Review by New York Times Review
MICHAEL CONNELLY'S maverick cop, Harry Bosch, has been kicked off plenty of important police cases over his long career. But until now, he has never gone over to the dark side to work against the prosecution in a homicide case. In THE CROSSING (Little, Brown, $28), the forcibly retired (and terminally bored) Bosch, a former California detective, breaks faith by taking on a private investigation for his half brother, Mickey Haller. The slick defense lawyer has convinced Bosch that his client, a reformed gangbanger named Da'Quan Foster, is not guilty of murdering Lexi Parks, a well-liked city official who was bludgeoned to death in her bed. But the case still makes Bosch uneasy. "Did he miss the work so much that he could actually cross the aisle and work for an accused murderer?" he asks himself. Never mind that the detective is convinced of Foster's innocence. To his former colleagues, he's a traitor. As an investigator with the sheriff's department puts it to him: "You used to be legit. Used to be. Now not so much." Tough guy that he is, Bosch "could feel his face burning red with humiliation." Overcoming his shame, he vindicates himself by solving an unusually cerebral case that hangs on the provenance of an expensive watch, a $14,000 Audemars Piguet. Like a classic whodunit, the complicated mystery pivots on one small clue. An extra treat for the reader is being able to follow the case from the dual perspectives of the prosecution and the defense. As a career cop, Bosch is well versed in the professional tactics of a police investigation. (Even a casual reading of the tricked-up "discovery package" that every investigating officer is obliged to prepare for the defense attorney puts him in a good humor.) But Haller's vocational talents, being on the shady side, are more like the sleight-of-hand tricks of a con man, and once in a courtroom he suddenly acquires the skills of a magician. Brothers they may be, but at times they seem a lot like an ego and its id. RUTH RENDELL'S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS (Scribner, $26), is a deliciously diabolical tale on a favorite theme: one person's devouring of a weaker person's identity. Carl Martin is the little mouse that allows itself to be caught by the tail. He lives in a lovely house in London's Maida Vale that he inherited from his father. He recently published a successful novel, and the girl he loves has just moved in with him. Carl may be sitting pretty, but he's just the sort of weak-willed milquetoast Rendell enjoys tearing into little bits. On flimsy grounds, he feels responsible for a friend's death, and his unscrupulous tenant, Dermot McKinnon, being aware of Carl's guilty secret, proceeds to blackmail him in psychologically subtle ways. First, he stops paying the rent. Then, he starts taking over parts of the house. When Carl finally protests ("You're ruining my life"), Dermot points out, "It's you who's doing that." Loss of identity also figures in a parallel plot in which a cipher of a girl named Lizzie Milsom steals the trappings, if not the vivid personality, of a dead woman. All of these fragmented lives eventually intersect, propelled by a supporting cast of endearing eccentrics who, sadly, will not pass this way again. WHEN HEROES GO BAD, the earth trembles, as it does in THE GUISE OF ANOTHER (Seventh Street Books, paper, $15.95), Allen Eskens's cautionary story of guilt, redemption and damnation. As a Minneapolis police detective, Alexander Rupert was a prince of the city - Medal of Valor and all that - until he was caught up in a police corruption scandal that derailed his career and alienated his beloved older brother. "More than anything, he wanted to feel that pride again," seeing hope of salvation in the Putnam case, a police matter too easily dismissed as an accidental drowning at sea. But can he resist the temptations of warm flesh and hot money? Eskens's elegant but chilly prose, like winter in the blood, is well suited to this fiercely told morality tale (and its deeply cynical ending), which is sure to send all of us wretched sinners straight to hell. CHILDHOOD IS a perilous country in Lisa Ballantyne's psychological suspense novels, so bleak and hostile that even grown-ups hesitate to go there. "Margaret Holloway, deputy head teacher, mother, wife, did not know what had happened to her when she was a little girl, and she was terrified to find out." But return she does, in EVERYTHING SHE FORGOT (Morrow/HarperCollins, paper, $14.99), when a traffic pileup on a London highway traps her in her burning car until a hideously scarred stranger risks his life to save her. "The crash. ..." she struggles to explain to her husband. "It's made me remember things." These "things," she fails to add, relate to her rescuer, who lies hospitalized in a coma. Ballantyne makes no real mystery of the relationship between Margaret and her savior, choosing to tell their stories in separate but interlocking chapters. Taken individually, these biographical histories of Margaret and the man she knows as Maxwell Brown give structure to the narrative; taken together, they give it a living, beating heart.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 11, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
Leaving work late on a snowy December evening, Margaret Holloway is involved in what's called the worst multicar crash in London history. Trapped in her vehicle, she's saved by a stranger who breaks her window and hauls her out just before the car explodes; yet the shock of the accident lingers and reawakens old memories. In another plot thread set 28 years earlier, Big George McLaughlin, the baby in a notorious crime family headed by his ruthless father, seeks to reunite his former girlfriend (now married) and his seven-year-old daughter, Molly, but plans go awry, and he ends up snatching the child and causing a major incident. Angus Campbell, whose Christianity is so rigid as to be cruel, is a local journalist covering the story of the missing child, and his instincts are more acute than those of the police. Ballantyne (The Guilty One, 2013) ties the three strands together in the final pages in a manner that brings the most peace possible to those involved. A moving and sensitive mystery about childhood trauma and its resolution.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
When school teacher Margaret Holloway, the heroine of this absorbing psychological thriller from Edgar-finalist Ballantyne (The Guilty One), gets caught in a horrific traffic accident on a London motorway during a blizzard in December 2013, a mysterious disfigured man rescues her from her car. Increasingly obsessed about a dark time in her childhood that she seems to have blocked out, Margaret soon discovers that the man who rescued her is now in a coma, and her growing unease is beginning to affect her family and her teaching career. In flashbacks to 1985, the youngest son of a murderous crime family desperately attempts to reconnect with his seven-year-old daughter as he seeks a new, more honest life, while a small-time journalist sinks his teeth into the disappearance of a child. Ballantyne weaves a fine tale of family drama, dark secrets, and the past's effect on the present. The threads seamlessly come together in a heart-wrenching, yet hopeful, finale. Agent: Nicola Barr, Greene & Heaton (U.K.). (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Ballantyne combines a stolen child, lost memories, and a love gone wrong in her latest tale. Margaret Holloway, a happily married mother of two, is driving home on icy, snowy roads from work at Byron Academy, where she's a deputy head teacher, when she becomes involved in a multicar accident. Margaret has already had a bad day, so the collision is the last thing she needs. And this is no ordinary wreck: Margaret finds herself stuck in her car, and when it catches on fire, she realizes she's destined to die. Instead, a mysteriously deformed man breaks her window and pulls her out, putting his own life at risk in the process. After the car explodes, the man disappears, but Margaret soon tracks him down to the hospital where he's been taken and put into an induced coma. When she visits him, she learns his name is Maxwell Brown and that he's had no other visitors. Told from numerous points of view, the story flashes back to the events of 1985, when a little girl named Molly is abducted on her way to school. As her mother, Kathleen, and the whole country search for the child while fearing the worst, Molly is getting to know the man who took herBig George McLaughlin, a gentle giant born into an unspeakably cruel family of gangsters. Meanwhile, an ambitious and unethical reporter named Angus Campbell is on Molly's trail, determined to use her case to make a name for himself. Readers will have no trouble figuring things out for themselves, but this is less a story of suspense and more one of Margaret's and George's personal journeys. Ballantyne has tightened and improved her writing since her first novel, and the effort shows. A sweet novel of love, redemption, and loss that chronicles one family's struggle with a difficult past. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
