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A Song For the Dark Times by Ian Rankin; Orion, 327 pages, $34.99
John Rebus is in gloomy retirement from the Edinburgh coppers, frozen out by his former colleagues when he offers inside dope on a hot new murder case. Nevertheless, Rebus slides sideways into a central role in the densely populated new Ian Rankin novel. The book offers two murders in two vastly separate geographic locations. The sleuthing time is parceled out to both Rebus and the ever sharp and engaging DI Siobhan Clarke. It’s all tricky Rankin territory, totally absorbing with the bonus that we get to empathize with the aging Rebus, diminished in physical powers but holding steady in crime ratiocination.
The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly; Little Brown, 424 pages, $37
All Michael Connelly novels featuring the
Los Angeles criminal lawyer Mickey Haller guarantee smart courtroom action, but the new one presents the most brilliantly realized incourt drama of the entire series. A motivating difference is that the defendant in the murder case, Haller’s client, is himself. He’s accused of killing a troublesome client, and if he fumbles his defence, Haller will never see daylight again. Connelly packs the story with the minutiae of courtroom tactics: choosing a jury, grilling prosecution witnesses, establishing a defence. He turns all of it into a succession of thrilling intellectual adventures. And in his familiar pulling-the-rug-from-under-the-reader fashion, he winds up with a wildly imaginative legal denouement.
The Dogs of Winter by Ann Lambert; Second Story, 336 pages, $19.95
It’s a bitterly frigid Montreal winter (is there any other kind?), and someone is killing homeless Aboriginal women. Plenty of other crimes poke into the plot, but it’s the offences against the most vulnerable victims that primarily call for the alert work of Detective Inspector Romeo Leduc, the most humane cop in all of Montreal. He draws assistance of an unorthodox but brainy sort from the woman he’s romancing, Marie Russell, who lectures in the history of Wales at Dawson College. Out of the ordinary? Almost everything skews that way in this inventively plotted novel.
Still Life by Val McDermid; Atlantic Monthly, 436 pages, $26
In the Acknowledgments to veteran crime novelist Val McDermid’s 40th book, the sixth featuring DCI Karen Pirie of Police Scotland’s Historic Cases Unit, McDermid says she wrote most of the book during the early weeks of 2020’s international lockdown. That’s 436 pages of brutally complex sleuthing on two baffling murder cases. How did McDermid nail all of this on paper in such a short time? Mostly because she takes a rough and ready approach to writing,. Pirie finds herself with two unconnected murder victims, one drowned in the Firth of Forth, the other a skeleton in a suburban camper. Once launched, she never stops barrelling through the ever gripping narratives until she produces solutions. The correct ones, of course.