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MURDER ON THE RED RIVER By Marcie R. Rendon Cinco Puntos Press, 204 pages, $15.95
The author, Marcie R. Rendon, is a grandmother and a member of the White Earth Anishinabe Nation. It’s a combination that explains why, in her laconic writing style, Rendon gives every impression of getting this novel about the hard life of a 19-year-old indigenous woman in the American Midwest just right.
Cash, the young woman of the piece, lives alone in Fargo, N.D. She works on farms just outside the city, chain smokes Marlboros, knocks back cans of Bud, endures racial insults and occasionally lends a sleuthing hand to the local sheriff, who happens to be her only friend.
When an indigenous man is stabbed to death, Cash pitches in on the investigation, mostly because the dead man left behind a wife and seven kids. Cash, raised in foster homes, can relate to the fate of those kids. Though the sleuthing is rudimentary, that’s no detraction, since the book’s main appeal lies in the process of the remarkable Cash’s coming-of-age story.
EARTHLY REMAINS By Donna Leon Atlantic Monthly, 320 pages, $25
Commissario Guido Brunetti’s blood pressure is soaring, 180 over 110. On doctor’s orders, Brunetti takes a break from his duties with the Venice cops, settling into a friend’s villa on an island in the Venetian Lagoon for a couple of weeks of exercise (mostly rowing) and reading (mostly Pliny). But when an elderly man Brunetti befriends on the island seems to have vanished, Brunetti finds himself back in the investigative business.
While the particulars of the case remain a mystery to the very end, the new book takes on, in general, an issue that has turned up frequently in recent Brunetti books, namely the horrific environmental damage that modern commerce is inflicting on Venice’s increasingly diminished beauty. Brunetti is, as always, dogged, sly and successful in his investigations, though, at the book’s conclusion, readers are left in the dark about one question: has Brunetti’s blood pressure dropped to healthier numbers?
BAD SEEDS By Jassy Mackenzie Soho, 368 pages, $31.95
On the surface, based solely on a handful of her more violent encounters — once, for example, she shot dead the man who killed her father — Jade de Jong might seem a totally tough character. But that’s not the whole story.
Jade works as a private investigator in Johannesburg, and Bad Seeds is Jassy Mackenzie’s fifth book featuring Jade’s adventures. In this one, she’s hired to track down the nefarious character who is attempting to sabotage South Africa’s nuclear power industry. As in past books, Jade throws herself wholeheartedly into the dangers involved in the assignment, and while there’s nothing wishy washy about the woman, she comes across as somewhat reticent, as if she’d prefer to stay home with a good book rather than clear the world of bad guys.
Predictably, this makes Jade seem all the more beguiling.
THE BOOKS OF MIRRORS By E. O. Chirovici Atria, 288 pages, $35
The retired police detective who ultimately solves the tangled murder case in this first novel suffers from Alzheimer’s. The disease is in its early stages, but still, a sleuth with Alzheimer’s? It’s questionable. No matter, in a book with a narrative that seems calculated to keep the reader permanently off balance, the dementia-afflicted detective comes across as a not unusual character.
The story, set in and around New York City, is told in three long sections by, in order, a book agent, a former newspaper reporter and the retired detective. What they deal with is the murder in the winter of 1987 of a Princeton psychology professor whose books popularizing his academic specialty are hot-selling properties.
As the tale moves into the present day, plenty of shady characters turn up as highly possible suspects in the killing — so many that everybody, readers included, feels baffled until the one guy with the potentially damaged mental capacity fingers the guilty party.