and potentially Sinikka's vanishing-unspools at a leisurely pace. An unexpected conclusion helps compensate for the sometimes saggy plot, while Wagner's take on grief seen through the dual prisms of time and circumstance will resonate with many readers. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
On the day of his retirement, Finnish homicide detective Antsi Ketola and his colleague Kimmo Joentaa make a trip to the police archives to uncover evidence gathered in the unsolved murder of a young girl in 1974. The girl's bicycle was found abandoned in a field, and her grieving mother erected a small white cross on the spot. Now 33 years later, another young girl has gone missing, her bicycle placed deliberately by the white cross. The murderer has returned, and the country is on edge-especially the troubled accomplice to the crime who has since tried to live a normal family life. As in his previous thriller, Ice Moon, Wagner is a skilled delineator of loss, solitude, and quiet anguish. His detectives are enveloped in their own complex personal issues that are reinforced by the frightening turn of events that now grip two families. Verdict With a real twist for a shock ending, this bleak story is recommended for those readers with a stomach for the melancholy realization that justice, sometimes, can only be partially served.-Sally Harrison, Ocean Cty. Lib., Waretown, NJ (c) Copyright 2011. 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 Kirkus Book Review
Ice Moon (2007), detective Kimmo Joentaa, of the Turko CID, grapples with a second, equally chilling case. It's been 33 years since Pia Lehtinen was raped and murdered. Her killer was never found--only her bicycle, abandoned at the side of a cycle path, and her corpse, recovered weeks later from a nearby lake. Now, Sinikka Vehkasalo, another teenager, has disappeared, her bicycle found in the place of the memorial marking the earlier unsolved crime. Is this new crime the work of a copycat, or has the original killer been driven to repeat his crime a generation later? The case falls to phlegmatic, reflective Joentaa, but he'd rather share it with Antsi Ketola, whose retirement has removed from the force its last veteran with firsthand knowledge of the Lehtinen case. Pia's killer, quickly revealed as now-elderly caretaker Olavi Prssinen, remains a minor figure; instead, the story focuses on his accomplice, real-estate agent Timo Korvensuo, bringing you so close to this sorry specimen that you feel trapped inside his head. As Joentaa and Ketola do their best to deal with Sinikka's troubled parents and unearth traces of a third similar disappearance a mere 24 years back, Wagner slowly brings Timo's combination of guilt, denial, passivity and enjoyment of his perfectly normal family to a boil. What is it about those Scandinavians? Though Wagner's cops get along equably enough, there's precious little oxygen between the other characters, who seem to be carrying all the torment his striking debut reserved for the hero.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
