CLASSIC CRIME
BEST known for Jurassic Park, ER and the classic science fiction novel The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton made his name in the 1960s with a series of thriller mysteries written under the pen name John Lange.
Grave Descend, his tenth novel, introduces McGregor, a deep-sea diver who makes a precarious living from salvage work off the Jamaican coast. His latest job, better paid than most, is to recover valuables from a sunken luxury yacht. The problem, as he soon finds out, is that the ship in question is not at the bottom of the ocean but moored safely in harbour.
Her demise has been accountably delayed, but not for long. When the ship does go down and McGregor starts to earn his money, he knows he is being set up as the fall guy in a scam. Can he resist? Of course not. McGregor is a tough guy who follows through on everything he does.
As rival gangs move in for the kill, the story takes off at a tremendous pace with deceit and double-dealing at every turn. Be ready to read this helter- skelter adventure at a single sitting. But allow time for the heartbeat to return to normal. BETTER late than never. A recent batch of reprints has introduced me to Charlaine Harris, a crime writer of rare talent who weaves her plots into a social fabric that is as convincing as it is intriguing.
The setting for Three Bedrooms, One Corpse is small-town America where the delightfully named Aurora Teagarden is helping out at the family real estate business. The job of showing a property takes a turn for the worse when the master bedroom reveals a dead woman — a rival estate agent who has died in sexually compromising circumstances.
Matters are further complicated when Aurora dumps her dull fiancé to embark on a torrid affair with the prospective house-buyer.
As an outsider of whom little is known, the local police are quick to take against him. When a second death puts him top of the list of suspects, Aurora starts her own investigation, discovering along the way far too much for her own good.
Who can be trusted in this hothouse community? Finding the answer is guaranteed to raise the adrenaline.