Review by New York Times Review
If James Lee Burke has the deepest regional voice in the genre - and I do believe that's so - it's because he understands those feelings that keep people connected to the places wher1e they have, or once had, roots. When Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, it swept all kinds of people, criminals among them, out of their natural element and into the strange foreign land called Texas. RAIN GODS (Simon & Schuster, $25.99) is Burke's version of a range war in Southwest Texas - a pitched battle between gangs of displaced bad guys, fighting among themselves for the new territory against the outmatched locals. Some of these boldly drawn newcomers, like the former owner of a floating casino who relocated to an exclusive community in San Antonio and now runs a sleazy skin club on the highway, are living like "colonials in their own country." Others are stuck in hellholes like Chapala Crossing, a rusty-dusty town on the Mexican border that takes its visual definition from an abandoned filling station and a crumbling church. Hackberry Holland, the tall, taciturn sheriff - and cousin of Billy Bob Holland, the lawyer-lawman in a Western crime series by Burke - finds the decomposing corpses of nine Asian women buried in the field behind the church, collectively mowed down by a World War II machine gun and plowed under by a bulldozer. The women were prostitutes and drug mules in an organized-crime ring run by a shadowy Russian mobster based in Phoenix. Whoever among the crime boss's many competitors ordered the mass murder, it was executed by the legendary hit man Jack Collins, known as Preacher and both feared and respected for being "a mean motor scooter and crazy besides." Crazy he may be, but Preacher is one of Burke's most inspired villains - violent and cruel, but also profoundly moralistic and self-loathing, qualities that he shares with Hackberry Holland, as he informs the guilt-haunted sheriff when they finally meet. Preacher will kill any number of people in imaginative ways, yet spare the foolish men and furious women who are offered to him as sacrificial victims. But while Preacher is a treat, camped out in the desert and howling to nameless ancient gods, you don't want to underestimate the locals, who have their own deities to answer to. Even Preacher gets that. "These are religious people," he says. "Disrespect their totems and feel their wrath." Right now, the native gods are withholding their blessings because of the killers and lowlifes who have brought the blight. But with good guys like Holland on the job, it might yet rain on this parched land. There's always a serpent in an English village mystery because the whole genre is a metaphor for the primordial Garden of Eden, which loses its innocence when something evil slithers through the gate. In her novel AWAKENING (Minotaur, $25.95), S. J. Bolton turns the myth into something more literal when she deposits a venomous adder in the crib of a sleeping infant and challenges a veterinarian named Clara Benning to save the baby, capture the snake and identify the villain who is distributing poisonous reptiles among the populace of her "quiet, half-forgotten village" on the border of Dorset and Devon. That's quite a tall order for this reclusive heroine. But although she passes for a simple country vet, dedicated to the belief that "all lives, even tiny, secretive, short ones, have a value and a purpose," Clara is actually a reptile expert and well qualified to solve the mystery of the snake infestations. For all the Gothic elements that Bolton has wrapped around her story to create suspense, there's more satisfaction in listening to Clara talk about snakes and watching her handle them ... carefully. In "Siren of the Waters," Michael Genelin introduced us to Jana Matinova, a smart, principled police officer who fought crime in her native Czechoslovakia. Now a commander in the Slovak police force and stationed in the capital city of Bratislava, Jana returns in DARK DREAMS (Soho, $24) to help a childhood friend whose crusading political aspirations are dashed when she has an affair with a married member of Parliament and becomes a pawn in an international smuggling ring. Outside of a tendency to speak girl-gush in private moments, the resourceful and prodigiously insightful Jana seems to have no flaws. But it isn't her feats of superheroism that give the story its chilly sense of reality; it's her casual acceptance of the almost universal corruption of everyone who lives in her world. THE CHALK CIRCLE MAN (Penguin, paper, $14) comes along just in time, before we get totally lost in the increasingly convoluted later adventures of Fred Vargas's quirky French sleuth, Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. Originally published in 1996, but only now available in a very smart translation from the French by Sian Reynolds, this book is the first in Vargas's series and answers certain questions about her eccentric detective and the lost love that haunts him. The mystery also works on its own whimsical terms, confounding us with images of blue chalk circles drawn around innocuous objects - until a corpse turns up in one of them and forces Adamsberg to put some gumption into his vague inquiries. Even here, in the beginning, Vargas writes with the startling imagery and absurdist wit of a latter-day Anouilh, about fey characters who live in a wonderful bohemian world that never was but should have been. James Lee Burke's taciturn Texas sheriff finds the decomposing corpses of nine women buried in a field.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
When European mystery authors make their way to the U.S., it often happens that their books are published out of order. So it is with this sixth Commissaire Adamsberg novel to appear here, which, in fact, is the series debut. Newly promoted from the provinces to a post in Paris, the Maigret-like Adamsberg whose intuitive sleuthing combines the belief of a child and the philosophy of an old man quickly overcomes the doubts of his colleagues and homes in on the seemingly insignificant phenomenon of chalk circles being drawn at random points around the city, each circle enclosing a piece of urban detritus (a Coke can, a single shoe). Adamsberg senses that the circles will soon surround dead bodies, and so they do. In addition to introducing her hero, Vargas also provides backstory on a host of other ongoing series characters, including the white-wine-swilling Inspector Danglard, whose logical mind is continually tested by his new boss' belief in instinct. Later installments ramp up the contrast between Vargas' comic touch and her dark themes, but as a stage-setter, this one is required reading for series devotees.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Fans of Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, the sleuth who doesn't do deductive reasoning, will welcome the first in Vargas's inspired crime series (This Night's Foul Work; Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand), originally published in France in 1990. Newly transferred from his home in the Pyrenees to Paris, the 45-year-old Adamsberg arrives with a reputation for solving big cases, though his diffident manner doesn't impress his colleague and foil, Adrien Danglard. A solitary man drawing blue chalk circles at night around stray objects in Paris streets manages to create a media sensation, but Adamsberg senses evil behind the act. When the corpse of a woman is found encircled in chalk, he's proven right. Adamsberg's indirect approach, his ability to sense cruelty and to let solutions percolate to the surface make him one of the more intriguing police detectives in a long time. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In the first of eight novels featuring Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg (last seen in the United States in This Night's Foul Work), the quirky commissaire has just been posted to police headquarters in the fifth arrondissement, where he is already renowned for his uncanny ability to solve murders by making leaps that defy logic. But after instantly solving one murder, he faces a much more complicated case: for four months, someone has been leaving blue chalk circles around found objects on the streets of Paris. While the city's intellectuals argue whether the circles are the work of a cynical con artist or a genuine madman, Adamsberg senses something far more sinister. Then the first of several corpses turn up inside a chalk circle. VERDICT As with other novels in this series, readers should settle in to be unsettled. Delight is found not so much in the details of plot as in the oddities of character. The crime, the suspects, and the commissaire are all pleasantly off-kilter and equally baffling. A definite pick for Francophile mystery buffs who also enjoy Georges Simenon's Maigret series and Pierre Magnan (Death in the Truffle Wood).--Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson (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
An eccentric Parisian killer baffles professional and amateur sleuths alike. Impulsive oceanographer Mathilde Forestier becomes more than a bit obsessed with Charles Reyer, an impossibly handsome blind man she meets on the terrace of the Caf Saint-Jacques. Because she habitually wanders the streets of Paris, she makes herself responsible for finding and helping him. When success in this endeavor eludes her, Mathilde goes for assistance to the police headquarters of the 5th arrondissement, to which Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg (This Night's Foul Work, 2008, etc.) has just been transferred. The charmingly quirky Adamsberg has taken Inspector Adrien Danglard under his wing as a protg, and the admiration is more than mutual; Danglard seems as obsessed with his boss as Mathilde is with Charles. Having recently solved a baffling murder case, Adamsberg finds Mathilde's whimsy entertaining, and they discuss the weird local phenomenon of The Chalk Circle Man, who has been drawing large circles accompanied by a cryptic message all over the city. Finally locating the frequently choleric Charles, Mathilde brings him into her household, which also includes impossibly sunny assistant Clmence Valmont, who's constantly scanning the personal ads for a lover despite her advanced age. When a murdered woman is found inside one of the chalk circles, the case becomes a serious police matter. Mathilde's claim that she knows the identity of the Chalk Circle Man, who may be merely the killer's unwitting accomplice, implicates her in murder. As droll and fascinating as la ville lumi're itself. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
