crime & thrillers
DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA
by Walter Mosley (Orion, $33) Best known as the author of the Easy Rawlins series — Bill Clinton’s a big fan — Mosley is a writer who goes where he wants: erotica, politics, YA, science fiction. He started writing aged 34, after the Irish writer Edna O’Brien, told him — “You’re black, Jewish, with a poor upbringing; there are riches therein”. She was right and this is an ambitious, if sometimes confusing, stew of race, corruption, class and redemption. Joe Oliver’s an NYPD investigator with a wandering eye who is framed and thrown in prison. A decade later he learns the truth around his framing. Alongside this Oliver, now a PI, takes on a case of a journalist accused of killing two cops. Heist man turned watchmaker Melquarth is on hand to help as the pair take the law into their own hands. The corrupt bankers, cops and politicians Oliver is up against could be pulled from today’s headlines. This might not be Mosley’s most accessible thriller but it’s a timely, angry tale from one of the finest crime writers working.
THE HIDDEN ROOM
by Stella Duffy (Little, Brown Book Group, $32) Duffy’s first crime novel in 12 years and it’s a good one. But the joys of this lie less in the thrills and more in its vivid portrayal of domestic life. Laurie and Martha own a sprawling house in the Lincolnshire countryside and from the outside, live an idyllic middle-class life. Laurie’s an architect who is finally gaining success and recognition; Martha takes care of the kids, ferrying them round to swimming practice and dance rehearsals. Yet the family has secrets — Laurie even has a secret room in the house. Soon the eldest — troubled 17-year-old Hope — becomes an unwitting player in an emotional and mental power play that threatens to tear the family apart as Laurie’s unconventional upbringing in a North American cult comes back to haunt her. A smart psychological thriller, Let’s hope we don’t have to wait a decade for the next.
PANIC ROOM
by Robert Goddard (Bantam Press, $32) Another thriller about a hidden room. “More twists than a box of macaroni,” said Stephen King about Cornwall-based writer Goddard’s work. Panic Room — set in a gorgeous house on the Cornish coast — with excursions to London and Zurich — is no exception. Ominously it starts at chapter 10 and counts down to zero. Don Challenor is a real estate agent; down on his luck, he takes a job offered by his lawyer ex-wife to value the empty mansion of a client who’s the ex-wife of a big pharma entrepreneur. When he gets there, he discovers a mysterious young woman acting as a house-sitter. Together they discover the house has a panic room, which can’t be opened. Is something — or someone — inside and why? It’s one of those books that’s difficult to review without revealing too much. A diverting read, although, going back to King’s analogy, at times the macaroni does feel a bit overcooked.
LIAR’S CANDLE
by August Thomas (Simon and Schuster, $30) It’s July 4 and a massive bomb goes off at a US embassy party in Turkey; the tragedy gets Liar’s Candle off to a cracking start. This promising debut novel from young writer August Thomas (fluent in Turkish, having travelled and studied there as a Fulbright Scholar) has a strong sense of place; clearly Thomas knows her Turkey, its history and its troubled relationship with the US. As one character comments “loving Turkey is leaving your heart on the railroad tracks. Sooner or later, it will get crushed”. The hero here isn’t a martial arts expert or skilled CIA operative but the sweet-faced Penny Kessler, a young US embassy intern in Ankara. What follows is a tightly plotted spy novel that revels in the CIA’s internal conflicts and political prevarications while managing to slip in a helicopter chase and a rather unlikely escape from the Turkish presidential palace.