Review by New York Times Review
Still writing against the grain, Ruth Rendell opens her 21st Inspector Wexford mystery, NOT IN THE FLESH (Crown, $25.95), with a rustic English scene featuring a truffle hound named Honey who leads her master to a fragrant growth of fungi buried in Old Grimble's Field. Since this author has neither taste nor time for sentimentality, the mood is abruptly shattered when Honey digs up a skeleton and the picturesque countryman whips out his cellphone to call the police. In the best whodunit tradition, Rendell advances her plot through surprises, some transparent enough to satisfy the engaged reader, others so shocking they dash all calculations. Once a second, fresher body is unearthed on the Grimble property, the original killing no longer seems so obviously tied to a decade-old land dispute. It makes us wonder about all the other people who've gone missing in the vicinity of Kingsmarkham and speculate on why some lives seem to have more value than others. Wexford himself reflects on the fact that women and children are tracked more rigorously than men, who are supposedly more inclined by nature to walk away from their problems. Rendell relies on the same biased thinking to misdirect the police investigation into the lives of the residents whose old houses border Grimble's Field. Calling attention to one local scandal - like the domestic ménage of a famous author and his two wives - is sure to distract from other long-buried village secrets. Even Wexford is preconditioned by his own compassion (for "people - women, mostly - who have been sheltered and protected all their lives and suddenly find themselves alone") to miss signs of criminality. Characters who are old and infirm are especially hard to fathom in a narrative that respects their humanity while refusing to white-wash their flaws. The disagreeable John Grimble might be a cantankerous cuss - or a vicious killer. His disabled neighbor, Irene McNeil, might be a lonely widow - or a nasty old hag. No less than the battered women and the maligned immigrants who play peripheral roles, the village elders can be pathetic, but they can also be evil. Because Rendell views people without prejudice and is surprised by nothing they do, the only character who conforms to type is Honey the truffle dog. Anxious about identity theft? Well, as a Jeffery Deaver character says, "If somebody wants to destroy your life, there's nothing you can do about it." That's the theme of THE BROKEN WINDOW (Simon & Schuster, $26.95), one of the most unnerving of Deaver's eight novels featuring his quadriplegic forensic detective, Lincoln Rhyme. Smarter and scarier than the genre's garden-variety nut jobs, the mad genius at work in this book takes pride in penetrating secure databases. After stripping people of an essential piece, of their lives, he frames them for his own murderous deeds. But here, the rape-torture-killing element seems largely just a concession to the sensationalistic formula of the thriller. Deaver is far more caught up in the devious mechanics of identity fraud, analyzed in depth by Rhyme once it's determined that the killer has access to the supersecret files of a datamining company whose clients include government agencies. While murder is still murder, the image that lingers in this Orwellian nightmare is that of the villain's original guinea pig, once a doctor, now a wretch who calls himself Job and lives in flophouses, hiding from the angry God who stole his life. The wickedly endearing hit man John Keller normally conducts his business in the brisk format of the short story. But Lawrence Block's amiable antihero, who's in Des Moines on a simple point-and-shoot assignment, needs all the extra attention he gets in HIT AND RUN (Morrow, $24.95) after someone sets him up to take the fall for a high-profile political assassination. Having spent most of his ready cash on rare stamps (a hobby offering "a more orderly sphere where serenity ruled and logic prevailed"), Keller barely manages to keep his cool as he makes an extremely tense and hazardous cross-country getaway. By the time he pulls up in New Orleans (an apt destination for someone who fears he's "never going to feel secure again"), the badly rattled button man is ready to retire from the game. Will he or won't he? Block teases out the question thoughtfully, in displays of wry wit and philosophical double-think, and leaves Keller just where we want him: hanging from an existential cliff. In Chapter 1 of THE WATER'S EDGE (St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95), Daniel Judson's carefully built but overwritten novel of guilt and redemption in Southampton, a man looks out a window in the rain and witnesses a double murder. Figuring 13 words to the line, that takes more than 1,500 words. In Chapter 2, a different man awakens in the dark and answers his cellphone. That's another 2,500 words. At this rate, anyone can see where things are headed - to more moody weather reports and bleak interior monologues than any thriller can sustain. The sluggish pace isn't entirely due to Judson's prose style, having as much to do with his construction of two parallel plotlines to deliver the same story from different perspectives. Either protagonist No. 1, Jake Bechet, former boxer and retired mob muscle, or protagonist No. 2, Tommy Miller, former P.I. and son of a crooked cop, could carry this violent gangster narrative on his own. But when the action takes place during a soggy spring in a coastal resort on Long Island, that's double the work and double the talk - and a lot of weather reporting. In Ruth Rendell's latest Inspector Wexford mystery, a dog finds a skeleton in the English countryside.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Keller, Block's stamp-collecting hit man, star of several novels and many short stories, is in Des Moines, Iowa, to do one last job before retiring. Dot, his friend and agent, has managed Keller's money shrewdly, and he's a wealthy man. But while Keller is buying some stamps in a suburb, the governor of Ohio, campaigning for the presidential nomination in Des Moines, is assassinated. Within hours, Keller's picture is on every TV screen in the country. He's been set up to take the fall, and the sting cuts deeply into all aspects of his life, one aspect of which will prove particularly shocking to series fans. With no access to his cash even his stamps have disappeared from his Manhattan apartment and only $200 in his pocket, Keller is the most wanted man in the country, and his life, as he knows it, is effectively over. This is the first novel-length Keller since Hit Parade (2006), and it offers Block the room to take his character in some new and fascinating directions. Hit men have become more common as protagonists in crime fiction in the years since the first Keller story appeared, but it's no surprise that consummate pro Block's version of the ordinary-guy-as-killer remains the best of the lot.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
While in Des Moines for one last job in MWA Grand Master Block's solid fourth Greatest Hits thriller (after Hit Parade), hit man John Paul Keller takes to the road. He's been accused of assassinating the governor of Ohio, who was in Iowa preparing for a presidential bid. By the time Keller gets back to his New York City apartment after too many days of fast food, his prize stamp collection has been stolen. With the governor's real killer still hot on his trail, Keller travels to New Orleans, where he rescues a woman, Julia Roussard, from a rapist in a local park. As Keller and Julia's relationship develops, he considers leaving the old life behind, but knows he must clear his name and settle the score. Block's trademark blend of humor and violence is a good fit for the deadpan Keller. While some fans may be disappointed to see Keller headed toward retirement, hope remains that this won't be the last outing for one of the crime genre's most unusual antiheroes. (June 24) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
He leads a sedate life--bounded by his own apartment with its state-of-the-art TV and TiVo, the newsstand with the Times every morning, and his stamp albums all arranged on their shelves. When his neighbors come to be questioned by the police--and they will--he'll be described as "a quiet kinda guy. He kept to himself." The life of a hit man's not an easy one, and it's never seemed tougher than in this latest appearance (following Hit Parade) of premier hit man Keller. Although he's looking forward to a well-deserved retirement, Keller just can't say no to a job in Des Moines, of all places. While he's there, the governor of Ohio is assassinated in town, and the evidence points to Keller. He's been set up, and despite having millions in a bank account, he doesn't have the cash to buy clean underwear and has to drive a hot car toward New Orleans with a Homer Simpson cap pulled down over his face. What a way to spend the golden years. Before it's all over, though, the old guys (both Keller and Block) show they've still got what it takes to teach the youngsters a thing or two in this brisk, suspenseful, and funny romp. A sure bet for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/08.]--Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO (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
John Keller--the philosophical hit man who's brightened the pages of many a short story and a quasi-novel cobbled together from stories (Hit Parade, 2006)--finally gets a proper novel of his own. The assignment, set up by a client named Al who paid cash in advance, seems routine: Fly to Des Moines, wait for the high sign to kill Gregory Dowling, go back to New York. But the days pass without Keller being turned loose. Not until after he's finally given the go-ahead does a news broadcast tell him he's been set up. Stranded in America's heartland with no contacts, precious little money and a bogus identity that's about to blow up in his face, and sought by every cop in the nation for a murder he didn't commit, Keller can think of only one goal: getting back to his hometown. He's almost made it, courtesy of an impressive variety of tricks he's improvised along the way, when he realizes that Al has made New York just as dangerous as Iowa. Keller's only chance is to say goodbye to his old life and rebuild himself from scratch. Block treats both his unlikely hero's initial flight and his attempt to establish a new identity in such painstaking detail that they become riveting. Only his climactic search for revenge against Al feels ordinary. From the first, Keller assumes this hit will be his last case. Readers can only hope it isn't so. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
