Crime

Quick Review: THE PROFESSIONALS by Owen Laukkanen (Corvus/Berkley)

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LaukkanenO-S&W1-ProfessionalsUKA fast-paced, engaging debut thriller

Four friends, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive. And then, suddenly, it’s no joke. For two years, the strategy they devise works like a charm – until they kidnap the wrong man.

Now two groups are after them – the law, in the form of veteran state investigator Kirk Stevens and hotshot young FBI agent Carla Windermere, and an organized crime outfit looking for payback. As they crisscross the country in a series of increasingly explosive confrontations, each of them is ultimately forced to recognize the truth: the real professionals, cop or criminal, are those who are willing to sacrifice everything.

This is the first of Laukkanen’s Stevens & Windermere thriller, and it marked the arrival of a great new voice for the genre. The novel is quickly-paced. The characters are interesting and mostly well-developed. It has a few debut niggles, but it’s pretty polished and gripping. I’ll be reading the rest of Laukkanen’s novels, and be keeping an eye open for more in the future. Continue reading →

Review: MEMORY MAN by David Baldacci (Grand Central)

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BaldacciD-AD1-MemoryManUSAn engaging new thriller with an interesting new detective

Amos Decker’s life changed forever — twice.

The first time was on the gridiron. A big, towering athlete, he was the only person from his hometown of Burlington ever to go pro. But his career ended before it had a chance to begin. On his very first play, a violent helmet-to-helmet collision knocked him off the field for good, and left him with an improbable side effect — he can never forget anything. 

The second time was at home nearly two decades later. Now a police detective, Decker returned from a stakeout one evening and entered a nightmare — his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law had been murdered.

His family destroyed, their killer’s identity as mysterious as the motive behind the crime, and unable to forget a single detail from that horrible night, Decker finds his world collapsing around him. He leaves the police force, loses his home, and winds up on the street, taking piecemeal jobs as a private investigator when he can.

But over a year later, a man turns himself in to the police and confesses to the murders. At the same time a horrific event nearly brings Burlington to its knees, and Decker is called back in to help with this investigation. Decker also seizes his chance to learn what really happened to his family that night. To uncover the stunning truth, he must use his remarkable gifts and confront the burdens that go along with them. He must endure the memories he would much rather forget. And he may have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

I have reviewed many of Baldacci’s novels on CR, and loved pretty much all of them. I’ve read all of his novels since The Camel Club, and have also read almost all of his earlier ones. Each new series, each new character has been distinct from previous protagonists. Up until now, though, they have all been very much in the same mould: heroes, strong characters, some might say All-American. In Memory Man, Baldacci has tried something new — and successfully so. This is a very interesting mystery. Continue reading →

Interesting, Different Conventions in Publishing… Synopses

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I’ve been thinking a lot about some various different conventions in book publishing. Partly because I keep moving around, but also because one element of one of my jobs at a literary agency is keeping track of international editions of clients’ novels. Couple these two things with my ‘work’ on this blog, and I spend a lot of time reading publishers’ websites and catalogues. Recently, I’ve spotted a few books published in the UK and North America with quite different synopses (as well as covers), and I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a couple here. The differences aren’t massive by any means, and maybe I only picked up on them because I read so many. The differences between conventions in cover artwork are, however, much greater – I’ll put together another post about this in the future, I think.

The two novels that jumped out at me were Rene Denfeld‘s The Enchanted and Helen Giltrow‘s The Distance. I spotted them both first in Toronto, and thought they both looked really interesting (and, naturally, have bought them). Since then, I’ve seen that the novels are also published in the UK by Orion Books. With different covers and synopses, my interest in reading them only grew. To be clear, I don’t think whoever wrote the back cover text for either of these books’ North American editions did a bad job. I just think the UK synopses are a bit better, and exhibit some different conventions. Both of the novels are among my 2015 Must Reads. Let’s take the books one-by-one… Continue reading →

Excerpt: ELEMENTARY – THE GHOST LINE by Adam Christopher (Titan)

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ChristopherA-Elementary-GhostLineElementary is one of my favourite TV shows at the moment, so I was very interested when I saw that Adam Christopher would be writing some tie-in novels. The first novel is The Ghost Line, out this week. Titan Book were kind enough to send me this excerpt to share. First, though, the synopsis:

A brand-new novel tie-in for the popular Elementary TV series.

A summons to a body found riddled with bullets in a Hell’s Kitchen apartment is the start of a new case for Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson. The victim is a subway train driver with a strange Colombian connection and a mysterious pile of money, but who would want to kill him? The search for the truth will lead the detectives into the hidden underground tunnels of New York City, where more bodies may well await them.

Adam Christopher is the author of a number of other novels, including Empire State, Seven Wonders and Hang Wire (Angry Robot), and The Burning Dark and The Machine Awakes (Tor US/Titan UK).

Onwards with the excerpt…

Continue reading →

Quick Review: THE DEVIL’S DETECTIVE by Simon K. Unsworth (Doubleday/Del Rey UK)

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UnsworthS-DevilsDetectiveUSA gloriously dark and twisted crime story… in hell

Thomas Fool is an Information Man, an investigator tasked with cataloging and filing reports on the endless stream of violence and brutality that flows through Hell. His job holds no reward or satisfaction, because Hell has rules but no justice. Each new crime is stamped “Do Not Investigate” and dutifully filed away in the depths of the Bureaucracy. But when an important political delegation arrives and a human is found murdered in a horrific manner—extravagant even by Hell’s standards—everything changes. The murders escalate, and their severity points to the kind of killer not seen for many generations. Something is challenging the rules and order of Hell, so the Bureaucracy sends Fool to identify and track down the killer…

But how do you investigate murder in a place where death is common currency? Or when your main suspect pool is a legion of demons? With no memory of his past and only an irresistible need for justice, Fool will piece together clues and follow a trail that leads directly into the heart of a dark and chaotic conspiracy.

A revolution is brewing in Hell… and nothing is what it seems.

The Devil’s Detective is Simon Unsworth’s first novel. He’s been writing shorter horror fiction for quite some time, which I have not read. After reading this novel, though, I’ll be sure to check out more of his work. The Devil’s Detective is a masterful blend of horror and crime fiction, set in an evocative, unsettling take on Hell. Continue reading →

Interview with BRUCE McCABE

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McCabeBruce-AuthorPicCropLet’s start with an introduction: Who is Bruce McCabe?

The ‘official version’ is I’ve spent a career researching, writing about, and advising on, human factors in technology innovation and adoption and now I write fiction. The unofficial version is, I’m an incorrigible explorer, and if I don’t spend time meeting people smarter than myself and poking and prodding new ideas and daydreaming about what they might mean, I go nuts!

Your debut novel, Skinjob, will be published in paperback by Transworld in January 2015. How would you introduce the novel to a potential reader? Is it the beginning of a series?

A frantic roller-coaster ride of a techno-thriller, set over just six days. Lots of action and provocative themes. A series? Maybe. My next book follows the fortunes of another protagonist, but I love the characters in Skinjob and if the right ‘what if?’ comes along I will be bringing them back. Continue reading →

Excerpt: SKINJOB by Bruce McCabe

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Last week, Bruce McCabe‘s Skinjob was published in paperback in the UK by Transworld Books. It is published in North America by Dreamcon Publishing. Here’s the synopsis:

A bomb goes off in down town San Francisco. Twelve people are dead. But this is no ordinary target. This target exists on the fault line where sex and money meet.

Daniel Madsen is one of a new breed of federal agents armed with a badge, a gun and the Bureau’s latest piece of technology. He’s a fast operator and his instructions are simple: find the bomber – and before he strikes again.

In order to understand what is at stake, Madsen must plunge into a sleazy, unsettling world where reality and fantasy are indistinguishable, exploitation is business as usual, and the dead hand of corruption reaches all the way to the top. There’s too much money involved for this investigation to stay private…

Check back in half an hour for an interview with Bruce. In the meantime, check out this quick excerpt from the thriller: Continue reading →

Upcoming: New John Sandford Fiction

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Longtime readers of CR will know I’m a huge fan of John Sandford‘s various series – be it the Lucas Davenport/Prey series, the Virgil Flowers spin-off series, or the Kidd & LuEllen series, I’ve loved them all. So, I’m happy to share the information for two upcoming 2015 releases from the author, including the 25th Prey novel:

Sandford-25-GatheringPreyUSGATHERING PREY

They call them Travelers. They move from city to city, panhandling, committing no crimes—they just like to stay on the move. And now somebody is killing them.

Lucas Davenport’s adopted daughter, Letty, is home from college when she gets a phone call from a woman Traveler she’d befriended in San Francisco. The woman thinks somebody’s killing her friends, she’s afraid she knows who it is, and now her male companion has gone missing. She’s hiding out in North Dakota, and she doesn’t know what to do.

Letty tells Lucas she’s going to get her, and, though he suspects Letty’s getting played, he volunteers to go with her. When he hears the woman’s story, though, he begins to think there’s something in it. Little does he know. In the days to come, he will embark upon an odyssey through a subculture unlike any he has ever seen, a trip that will not only put the two of them in danger—but just may change the course of his life.

Gathering Prey is due to be published in the US by Putnam, on April 28th 2015.

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SandfordCook-SM2-OutrageOUTRAGE, w. Michele Cook

Shay Remby and her gang of renegades have struck a blow to the Singular Corporation. When they rescued Shay’s brother, Odin, from a secret Singular lab, they also liberated a girl. Singular has been experimenting on her, trying to implant a U.S. senator’s memories into her brain—with partial success. Fenfang is now a girl who literally knows too much.

Can the knowledge brought by ex-captives Odin and Fenfang help Shay and her friends expose the crimes of this corrupt corporation? Singular has already killed one of Shay’s band to protect their secrets. How many more will die before the truth is exposed?

The second novel in Sandford and Cook’s The Singular Menace YA series, it follows Uncaged (which I still need to read). It’s due to be published in North America by Knopf for Young Readers, on July 14th 2015.

Review: GRAY MOUNTAIN by John Grisham (Doubleday/Hodder)

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Grisham-GrayMountainUSAn important and interesting topic, but lacklustre storytelling

The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer’s career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track — until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building. Samantha, though, is one of the “lucky” associates. She’s offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she’d get her old job back.

In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200, in the heart of Appalachia, a part of the world she has only read about. Mattie Wyatt, lifelong Brady resident and head of the town’s legal aid clinic, is there to teach her how to “help real people with real problems.” For the first time in her career, Samantha prepares a lawsuit, sees the inside of an actual courtroom, gets scolded by a judge, and receives threats from locals who aren’t so thrilled to have a big-city lawyer in town. And she learns that Brady, like most small towns, harbors some big secrets.

Her new job takes Samantha into the murky and dangerous world of coal mining, where laws are often broken, rules are ignored, regulations are flouted, communities are divided, and the land itself is under attack from Big Coal. Violence is always just around the corner, and within weeks Samantha finds herself engulfed in litigation that turns deadly.

I’m a fan of Grisham’s novels — I’ve spent many a pleasant summer or winter binge-reading his novels, and I’ve always been among the eager readers awaiting his latest novel. That’s not to say I love them all; there have been a couple that failed to engage me. The Street Lawyer, for example, which I’ve started about three times, but never finished. A Time To Kill, which was a perfect example of a debut author over-writing and info-dumping their way through an otherwise good story, ruining it in the process (it does not surprise me that it failed to get much traction when first published) — Grisham provided all the details, swamping the story with his desire to include all the legal minutiae. Gray Mountain walks a line somewhere between these two examples. Continue reading →

Quick Review: CROSS MY HEART and HOPE TO DIE by James Patterson (Arrow/Grand Central)

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Catching up with Detective Alex Cross…

Alex Cross’s whole world is crashing down around him.

He has been hunted, stalked like prey, his predator priming himself for the kill.

Cross has devoted his life to protecting others. Now he’s unable to protect even those closest to him.

As a police detective, he has made many enemies, but never like this.

Everything he loves is being taken from him.

Soon he will have nothing and no one left.

These two novels are linked, which is I think the first time Patterson has chosen to make consecutive novels a single story (not including the cross-book storyline featuring the Mastermind from the earlier books, although this is a similar idea, if shorter). Cross My Heart ended on quite the cliffhanger, with Alex Cross distraught and lost, so I was very eager to get my hands on Hope to Die. The 22nd and 23rd installments in the series, it’s a little tricky to figure out anything new to write about the series.

Patterson still has a knack for writing fast-paced, engaging thrillers that have readers gripped from the first page. He still sometimes veers a little too far into the schmaltzy. His villains remain as deliciously evil and colourful as always, complete with hapless henchmen. In Cross My Heart, Cross is investigating a string of murders, but also being stalked and provoked by an elusive other psychopath fixated with him and determined to torment him by getting to his family, which forms the plot for Hope to Die. Given Patterson’s usual style, which always seems to include over-emoting characters, Cross is surprisingly unemotional following the events of the first couple of chapters in the second novel. They unfold quickly, somewhat conveying Cross’s slight disassociate state. The introduction of Ava into the story added a nice new twist on the family dynamic, and her street-learned skills prove invaluable in Hope to Die. Other new characters are welcome additions, too, creating some variety in perspectives.

Both of the novels were quick reads, and I zapped through them. It’s not difficult to see why Patterson is so successful. The novels weren’t perfect — in particular, with Hope to Die, I couldn’t help but think the tornado and psychic could have been dispensed with. Minor quibble, though, really. If you’ve been reading and enjoying the Alex Cross series, then Cross My Heart and Hope to Die should appeal as they very much offer more of the same quality and crime thriller suspense. Solid continuations of the series, I look forward to reading the 23rd.

Published in the UK by Arrow, and in the US by Grand Central Publishing.

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