Review by New York Times Review
When it comes to language, Irish poets place a distant second to the crooks in crime novels. Say you're planning a big bank heist. The crew you recruit for the job is likely to include a jugmarker, the tactical genius who designs these delicate operations; a lip man to deliver the boss's orders; a boxman to crack the safe; a bagman to handle the loot; a wheelman to drive the getaway car; and maybe a couple of buttonmen ("they hurt people") to facilitate the whole enterprise. Roger Hobbs has named GHOSTMAN (Knopf, $24.95) after the most elusive gang member - the guy who makes everything disappear. "I'm very good at what I do," says Jack Delton (not his name, but it'll do). "I've survived because I'm extremely careful. I live alone, I sleep alone, I eat alone. I trust no one." Sexy as that sounds, it's not quite true. Five years earlier, Jack botched an elaborate bank job in Kuala Lumpur, putting him in serious debt to Marcus Hayes, once the master of all jugmarkers and, in Jack's view, "the most brutal man I'd ever met." To shrink his debt, Jack agrees to clean up the mess after another of Marcus's intricately planned robberies - knocking off an armored car full of casino cash - goes bad. How bad? "Bodies everywhere, loot missing, feds circling." That kind of bad. Hobbs, a first-time novelist who's barely out of college but already writing with the poise of an old pro, has put a great deal of wit and ingenuity into Jack's sophisticated professional skills. As someone whose life depends on his ability to operate in plain sight while remaining invisible, Jack is a master at the art of disguise. Give him a bottle of hair dye and the right wardrobe pieces and he can age 20 years, change nationality and walk away with your watch, your wallet and your daughter. But Jack is no common trickster, and his daring criminal exploits are grounded in detailed, well-researched knowledge of all kinds of practical matters, from picking locks to faking the Kazakhstan Crown Diamond. The dangerous mop-up job he's doing for Marcus also involves violence on a grand scale. Lucky for us, Jack's elastic work ethic allows for that too. "No sane person enjoys killing," he concedes, "but it isn't as bad as people make it out to be." Although Hobbs is an assured stylist who favors clean, precise prose, he handles violence with a lyric touch. In a narrative stuffed with gruesome murders, the most graphic death is executed in a gracefully choreographed scene that's remarkably poignant - because it shows Jack in a rare moment of conflict with what appears to be a nascent conscience. Nobody gets a free pass in Denise Mina's sobering novels, not even the white-haired grandfather in GODS AND BEASTS (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown, $25.99) who's cut down by 10 rounds from an automatic pistol during a post office robbery. After quickly handing his 4-year-old grandson to a stranger, Brendan Lyon, a retired bus driver and a union activist back in the day, steps forward to help fill a canvas bag of money for the robber, who shows his thanks by emptying his gun into the old man. That's only one of the elements Mina weaves into her bleak account of how corruption can poison a city like Glasgow, with its deep economic problems and intransigent class divisions. A popular politician caught in a sex scandal, a petty crook who makes the regrettable mistake of stealing a crime boss's car, two police officers tempted by a stash of drug money, and the strange young man who watched over Brendan's grandson during the robbery all play their fated roles in this thoughtful look at how good people can go bad. There's a grand design to Charles Todd's period novels featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge, a Scotland Yard detective who returned from the battlefields of World War I burdened with a heavy load of survivor's guilt. Each of these elegant mysteries takes Rutledge to some rural district of England scarred by unhealed war wounds and offers him the chance to do penance by solving a crime and restoring justice. This journey of redemption continues in PROOF OF GUILT (Morrow, $25.99) when the inspector is sent to a village in Essex to find a prosperous wine merchant who has gone missing and may be the victim of a murder back in London. With a gentleman's pocket watch as his only clue, Rutledge cuts through the history of a family dynasty to expose the original sin that left later generations fighting a war no one could win. Laughter is a subversive weapon when you live under a repressive regime. That's the take-away lesson from Colin Cotterill's gravely funny novels set in Indochina in the 1970s and honoring the extravagantly colorful life of Dr. Siri Paiboun, the national (indeed, the only) coroner of Laos, "a country without a constitution or a body of laws." In his latest adventure, THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN'T DIE (Soho, $25.95), the irascible Dr. Siri is recently retired, but still a thorn in the side of the Pathet Lao government. Unable to communicate with the dead souls who regularly appear to him, Dr. Siri is delighted to take a tutorial with the bona fide witch engaged by the general in charge of the Ministry of Agriculture to contact the spirit of his dead brother. Since that entails a trip to a provincial region noted for "boat races, beer, views, elephants," as well as romantic cruises up the Mekong, Dr. Siri has no trouble persuading his wife to go along - a fateful decision that contributes a moving chapter to her memoirs. 'I live alone, I sleep alone, I eat alone, says the ghostman. 'I trust no one'.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 24, 2013]
Review by Booklist Review
A post-office robbery in Glasgow turns deadly at the start of Mina's latest sharp thriller starring Strathclyde Detective Sergeant Alex Morrow. In the midst of the heist, elderly Brendan Lyons hands off his grandson to an unsuspecting stranger, then assists the AK-47-toting thief in filling bag after bag with cash. Lyons' attempt to keep the peace backfires; the gunman shoots him in the back as he carries the score to the door. Was Lyons, a well-known local activist, in on the crime from the get-go? Meanwhile, more trouble is brewing around town. Charismatic politician Kenny Gallagher faces allegations of an affair with a very young woman, and two of Morrow's colleagues steal money from a drug deal but then, in a crisis of conscience, come clean about the deed. Award-winning Scottish crime writer Mina (The End of the Wasp Season, 2011) once again demonstrates her command of the police procedural, creating a compelling cast of characters, from the likable to the loathsome, and deftly linking the plots in a chilling ending.--Block, Allison Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Scottish author Mina's excellent third crime novel featuring Det. Sgt. Alex Morrow (after 2011's The End of the Wasp Season), a lone gunman enters a Glasgow post office, where he orders the patrons to lie on the floor. An elderly gentleman hands his young grandson to a stranger and gets up to assist the robber by filling bags with cash. The gunman then cuts the old man down with a hail of bullets from his AK-47 pistol. Meanwhile, looming budget cuts and police layoffs lure two of Morrow's subordinates into stealing a pile of dirty drug money. Finally, a former labor hero turned politician is caught up in a sex scandal with a 17-year-old female staffer. While Mina keeps Alex's life outside of work mostly on the back burner, she ups the stakes by taking us into the dark, beating heart of modern Glasgow, where the real deals are struck and the spoils divided. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
During an armed robbery in a Glasgow post office, a grandfather inexplicably steps from the queue to help the gunman before being shot to smithereens. DS Alex Morrow is on the case, despite her exhaustion from having newborn twins. But what begins as a murder investigation turns into a maze of conspiracy and lies. A witness claims the grandfather recognized his killer, but the dead man's widow says it's impossible. Meanwhile, one of Morrow's trusted officers flirts with corruption, and her half-brother, Danny, a notorious gangster, is connected to a scandal that threatens a prominent politician. Although these story lines don't always appear to connect, Mina deftly stitches them together in time for a powerful climax. VERDICT In this third Alex Morrow procedural (after The End of the Wasp Season) Mina again plumbs the depths of the grungy Scottish metropolis, capturing political posturing, class differences, and familial dynamics with equal aplomb. At its center is the cranky, sympathetic Morrow, fast becoming one of the most intriguing cops in crime fiction. Fans of smart, character-driven procedurals will want to snatch this one up. [See Prepub Alert, 8/3/12.]-Annabel Mortensen, Skokie P.L., IL (c) Copyright 2012. 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
Who would shoot an inoffensive retiree in the middle of an otherwise routine robbery? One minute, geology student Martin Pavel is queued up at the post office; the next, he's lying on the floor at the command of a man with a mask, an AK-47 and a very short temper. Yet Martin is a lot luckier than Brendan Lyons, the retired bus driver who offered to help the gunman collect the loot and got thoroughly shot for his trouble. It seems clear that the robber recognized the old man, but even so, why would he feel the need to kill him? DS Alexandra Morrow would love to bear down hard on the case, but as usual, there are other problems. After pulling over dicey driver Hugh Boyle, DC Tamsin Leonard and DC George Wilder have found 200,000 concealed in his car; instead of turning it in, Wilder's had the bright idea of splitting it between themselves; and the surprisingly resourceful Boyle has photographed them in possession of the loot. So, even though Alex gets a promising lead that links the gunman to the anonymous figure who menaced householder Anita Costello three years ago, Strathclyde's finest is hardly enjoying its finest hour. Higher up in the social ranks (though equally far down the ethical scale), Labour MP Kenny Gallagher is battling rumors that he's taken party volunteer Jill Bowman, 17, under more than his wing--rumors that are particularly hard to scotch since they're true. As Gallagher faces the ruin of his career, readers will wonder how Alex (The End of the Wasp Season, 2011, etc.) can possibly tie these cases together. Though the final surprise doesn't have the snap of logical inevitability, it's depressingly realistic.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
