Review by New York Times Review
IT'S no wonder that the postwar noir thriller is making a comeback. With its fugitive heroes, undefined agents of menace and pervasive air of paranoia, the bleak formula is an ideal one for our modern-day age of anxiety. The one drawback to the classic model - as comes through in Lee Vance's overplotted but relentlessly readable debut novel, RESTITUTION (Knopf, $23.95) - is having to pick (and discard) new signifiers of corruption from among the many contemporary offerings. Vance, a retired general partner of Goldman Sachs, tries to cram all the sins of Western civilization into his fast and furiously paced morality story about a narcissistic investment banker who learns humility when he is set up as the chief suspect in his wife's murder. That leads to a vengeance plot involving Wall Street chicanery, Russian greed, Nazi war crimes, international terrorism, biological warfare and the ever-popular strong-arm tactics of Homeland Security. But while the heavily freighted plot continually threatens to go off the rails, the classy writing and the nonstop action keep it on track. Narrating this cautionary tale is its flawed protagonist, Peter Tyler, a Wall Street shark observed at such close range you feel as if you were in the tank with him. Tyler becomes humanized during the Faustian journey he undertakes after losing his wife, his job and his respectability to the sinister forces that have framed him - while inadvertently tipping him off to a huge stock swindle with grave consequences. On the run from American law enforcement and Russian gangsters as he frantically pursues a friend who might have set the entire chain of events in motion, Tyler broods on the questionable values that once defined his life and eventually comes to accept his current punishment as atonement for his past sins. "How did my life ever reach this point?" he asks himself, and by finding the courage to answer that existential question as honestly as he can, this humbled prima donna wins over even those hard-nosed readers who cheered when he lost four straight games of office Nerf ball. Vance plays his own excruciatingly complex game with great finesse, balancing the interior drama of Tyler's self-enlightenment with the spiraling complications of the financial crimes and the ripsnorting action of the chase scenes. And while Tyler's transformation into a human being gets a bit sticky as he becomes sensitized to the world's suffering orphans and AIDS patients, Vance strongly suggests that his chastened hero has a lot to teach his cocky fellow Americans on Wall Street. You call it love. Ruth Rendell calls it sick, and she has written a book that makes her point with exquisite cruelty. In THE WATER'S LOVELY (Crown, $25.95), she examines love from every imaginable angle, rendering much of it in a decidedly unhealthy light. Taking her theme from the opening image of a pedophile drowned in his bathtub, the queen of the psychological suspense novel slyly insinuates that many people who think they're feeling the purest of emotions for their spouses, children, siblings and lovers are more likely sloshing around in jealousy, lust and murderous rage. All the characters come in pairs in this subtly horrifying story, beginning with Ismay and Heather Sealand, sisters who live with their gaga mother (and her care-giving sister) while planning marriages to their respective boyfriends. Ismay and Heather share a festering secret that poisons more than one relationship in this London household before seeping out and infecting all the neighbors - including the homicidally inclined Marion and her abominable brother, Fowler, who have made a career of preying on the love-starved. Rendell develops her many characters with such cunning that an element of comic suspense is created around the question of which of them will crack up first. Don't bet on Marion. In this crowd, she's far too stable. For female mystery readers of a certain age, Sharon McCone was the genre's grown-up Nancy Drew, a smart, if overly stern, private investigator who built her own agency in San Francisco and mainly represented poor people in desperate circumstances. Marcia Muller, who introduced McCone in 1977, has taken her sleuth a good distance from her social-service roots, and the extent of that growth can be measured in THE EVERRUNNING MAN (Warner, $24.99), the 25th book in the series. This may come as a revelation for anyone who hasn't been keeping up, but McCone flies her own plane and chases terrorists these days, and in her latest adventure she has the gratification of saving her husband's security firm from being destroyed by an elusive bomber who seems to object to the shady history and "unorthodox methods" of its military-trained personnel. The story is violent and thick with international intrigue, but McCone fights to keep her cool and save her marriage - a different kind of role model for different times. Of course, for every intelligent and resourceful woman who surfaces in crime fiction, there is sure to be some crazed serial killer out there determined to maim, mutilate and otherwise take her down. David Ellis comes up with a particularly nasty specimen in EYE OF THE BEHOLDER (Putnam, $24.95), challenging his lawyer-sleuth, Paul Riley, to find the connection between two series of murders committed more than 15 years apart. Ellis, a former partner in a Chicago law firm, isn't squeamish about laying out the gory details in the initial massacre of six young women in 1989 or the copycat atrocities to follow. But the carnage is only the grabber for what is actually a very tricky legal mystery, and Riley, who prosecuted "the most famous serial killer our city has ever seen" when he was a raw youth, doesn't really hit his stride until he walks down those mean corridors that lead to the courtroom. Lee Vance In a first novel by a former partner of Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street shark is set up as the chief suspect in his wife's murder.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
The author's fifth novel (his previous titles include the Edgar-winning Line of Vision , 2001, and the popular In the Company of Liars , 2005) cements his reputation as a top-notch thriller writer. Fifteen years ago, prosecutor Paul Riley made his mark by putting away Terry Burgos, who was inspired by song lyrics to kill six young women in the most gruesome of fashions. Now, a new series of killings bears a frightening similarity to the Burgos murders, and as the victim list keeps growing, Riley realizes the killer seems to be sending a personal message to him. In order to solve the new crimes, Riley, realizing that the connection to the Burgos case is very real, must confront his own past and the terrifying possibility that, 15 years ago, he might have made a terrible mistake. The novel is tightly plotted and sparklingly written, a surefire winner and a fine read-alike for legal thrillers by Philip Margolin and Perri O'Shaughnessy. --David Pitt Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Some books aren't natural fits for audio. Edgar-winner Ellis's new novel, for example, has a complex plot that hops back and forth between the arrest, conviction and execution of serial killer Terry Burgos in 1989 and 16 years later when Burgos's prosecutor, Paul Riley, is drawn into the investigation of a very similar series of murders, involving many of the same characters. Complicating things even more, the contemporary sections jump from Riley's point of view to that of the demented new killer. Ellis uses chapter breaks, posted dates, italics and a shift from present tense narration to past tense for 1989, efforts that clarify matters in print but are a bit subtle for audio. Even an accomplished and inventive narrator like Dick Hill can only do so much-a pause before announcing a time shift, the use of a distinctive accent for the killer-to keep listener confusion to a minimum. But there's not much any reader could do with a key ingredient of the novel-the nonsense messages left at the crime scenes that contain a coded text that is near-impossible to distinguish by ear. Hill handles the dramatic sequences and thriller elements effortlessly and if one is willing to overlook several perplexing time-warped moments and the impossibility of deciphering the clues before Riley explains them, this audio provides a fair amount of entertainment. Simultaneous release with the Putnam hardcover (Reviews, May 21) (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A 15-year-old case gets personal for attorney Paul Riley in the fourth work by Edgar Award winner Ellis (Line of Vision). Author tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
From a shark prosecutor's easy win, incalculable losses derive. A slam dunk if ever there was one--that's how the case looks to newly appointed First Assistant County Attorney Paul Riley. The case: six young women brutally murdered on premises belonging to a certain Terry Burgos. Forensic evidence: overwhelming. Alibi: nonexistent. When, in addition, Burgos more or less confesses, the defense is down to the frail hope of an insanity plea. Without working up much of a sweat, Riley disposes of that, and in the process, earns the gratitude of tycoon Harland Bentley, whose personal wealth is estimated at a billion and a half, and whose beloved daughter was one of the six victims. Convicted, Burgos is sentenced to die in the gas chamber and does, and Riley is a witness. There is, to be sure, a moment of unforeseen drama. Before dying, Burgos mouths to Riley: "I'm not the only one." Unsettling, yes, but not for long. The question of legality aside, Burgos was, after all, manifestly crazy. Flash forward 16 years. Riley is now in private practice, head of a substantial firm bulwarked by Harland Bentley's multinational legal business. He is, in short, a player. Suddenly, a new murderous cycle has the city's media buzzing. And there are the notes that begin arriving at Riley's office--creepy, cryptic. Despite himself, Riley investigates--and learns how chimerical truth can be. And how disastrous. Another top-flight legal thriller from Edgar-winner Ellis (In the Company of Liars, 2004, etc.), brimming with quality prose and layered characterizations. And if the plot twists gratuitously a time or two, well, settle. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
