Review by New York Times Review
Andrew Taylor has written almost every kind of genre fiction, from village mysteries to psychological thrillers. But his mandarin style and eccentric imagination seem best suited to the historical crime novel. "An Unpardonable Crime" was a cunning facsimile of a 19th-century Gothic melodrama. "Bleeding Heart Square" caught the swoony sensationalism of a 1930s women's romance. Now THE ANATOMY OF GHOSTS (Hyperion, $24.99) pitches us into dynamic but rowdy 18th-century England, when superstition still held a grip on rational minds despite the advent of the Enlightenment. John Holdsworth, a London printer and bookseller whose wife falls prey to a medium claiming to be in touch with the spirit of their dead son, writes a book denouncing such charlatans. After his wife commits suicide and he is forced to sell his business, the embittered author of "The Anatomy of Ghosts" is in no position to turn down a commission from Lady Anne Oldershaw to travel up to Cambridge and talk some sense into her son, Frank, who believes he's being haunted by a friend's dead wife. Jerusalem College, where young Frank is enrolled as a student, comes to vivid life through the meticulously detailed routines observed by the students, the retinue of tutors who teach them Latin and the lackeys who collect their "scholarly manure" and otherwise exist to serve them. Since town officials have no authority inside this walled city-within-a-city, students are free to drink, gamble, abuse their servants and partake in the organized debauchery of hellfire societies like the Holy Ghost Club, where the ritual rape of a virgin customarily follows dessert. Frank's haunting dates from the night the virgin he was scheduled to ravish died a mysterious death - the same night the wife of the dissolute head of the Holy Ghost Club (who is himself "something of a personage at Jerusalem") drowned in a pond. As Taylor points out, "drowning ran like a watery thread through the whole sad affair." But so do other themes, like the clash between reason and humbug, and the power of grief and guilt to raise the dead. As a man ahead of his time, Holdsworth may be able to convince Frank that the ghost he sees is a figment of his "disordered fancy - born of too much laudanum, too much wine, too much unhappiness." But what is this pale figure rising from the mist? Anyone may be capable of murder, but only a mathematical genius can concoct a foolproof plan for getting away with it. That's the premise of THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X (Minotaur, $24. 99), Keigo Higashino's ingeniously plotted mystery about a math teacher who deduces that the neighbor he worships has murdered her abusive ex-husband and then calmly offers to help her escape the consequences. "Logical thinking will get us through this," Tetsuya Ishigami promises as he presents Yasuko Hanaoka and her daughter with detailed instructions on how to establish an alibi while he disposes of the corpse. The brilliance of this scheme can't be fully appreciated until the conclusion of the story, which has been translated from the Japanese into chilly English by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander. Meanwhile, unpredictable human variables keep forcing Ishigami to recalibrate his plan. There's the wealthy suitor who threatens to snatch his beloved Yasuko away from him, and the clever physicist, a friend of the detective investigating the case, who devises a counterplot for trapping the mathematician at his own game. And then there is Yasuko, who acknowledges her deep debt to her neighbor but may not be able to go through with the final step of his master plan. The taste for the macabre that accounts for the yuck factor in Mo Hayder's crime novels is curiously subdued in GONE (Atlantic Monthly, $24), lending credibility to this new assignment for Detective Inspector Jack Caffery of Bristol's Major Crime Investigation Unit and Sgt. Flea Marley, who heads up the Underwater Search Unit. This artfully constructed procedural opens with a car-jacking that becomes a kidnapping after the thief drives off with a little girl in the back seat. The narrative takes its first chilling turn when Caffery's team detects a pattern of other "accidental" kidnappings, indicating that the carjacker was stalking little girls all along. More shocks are in store, but for once the visceral thrills don't come at the expense of character. By giving her villain the intelligence to inflict as much emotional as physical pain, Hayder makes him less of a monster and more of a terror. "There was nothing soft or malleable or negotiable about her; she was simply her own solid core." You can trust Liza Marklund's description of her hard-nosed heroine, Annika Bengtzon, an investigative reporter on a Stockholm daily with the enviable freedom to write just about anything she well pleases. In RED WOLF (Atria, $25.99), the first novel in this series to be published in English (in a clear-cut translation by Neil Smith), Annika pleases to write about terrorism. Her research into an unsolved 1969 attack on a Swedish air force base not only triggers more violence from one of the original saboteurs but disrupts certain unholy alliances between government and big business. Despite her messy personal life, Bengtzon hangs on to the uncompromising ethics and sense of justice that make her a welcome figure in the ranks of Scandinavian sleuths. In the 18th-century England of Andrew Taylor's novel, superstition still holds a grip on rational minds.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 27, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In the fifth riveting entry in the series featuring haunted homicide detective Jack Caffery, his latest case seems to be a routine carjacking. But as the investigation proceeds, it becomes clear that the Jacker was really after the 11-year-old girl in the backseat and, what's more, is taunting police with the threat that he will strike again. He is so far ahead of the unit at every step that the investigation is continually being stymied, and Jack suspects the Jacker is privy to inside information. As the Walking Man, a vagrant with whom Jack has a special connection, tells him, the kidnapper is cleverer than any of the others you've brought to me. Meanwhile, police diver Flea Marley is recklessly ignoring protocol in her search for the missing girl and finds herself trapped in an underwater cavern. Hayder keeps the tension high as she switches between the distraught parents and the stressed-out investigators. The meticulously crafted plot is heightened by Hayder's skillful evocation of mood as she summons the specter of a highly intelligent criminal who is taking great satisfaction from every parent's worst nightmare. A captivating thriller. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Hayder has been threatening to vault from cult favorite to mainstream smash for a few books now, and this one aided by a full-dress marketing campaign may be the one to make the jump.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A carjacking goes from bad to horrifying in Hayder's gripping fifth thriller featuring Bristol Det. Insp. Jack Caffery and Sgt. Phoebe "Flea" Marley (after Skin). When Rose Bradley's car is stolen with her 11-year-old daughter, Martha, inside, it appears to be a routine snatch-and-grab. It becomes clear, however, that the carjacker had his sights set on the girl, not the vehicle, when he begins taunting the police, who scramble to find clues to Martha's whereabouts. Jack soon discovers a pattern of similar kidnappings disguised as car thefts, with the level of violence ratcheted up in each case. As Jack tracks the kidnapper above ground, Flea's search takes her below ground and underwater into a decommissioned canal and tunnel, where she fights to save her own life and that of the kidnapped child. Hayder expertly brings to life the claustrophobia of Flea's dives and the emotional burden of the case on Jack. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
DI Jack Caffery and Sgt. Phoebe "Flea" Marley, a police diver, return in Hayder's latest thriller. This is the fifth appearance for Caffery, who debuted in Birdman, and the third for Marley. The events of the previous novel, Skin, have eroded their personal and professional relationship, and Marley and her team are under scrutiny. A new case brings them together, and the two struggle with their partnership and with the brutal criminal they face. What appears to be an accidental kidnapping during a carjacking turns more sinister when the child is not released, a pattern of similar attempted incidents emerges, and they receive a letter from the kidnapper outlining what he's done and what he's planning. VERDICT Readers who can tolerate some graphic descriptions of violence (or skim past them) will be rewarded with a complex, fast-paced, well-written mystery with interesting characters fighting personal and external demons. Recommended for those who enjoy Karin Slaughter and John Connolly.-Beth Blakesley, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman (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
A carjacker in a clown's mask drives off with an 11-year-old girl in the back seat, drawing DI Jack Caffery of Bristol's major-crime unit into a multilayered plot that also brings back unsteady female police diver Flea Marley.Hayder's fifth novel to feature Caffery (introduced in Birdman, 1999) tones down the gruesome violence (if not the creepy scenarios), delivering a brilliantly plotted mystery that keeps you guessing not only who the villain is, but what exactly he's after. With his poorly disguised antipathy toward children, Caffery is not the best choice to investigate the disappearance of little girls. But the former Londoner, who's still losing sleep over his brother's childhood disappearance, is comfortable on the missing-person trail. Helped by his unhinged but brilliant street friend, the Walking Man, he is led to a canal with a submerged barge and an odd network of air shafts. That's where Marley (introduced in Ritual, 2008) is on her own mission to make up for a traumatic pastnot to mention a recent criminal act in taking responsibility for the death of a woman her drunken brother ran over. The complicated personal history of Caffery and Marley provides a compelling undercurrent, as does Marley's confessed love-hate affair with Caffery and his checkered past. She does something most mystery writers wouldn't with their star protagonist: She has him miss major clues and get outsmarted by the mother of a missing girl. But only, of course, to a point.First-rate mystery that takes full advantage of the wintry, moonlit West Country and the unusual skills of its lady diver.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
