Review by New York Times Review
At age 60, Dan Chase figures he has outrun all his old enemies. But then a car seems to be following him while he's walking his dogs, and a man with a gun turns up outside his house later that night - and Chase realizes that he's let his defenses drop since he settled into a quiet life in rural New England. A flashback reveals that he made off with close to $20 million after an aborted Special-Ops mission in Libya. Although he's tried to return the money, the government considers him a traitor and a murderer. "Once you run, there isn't any possibility of not running," he explains to the woman who becomes his companion on this harrowing hunt-andhide adventure, which takes them up Bear Mountain, then racing back down on skis, pursued by six armed men on snowmobiles and another assassin in a chopper. Nobody writes chase scenes like Perry, who devises intricate itineraries, multiple identities and frequent costume changes for Chase and Zoe McDonald, who rents him an apartment in suburban Chicago and winds up sharing his bed. "Running away with him is more fun than most people have in a lifetime," Zoe tells her worried daughter, who tries to talk her out of hitting the road with a reckless old man. But Chase is old "in the way a seven-foot rattlesnake was old," and Zoe proves to be a natural at destroying evidence, switching personalities and handling a Beretta. It takes a lot of ingenuity to get these fugitives across the country and into Canada without being plugged by hired killers or caught by one of the smart government agents who are all "too fast, too young and too strong," not to mention adept at the kind of procedural "tricks and traps" that didn't exist when Chase gave up the game - if anyone ever really gives up the game for good. THE CHINESE AUTHOR Chan Ho-kei takes on the staggering task of covering 50 years of Hong Kong's criminal past in THE BORROWED (Black Cat, paper, $16). This episodic novel, translated by Jeremy Tiang, derives its historical sweep from the career of the famed detective Kwan Chundok, who is on his deathbed when the story opens but becomes progressively younger as the chapters unfold in reverse chronology. Viewed from the perspective of Kwan's protégé, Inspector Sonny Lok, each of the six stories reflects the city at a time of social or political upheaval, including the handover from Britain to the People's Republic in 1997 and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Inspector Kwan ("the genius detective") solves each crime - from domestic murders to turf wars among organized crime triads - by applying his superior powers of deductive reasoning. In this, the author hews to tradition, but you need to be a genius yourself to solve his confounding puzzle mysteries. THE BEAUTIFUL DEAD (Atlantic Monthly, $25) is something of a misstep for Belinda Bauer, whose suspense novels usually have a sly touch of the macabre. This one comes closer to a conventional woman-in-peril narrative, with a plot that features a young television reporter who catches the eye of a serial killer. Eve Singer is with iWitness News, assigned to the "meat beat," a never-ending spectacle of "bodies, black bags and bloodstains." Eve's stalled career seems to get a boost when a murderer singles her out from the press pack - until he starts stalking her. "We both crave death," he tells her, "and an audience." That's a tired conceit, and Bauer doesn't do much with it. But she can still turn a phrase (Eve's pet hamster rushes into his wheel "as if it were a getaway car") and write a tense scene (like the one that has Eve witnessing a murder in the London Underground), so we trust she'll be up to form next time. THERE WILL ALWAYS be civilized weekend parties in grand old English mansions, especially on the threshold (or in the aftermath) of a world war. And so it is in THE DEATH OF KINGS (Viking, $27), Rennie Airth's new mystery featuring Inspector John Madden, who comes out of retirement to reopen an old murder case at Foxley Hall, the stately home once presided over by Sir Jack Jessup. There, back in the summer of 1938, an actress named Portia Blake went for a walk in the woods and was murdered, supposedly by a man who confessed and recanted but was later hanged for the crime. Now it's 1949, and the jade pendant she was wearing on the day of the killing has been sent to the Canterbury police. Vestiges of the war always make their way into Airth's novels. "It's like the war never ended," a housewife says of the persistent food rationing. And in contrast to bucolic scenes that have hop pickers harvesting in the fields, there are startling glimpses of the bombed-out port of Rotterdam and heavily targeted British cities like Canterbury, the dumping ground for any bombs left over from the Luftwaffe's forays over London. Airth knows not to overdo the historical background; he gives us just enough to see this period whodunit from a wider perspective.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 1, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
A jade necklace supposedly recovered from a 1939 murder case raises red flags 10 years later for former Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Sinclair, who calls his retired colleague, John Madden, into action in this fifth entry to the series, following The Reckoning (2014). A house party at the Kent country estate of Sir Jack Jessup turned tragic with the shocking murder of a guest on the grounds, actress Portia Blake, who was last seen flaunting the pendant in question. As Madden immerses himself in the case and delves into Portia's life, the pernicious tentacles of a larger picture emerge. Why were an actress and the Chinese businessman, Mr. Wing, invited to the party? Was the man convicted of the murder actually guilty? A procedural and a fairly straightforward puzzler become utterly absorbing and psychologically intriguing by virtue of the characters' personalities and unusual motivations. One can't help but compare Madden to other chief inspectors, like Armand Gemache in Louise Penny's Three Pines mysteries or Reginald Wexford in the series by Ruth Rendell, set in fictional Kingsmarkham, England.--Baker, Jen Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
It's been 17 years since readers were introduced to Insp. John Madden in River of Darkness. At the time Madden was a returning World War I veteran whose experiences in the trenches and collaboration with Dr. Helen Blackwell convinced him to employ the as yet unproven science of psychological profiling to track down a serial killer. By 1949, the time frame for Airth's latest, Madden has happily retired to the life of a farmer, but he's called back into service to investigate a cold case on behalf of two former colleagues. Once again readers are treated to an insider's view of Madden's contemplative approach to his inquiries; this time he's delving into the social world of Britain's aristocracy in search of the true killer of would-be actress Portia Blake, who died on the Kent estate of Sir Jack Jessup 11 years earlier. VERDICT This volume will be warmly welcomed by series followers and can be recommended to fans of British procedurals and golden age mysteries alike.-Nancy McNicol, Hamden P.L., CT © Copyright 2016. 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.
