SUSPENSE: Suspend your disbelief and… still disappointing

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/08/2011 (5493 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

RECESSION can breed all manner of desperate, unnatural acts — including, it seems, wayward mysteries.

After four books of similar ilk, Linwood Barclay’s game-plan is pretty familiar — regular folks have their slice of middle America demolished by a sudden, catastrophic event (disappearance, abduction, murder) that eventually explodes into an outsized web of sinister doings.

And the ex-Toronto Star columnist’s highly commercial brand of what his publisher dubs “domestic suspense” would be fine — if you could believe these just-plain-folks would actually do what he has them do, short of a Twilight Zone episode.

The Accident (Doubleday, 386 pages, $22) finds struggling, small-time Connecticut contractor Glen Garber trying to rationalize the death of his normally sober and conscientious wife in a bizarre drunk-driving mishap. Pretty soon — you guessed it — Garber finds nothing is as it seems, and just about everybody he knows is crooked.

In Barclay’s movie-of-the-week world, what naturally results are — at a quick count — six murders, three near-misses, a kidnap attempt and a drive-by shooting, plus an underworld enforcer who kills a PI and shoots up two cops for a measly 62 grand owed on some fake purses and cut-rate Viagra.

Seems a tad excessive for suburbia, even American suburbia.

It’s ironic that counterfeits are the hook here, in that Barclay’s aspirations seem limited to becoming a Canadian knockoff of U.S. schlock-meister Jimmy Patterson. With The Accident‘s flimsy plot, breathless pacing (so you don’t realize it’s a crock), over-the-top mayhem and tinker-toy characters straight out of Central Casting, he’s right on track.

— — —

After Don Winslow’s last two outings, the equally execrable Savages and Satori, it’s understandable that the arrival of The Gentlemen’s Hour (Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, $29) might be met with some grim resignation.

Banish any such thoughts — the California darling has aced this one.

There’s trouble in paradise as San Diego PI Boone Daniels is reluctantly drawn into the defence of a wannabe Aryan Nation type in the murder of a surfing icon, alienating his Dawn Patrol board buddies. Machinations over a (literal) housing collapse, a developer who suspects a cheating wife, druglords and surfer thugs litter Winslow’s elaborate but tightly crafted plot.

Yet, this is not just a snappy beach read. Through Boone’s increasingly disillusioned eyes, it offers keen — and not always laudatory — insights into an iconic community, the SoCal surfing crowd. With themes of transition, friendship, betrayal and prejudice, it borders on a true cultural artifact.

Beach fare

The Nightmare Thief, by Meg Gardiner (HarperCollins, 284 pages, $20): More breezy summer nonsense, but at least it’s lightning-paced and solidly written nonsense. And the primary derring-doer is female, as San Francisco forensic shrink Jo Beckett stumbles on a cops-and-bad guys “urban reality game” that turns into a real kidnap attempt on a hedge-fund heiress. Much character-building ensues, though you could drive the girl’s stretch Hummer limo through chasms in the wilderness-survival plot.

Portrait of a Spy, by Daniel Silva (Harper, 464 pages, $30): The 11th conspiracy thriller starring Israeli super-spy (and sometime art restorer) Gabriel Allon and his eclectic band of Mossad operatives finds them trying to flush out a new terrorist network using a super-rich Saudi heiress. If you can stand (or share) the gobs of underlying shoot-’em-up politics, it’s fast-moving beach fluff.

Shut Your Eyes Tight, by John Verdon (Crown, 528 pages, $27): A sequel to Verdon’s debut Think of a Number finds retired NYPD detective Dave Gurney tracking a grisly maze of disappearances that begins with the beheading of a bride on her wedding day. It’s a decent mystery, if a bit overlong, and burdened by Gurney’s irritating wife. Not for the faint of heart.

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