Review by New York Times Review
So these two guys walk into a bar . . . and find themselves in George Pelecanos's great shaggy dog Story, WHAT IT WAS (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown, $35; paper, $9.99). Derek Strange, the African-American private eye from one series of Pelecanos novels, and his drinking buddy Nick Stefanos, the featured character in yet another Pelecanos series, get to talking about the summer of 1972, which burned itself into the collective memory of their Washington neighborhood as the summer when Robert Lee Jones (known on the street as Red Fury, after the car he bought for his girlfriend) went on a legendary killing spree. Punching in some appropriate jukebox tunes, Strange proceeds to spin this breathless yarn, which Pelecanos says he wrote "in a fever" last summer. When the story opens, 26-year-old Strange is fresh off the police force, establishing himself as a newly minted P.I. (Cue "Mr. Big Stuff.") And already he realizes that he's "in the midst of something, a music, dress, and cultural revolution that was happening with his people, in his time." All he has to do is survive the casual violence of his world and live down the fashion fads of stacked shoes, bell-bottom pants and loud-print rayon shirts. Red Jones ("tall and proud, tight bells, tall stacks, big old Afro") begins his rampage by shooting a pathetic junkie named Bobby Odum and walking off with a pretty ring and two tickets to a Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway concert - which he immediately gives to Coco Watkins, the long, tall, "finely postured" girlfriend who drives that red Fury. The case officially belongs to Strange's old police partner, Frank Vaughn (wears Robert Hall suits, drives a Dodge Monaco, plays Sinatra; must be white). But Strange becomes a player when Maybelline Walker drives up to his office in a Warwick-blue Firebird convertible and hires him to retrieve that pretty ring. Pelecanos is crazy for details, so all these particulars - the colorful names, the flashy clothes, the sexy cars and soulful music - add to the big picture he's continually drawing of crucial moments in America's changing history, as viewed from the streets. Red Jones succeeds dramatically in his aspiration to become a legend in his own time, mowing down a high percentage of the criminal populace and "leaving behind a trail of fire." As for Derek Strange, at this point in his young life his ride is only a "triple-black" 1970 Monte Carlo, but he's "working his way up to a Cadillac." You can't help wondering if Jan Costin Wagner's psychological suspense novel, silence (Pegasus Crime, $25), might have been even creepier in the original German. Disturbing enough in Anthea Bell's suggestive translation, the story, set in Finland (where the author, a former journalist, has a home), opens in the summer of 1974. That's when a cunning pedophile invites an impressionable young man named Timo to participate in a stalking that ends in the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl they find riding her bicycle along a country road. After looking on in horror, Timo packs up and runs off. Thirty-three years later, we find him in Helsinki, a successful real estate agent with a wife and two children and a weekend house on a lake. But when another girl riding a bicycle goes missing from the same spot, Timo's cozy life starts to come apart. The narrative is constructed along the lines of a roman policier and features a strong working relationship between the retired detective who failed to solve the original case and a younger colleague, Kimmo Joentaa. But the book's dark matter has more to do with the obsessive thoughts of troubled minds. Just as Kimmo can't stop brooding over the death of his wife, Timo can't escape the alter ego he has suppressed for more than three decades. And that way, as we know, lies madness. John Burdett's hallucinatory novels set in Thailand tend to open on surpassingly gruesome crime scenes. True to form, VULTURE PEAK (Knopf, $25.95) lures us to an exclusive neighborhood in Phuket and treats us to the sight of three corpses freshly harvested of all their marketable body parts. Someone is obviously doing a roaring trade in human organs, and it falls to Burdett's hippie Buddhist cop, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, to put an end to it. By delivering 1,764 eyeballs to Dubai (where the sun is brutal on corneas), Sonchai meets the masterminds of this operation, twin sisters who seem to be on loan from a James Bond movie. Though not for the faint of heart, the "surreal, exotic, rich" - and quite crazy - world Sonchai inhabits is a classic head trip. Ray Lovell, the private investigator who narrates Stef Penney's woolly novel, THE INVISIBLE ONES (Putnam, $25.95), isn't much of a detective, and his habit of spying on his estranged wife is nasty. But his Gypsy origins qualify him to look into the whereabouts of Rose Wood, a Gypsy girl who married into the secretive Janko clan and has been missing for seven years. Ray can't break through the hostility of the inscrutable Jankos, and if JJ, a 14-year-old member of the clan, didn't help with the narrative chores, we'd still be in the dark about Rose, who is said to have deserted her husband after delivering a child with a genetic disorder. Penney fleshes out her story with a tentative romance and a near-death experience for Ray, a trip to Lourdes for the Janko family and a heap of Gypsy lore for the rest of us. But the best reason to keep reading is JJ, whose engaging voice cuts right through the novel's vagaries. George Pelecanos is crazy for details: colorful names, flashy clothes, sexy cars and soulful music.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 5, 2012]
Review by Booklist Review
Private investigator Ray Lovell wakes up in the hospital after an accident, and he slowly remembers the events that brought him there. Lovell, who is half Romany, is hired by Leon Wood to find his daughter, Rose, whom he hasn't heard from since her arranged marriage to Ivo Janko seven years ago. The story is seamlessly told by Ray in the hospital, Ray before his accident, and teen JJ Janko. The Janko family insists Rose ran away with a gorjio (non-Romany) after her son was born afflicted with the family illness, but Ray begins to doubt that Rose is still alive. If she is dead, which of the extended Janko family killed her? Ray solves the crime while he slowly recovers, comes to terms with the break-up of his marriage, and begins a new relationship with a member of the Janko family. The interesting life of gypsies in 1980s England frames a story with plot twists and interesting characters, but the resolution is rather a letdown.--O'Brien, Sue Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In her mesmerizing sophomore outing, Penney wraps a riddle in a mystery inside an enigma that intrigues from the very first page. As the tale-set in the '80s-begins, private eye Ray Lovell wakes up in an English hospital with little memory and partial paralysis. While he recovers, other problems present. Lovell Price Investigations is broke and most of its cases involve adultery, about which Ray says: "These sorts of cases... can depress you if you let them." Then Ray, who is half-Gypsy himself, is offered a job by a fellow Gypsy, Leon Wood, who wants Ray to find his daughter, Rose, who he hasn't seen or spoken to in seven years, ever since she married Ivo Janko, another Gypsy (or traveler, as the British often call them). Why Leon wants to find Rose after so much time begins the mystery. He tells Ray it's because her mother has died and she should know, but Leon suspects foul play even though Rose's husband claims she ran off with a "gorjio" right after having a child, but Leon suspects foul play. Given his Gypsy heritage, Ray is able to insert himself into the itinerant lifestyle of that world-exactly the reason why Leon has hired him. But even with his knowledge of the traveling life, Ray is surprised by the stonewalling and half-truths he encounters while trying to learn the Janko family's secrets. The narrative slides seamlessly between Ray's point of view and that of J.J., Ivo's cousin's son, giving the reader a balanced perspective-and serving up two truly shocking twists at the story's end. Fast-paced, with characters who will live in full color inside the reader's head, Penney delivers an impressive follow-up to her debut bestseller, The Tenderness of Wolves. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Penney's Costa Award-winning debut, The Tenderness of Wolves, offers edge-of-civilization suspense in Canada's Northern Territory in the 1860s. Set in 1980s England, her new novel might seem like a departure, but it's not; here Penney probes the edge-of-civilization otherness of England's Romany (or Gypsies) while presenting a mystery rooted in the stranglehold of family. As the novel opens, Det. Ray Lovell gets a visit from Leon Wood, a Gypsy whose daughter, Rose, went missing years ago after marrying into the Janko family. Since Lovell has Gypsy roots, he's the only investigator Wood trusts. Trying to breach the silence surrounding Rose's disappearance, Lovell goes up against the entire Janko clan, including patriarch Tener; Tener's son Ivo, husband to Rose and father to Christo, who's languishing from an inherited disease that has killed off much of the family; Sandra, Ivo's cousin and the mother of JJ; and JJ himself, who's 14, smart, and the family's bridge to the outer world. Told alternately from Lovell's and JJ's perspectives, the story ends with a bone-rattling surprise that conveys how much the Jankos have endured. VERDICT Another stunner from Penney; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 7/5/11.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2011. 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
Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
