WHODUNIT: JACK BATTEN
THE PRECIPICE By Paul Doiron Minotaur, 336 pages, $29.99
Paul Doiron is shaping up as the Tony Hillerman of the east. Just as the late Hillerman knew intimately the landscape of the two states he adored, New Mexico and Arizona, so Doiron brings to Maine much affection and understanding. The two writers are likewise similar in presenting central characters who are brave and brainy but all too human and fallible. Hillerman gave us Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, two Navajo cops who grew into men whom readers came to embrace; Doiron seems on the same path with Mike Bowditch, a Maine game warden who may have a little too much grit for his own good.
Bowditch’s latest adventure begins with two young Georgia women walking the Appalachian Trail from south to north, from Georgia’s northwest tip to the top of Maine. It’s when the women pass into the fearsome “Hundred Mile Wilderness” deep in the Maine woods that the two vanish off the map.
Bowditch assumes an essential role in the search for the missing Georgians, and in the course of business he turns up a handful of villains who could have done harm to the women. It seems mildly surprising to the reader, but not to Bowditch, that this gorgeous country could be home to such nasty crews of despoilers of the landscape and bloodthirsty hillbillies with guns.
Doiron takes his time in building the suspense in his narrative about evil deeds in the Maine wilderness, but his storytelling is controlled and always enthralling. Just like Tony Hillerman’s.
THE SLAUGHTER MAN By Tony Parsons Century, 375 pages, $24.99
Tony Parsons specializes in suffering. His murder victims invariably endure horrible agonies before they slip off to death. But his first choice for inspired suffering in The Slaughter Man is the book’s principal sleuth figure, the redoubtable London police detective DC Max Wolfe. Wolfe is working the murder of four members of a family in the city’s wealthy Highgate neighbourhood. Slick detecting ultimately yields the killers, but not before Wolfe experiences a knockout smack from a full champagne bottle, a brutal kick to the ear, a dose of Rohypnol, the binding of his head in duct tape to near suffocation and burial in a coffin from which Wolfe, intrepid fellow, claws himself free.
RUN YOU DOWN By Julia Dahl Minotaur, 304 pages, $29.99
This is Julia Dahl’s second novel featuring Rebekah Roberts, a nervy young reporter on a Manhattan daily. In the first book, Rebekah took up a suspicious death in an ultra-orthodox Jewish community. It was a story that brought Rebekah much emotional damage. That doesn’t stop her in the new book from pursing yet another murky death in yet another ultra-orthodox community. To give the narrative an extra jolt, Dahl introduces a parallel story line about the re-emergence of Rebekah’s mother who deserted her family when Rebekah was a baby. In a book that’s already excitingly messy with drama, it’s no surprise that the two stories collide with one another. The impact is colossal.
THE VERDICT ON EACH MAN DEAD By David Whellams ECW, 384 pages $24.95
David Whellams of Ottawa writes with tongue deep in cheek, producing the kind of clever books you read with a small smile pasted on your face. Even the billing of the new book as “A Peter Cammon Mystery” is a mild joke since Cammon, a retired Scotland Yard whiz, doesn’t take over until half way through the plot. The intricate case he finds on his hands involves Utah, several murders and a Mexican drug baron who has frequently switched his name “from Juan to Pedro to Chico and so on.” Cue the small smile.
Jack Batten writes the Whodunit column every second Sunday.