WHODUNIT: JACK BATTEN
Protected By The Shadows By Helen Tursten Soho, 288 pages, $26.95
Goteborg in Sweden is under siege from violent criminal gangs. Gambling, drug dealing, extortion — the gangs have a grip on everything lucrative and illegal. Detective-Inspector Irene Huss, probably the cop with the most balanced personality in all of policing, takes a leading role in running down the gangs. But suddenly, out of the blue, the fight against the bad guys comes terrifyingly closer to home for Irene. Her beloved husband, a chef named Krister, opens his own restaurant, and one of the gangs immediately makes extortion moves on the new establishment. For the rest of the book, written in Tursten’s familiar straight-ahead style, the ever-resourceful Irene needs to handle two all-consuming jobs: protect her husband and crack down on the gangs.
Munich By Robert Harris Random House, 342 pages, $24.95
Robert Harris’s latest historical thriller deals with the four days in September 1938 before, during and after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s meetings in Munich with Adolf Hitler for negotiations, which, as Chamberlain hoped, would “bring peace in our time.” Depending on his usual impeccable research, Harris presents the contemporary figures who took part in the meetings. Then he throws in two fictional characters, two young civil servants, one German and one English, friends from their college days at Oxford. The two have ideas that may not fit the accepted diplomatic stances of their respective sides. With what result? This is the question that turns Harris’s history of the period into a cracking good yarn.
Two Kinds of Truth By Michael Connelly Little, Brown, 402 pages, $38
Harry Bosch, the central figure in Michael Connelly’s compelling series, has reached his mid-60s and is still going strong in the crime-busting business. He’s been kicked sideways from the LAPD to an advisory job with the San Fernando cops, but he remains resourceful and dedicated. What’s his motivation? Long ago, taking on the example of the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone, he built himself as a man of action, and he remains that man today. In the new book, Bosch handles two tricky cases. One involves a sophisticated and brutal gang of opioid pedlars, and the other is the reworking of one of Bosch’s own 30-year-old murder cases. The action makes for a book as powerful and engrossing as any in Connelly’s nonpareil series.
Insidious Intent By Val McDermid Atlantic, 424 pages, $26
In McDermid’s 10th book featuring Carol Jordan and her elite Yorkshire police team, the cops are as professionally expert as ever and as personally troubled (Carol’s immediate challenge is to stay off the booze.) In their new case, a clever serial murderer is loose, killing women and burning the bodies in cars dumped in remote pieces of wilderness. The sleuthing moves inexorably, but still misses a final solution by a beat or two. Indeed, it looks like it might be permanently stalled. At this point, everyone reading the book (including reviewers) should take note of a plea McDermid makes in a letter at the back of the book. “I’m asking you not to say or write anything that is a spoiler for the ending.” Fair warning.