Torontonian April Lindgren, a former political reporter, has used her journalism training well.
Headline: Murder (Second Story Press, 308 pages, $12), Lindgren's first novel, takes readers behind the scenes at a daily major newspaper as heroine (and entertainment editor) Pia Keyne finds herself involved in the murder case of a well-known politician.
May Gatway, the culture minister, has been found dead in the attic of Queen's Park, the Ontario legislative building. Keyne, tipped off by a security guard, is on the scene almost as quickly as the cops.
Keyne, who is still a reporter at heart, starts looking at who might want Gatway dead. It's a detailed list, as the minister didn't make many friends in the arts community. There's Nazi plunder involved, and Keyne quickly finds herself in danger.
Headline: Murder is entertaining and sure to amuse anyone with more than a passing interest in the Canadian arts scene. Political reporters, however, might be wise to avoid the attics of their legislative buildings.
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David Baldacci hasn't had a misstep yet in his climb to the top of the thriller category. The Whole Truth (Grand Central, 415 pages, $30) will only cement his reputation.
In a plot reminiscent of the Dustin Hoffman movie Wag the Dog, arms dealer Nicolas Creel decides he needs a war.
He hires Dick Pender to create the illusion the world is on the verge of a cataclysmic war, quickly manipulating governments and citizens into believing they have to defend their countries.
When skirmishes break out, sales boom.
Reporter Katie James, who has been discredited and reduced to writing fluff, is handpicked to write a story based of falsehoods that will further Creel's ambitions. She realizes she's been had, attempts to write the real story and is rewarded with several attempts on her life.
Thisis impossible to stop reading, for its pacing and for the sense it might be possible.
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Hell's Bay (St. Martin's Minotaur, 306 pages, $28) is the latest instalment in James Hall's Thorn series. Thorn, a Florida iconoclast in the tradition of John D. Macdonald's Travis McGee, lives quietly, tying fishing lures, occasionally bedding women and generally reflecting on his dislike for much of humanity.
He's yanked out of his self-imposed misery when a former love asks him to serve as a fishing guide on the inaugural voyage of her luxury charter boat. He agrees, not realizing the passengers will be members of a family he never knew he had.
Hall writes with passion about the degradation of Florida's wilderness, using Thorn's misanthropic nature to vent his hatred of developers. Thorn's long-lost relatives want to raze more of the Everglades
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Compulsion (Ballantine Books, 337 pages, $32) is the latest in Jonathan Kellerman's series on Alex Delaware. The psychologist ranges further and further from the couch with each novel, solving crimes with his cop friend Milo Sturgis.
This one is better than some of Kellerman's recent work, with less of a typing on deadline feel than he's been offering lately. Delaware and Sturgis go hunting a killer who disguises himself and murders seemingly at random.
If you like Kellerman, it's a good read. If you wish he'd spend more time in the office with patients, not so much.
Free Press columnist Lindor Reynolds' mystery roundup runs on the second Sunday of the month.
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