MYSTERIES: Seamless narrative of escalating suspense

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This article was published 13/02/2010 (5693 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The ethereal quality of memory, veering from crystalline to transitory, permeates Steve Hamilton’s The Lock Artist (Minotaur, 320 pages, $30), the diary of a boy rendered mute by unspoken trauma and forced to exercise an "unforgivable talent" that puts him behind bars.

That talent is lock-picking, but it’s Mike’s artistic skills that enable communion with an unlikely soulmate and, in a blackmailing turn, make him a pawn for professional thieves. Tutored by an aging "boxman," Mike is summoned to safe-cracking jobs across America until a bloody, double-crossing venture puts him in the crosshairs.

Hamilton maintains a seamless narrative of escalating suspense as he juggles alternating adolescent and late-teen storylines that merge in the revelation of Mike’s brutal secret.

With this absorbing coming-of-age tale scarred by horror and adversity, the New York author breathes new life into the oldest chestnut of all, the redemptive power of love.

***

With The First Rule (Putnam, 320 pages, $33), it’s easy to forget that Robert Crais penned some of the best American detective fiction in the last two decades, most notably the long-running Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series.

Owing far more to 24 than L.A. Requiem, Rule is a grossly inflated chase scene, with archetypal silent-avenger Pike tracking the murderers of an ex-mercenary pal and his family, pawns in a Serbian gun-running war and the kidnapping of a ganglord’s infant heir.

There’s no sign of L.A. itself as a sensuous, full-blooded player, the hallmark of earlier Crais works, and to say the storyline and character insight are paper-thin is to wish the latter into nothingness. With Cole’s wisecracking charm sidelined, Pike’s one-dimensional role is writ large and sadly unleavened.

Crais stripped his gears with The Watchman (2007) and Chasing Darkness (2008), and the rudimentary soft-headedness of Rule‘s ending foretells a shallow, predictable line of sequels. While the author has said the real first rule here is "Don’t make Pike mad", the patience of his fans might be substituted in that maxim.

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Flush with bolt-from-the-blue inherited wealth, Florida thriller dean James W. Hall’s favourite protagonist, the flinty and aptly named Thorn, seems determined to give it all away and return to his happily-broke life as a Key Largo fishing guide.

The catalyst for mayhem in Hall’s Silencer (Minotaur, 288 pages, $30) is a cash-and-land swap that would add both Thorn’s land and Earl Hammond’s huge but struggling Coquina Ranch to Florida’s preservation reserve.

Hammond’s murder, followed by Thorn’s abduction and imprisonment in a remote sinkhole by two twisted hit-men, indicates some family disagreement over that plan.

It all sounds more than a bit unlikely in shorthand, but Hall manages to keep the suspense galloping along with sharp dialogue and roller-coaster plotting.

***

A two-year sabbatical brings a reinvigorated Tami Hoag back to the bestseller lists with Deeper Than the Dead (Dutton, 432 page, $34), a serial-killer whodunit set at the dawn of behavioural profiling and DNA forensics.

When four kids stumble upon the half-buried remains of a young woman, the quietude of a prosperous California town is shattered. The discovery of an earlier, similar victim and a new disappearance, all with ties to a local women’s shelter, bring FBI profiler Vince Leone into the lives of the children, their families and a protective teacher.

A bracing psycho-thriller with romantic underpinnings, Hoag delves deep and comes up roses.

***

No one should endure the self-abuse of Red Snow (Penguin 288 pages, $24), an execrably cheesy attempt to cash in on this month’s Olympics by prolific (and unaccountably published) Vancouver lawyer/author Michael Slade.

With villains named Mephisto and Headhunter, a buxom femme fatale in Scarlett the Ice Pick Killer, Mountie "psycho hunters," schoolyard titters about "ooh-la-la" Amazon cops and a silly Frankenvirus plot, the danger is that your eyes will roll right out of your head.

Burn before reading.

John Sullivan is editor of the Free Press Autos, Homes and Travel sections and specialty websites.