WHODUNIT: JACK BATTEN
Sleep No More, by P.D. James. Knopf, 178 pages, $27.95.
A pleasant surprise in this collection of six stories from the late P.D. James (she died in 2014) comes with the number of times children appear in the narratives as prominent figures.
We think of the late James as strictly a dealer in grown-up characters in her novels, but these stories are different. In a delicious Christmas tale titled “Yoyo,” the murder plot is narrated to excellent effect by a 14-year-old boy. In another Christmas story, it’s a boy aged 16 who provides the voice; he is so much taken with the experience that he grows up to become a writer of crime novels.
But the most striking appearance by a child occurs in a chilling chronicle featuring a girl whose saga begins when she is four.
13 Claws, by Mesdames of Mayhem. Carrick, 250 pages, $16.
The gimmick in the third annual collection of crime stories from this group of Canadian women writers is that an animal plays a role in each tale. Inevitably we get plenty of cats and dogs in the stories, but a pig turns up, many snakes in more than one story and, stretching the definition of “animal,” a dragon in another. In one especially clever story by Catherine Dunphy, we even get a plot built around boxes of animal crackers.
But just because the contributors write out of an affection for animals doesn’t mean readers need similar feelings to appreciate the stories. There’s enough suspense and intellectual fascination to satisfy even the most ferociously cynophobic reader.
Give Me The Child, by Mel McGrath. HQ, 330 pages, $21.99.
It initially looks as if the story in this cunningly conceived novel is going to deal with a bizarre challenge to a marriage’s stability. But it develops into more than that. Caitlin is the wife, a psychologist who specializes in child personality disorders; Tom is the husband, a computer-game designer who’s mostly a stay-at-home dad.
The couple have an 11-year-old daughter and, as Caitlin and the readers learn in the opening chapter, Tom has also fathered a slightly younger daughter by a woman who has just been murdered. This girl moves in with Tom and Caitlin, and massive trouble ensues, reaching into territory way beyond the obvious pressure the living arrangement puts on the marriage.
Death by His Grace, by Kwei Quartey. Soho, 272 pages, $28.95.
Darko Dawson has a head start over other homicide investigators. Darko is the chief inspector of the Ghanaian Federal Police in Kwei Quartey’s vastly engaging series and it happens that, along with his conventional forensic gifts, Darko can detect when a witness is lying to him by a fine vibration that is in his own left palm.
This brand of synesthesia comes in handy in solving the particularly vicious murder of a beautiful Accra housewife.
It’s a tricky case in which a half-dozen legitimate suspects emerge from Darko’s sleuthing.
“Death By His Grace” offers an education in Ghana customs peculiar to that endlessly intriguing country.