SUSPENSE: Atmosphere works, story less successful

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This article was published 11/10/2009 (6162 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For a tiny Quebec village, Three Pines sure has a lot of murders.

When an old hermit nobody admits to knowing is found bludgeoned to death in Oliver’s Bistro, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team once again set up shop in Louise Penny’s The Brutal Telling (Minotaur, 384 pages, $25), her fifth Gamache/Three Pines mystery.

Faithfully adopting the rural-Brit whodunit model, the former CBC radio host again strives for (and largely achieves) an ominous, even mordant atmosphere, a small town’s familial intimacy shaken by secrets, lies and (the tale’s core theme) unfettered greed.

Less successful is the story itself, which meanders and rolls rather aimlessly, content with literary mood over substance. Despite endless ruminations, speculation and a puzzling whirlwind trip to B.C. that yields Gamache little, the victim largely remains a cipher.

The prime suspect is joined by others among the village’s various eccentrics simply by their presence, not through any real red-herring development. The police work is plodding, and the resolution anti-climactic in the extreme.

With so few surprises, it all seems much ado about, well, not much.

***

Another murder, another village, this time in Dorset, England. But S.J. Bolton’s The Awakening (Minotaur, 400 pages, $26) is a tour-de-force of stunning originality, so beautifully crafted and paced, with such a compelling protagonist, as to leave you hooked and breathless.

Scarred by a childhood accident, reclusive wildlife vet Clara Benning is overrun by snakes, ghosts, suspicious deaths and unwanted attention, particularly from a senior copper and a famous bad-boy herpetologist (look it up). Suspected of herself engineering the snake-bite deaths of three elderly villagers, Clara is thrust headlong into a frantic inquiry of her own.

A charismatic 1950s snake-handling sect led by a sinister preacher, a tragic church fire, and a mysterious family whose dead members keep turning up — all bizarre elements of a deliciously convoluted plot that almost (but not quite) goes off the rails. And you’ll learn more about snakes that you’d ever care to, and somehow want more.

Creepy, neo-gothic, nail-biting, with the psychological emergence of a strong, damaged, warmly sympathetic figure at its core, The Awakening is a must-read sophomore effort by this rising U.K. writer.

***

It’s been a four-year wait for fans of Sara Paretsky’s platinum D.I. Warshawski series, but Hardball (Putnam, 464 pages, $27) returns the favour.

Keyed to the 40-year-old disappearance of a young black man involved in the murder of a young woman at a 1966 Martin Luther King rally, Paretsky revisits an ugly time in Chicago racial, police and electoral politics as Warshawski tackles the agonizing prospect that her father may have been a dirty cop.

It’s a more intimate, evocative look at the indomitable Warshawski, but with the same keen sense of place, history, social awareness and human frailty that always mark a Paretsky novel.

***

Retired Ohio trial lawyer Richard North Patterson is best known for his bestselling tales of high political or legal intrigue, pots now well-stirred by others.

So while his themes are still large (racism, injustice, corruption, betrayal) and his hero is still a high-flight Boston trial lawyer, it’s refreshing to find Patterson immersing himself in a smaller, straight-up thriller in The Spire (Holt, 384 pages, $33), with nary a courtroom drama or Washington conspiracy in sight.

Mark Darrow is enticed by his college mentor to take over the presidency of his alma mater amid a festering embezzlement crisis. There, he’s also drawn to re-investigate the 16-year-old murder of a black student that sent his best friend to prison for life. But when the two inquiries start to overlap and a fresh body turns up, Darrow begins to feel stalked himself.

Alternating lengthy flashbacks and brisk plot twists with practised ease, Patterson crafts a superior, no-frills psychological thriller that satisfies, if without any great illumination.

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