Scarpetta’s long-lost nemesis resurfaces

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This article was published 06/08/2016 (3669 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Patricia Cornwell’s Depraved Heart (HarperCollins, 539 pages, $12) sees the return — in a manner of speaking — of one of medical examiner Kay Scarpetta’s nastiest foes. A text message from Scarpetta’s niece Lucy contains video footage of Lucy taken 20 years ago — footage filmed, apparently, by Carrie Grethen, who was once Lucy’s mentor and lover, when she wasn’t being a serial killer’s sidekick. What does this mean? Is Grethen somehow, after all these years, still playing games with with Lucy and Kay? Is Lucy’s life in jeopardy?

The novel presupposes at least a passing familiarity with the saga of Carrie, Kay and Lucy, so if you’re not familiar with the series you might want to check out The Body Farm, From Potter’s Field and Point of Origin first. On the other hand, this new book is so compellingly written and plotted that we’re soon caught up in its story, and Cornwell gives us enough context to enable us to figure out what’s going on. So maybe you should just jump right in.

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In Ted Bell’s Patriot (Morrow, 684 pages, $13), super-spy Alexander Hawke goes up against two fiendish foes: a rogue spy who’s turned into a cold-blooded killer, and Vladimir Putin, the real-life Russian president, who’s devised a clever new way to restore the former Soviet empire to global greatness.

Bell, a former advertising executive, burst onto the literary scene more than a decade ago with Hawke, the first novel in the series, and each book since has been a near-perfect example of how to write a thriller: come up with some exciting action scenes, create some slightly larger-than-life characters, and — above all — don’t take yourself too seriously.

Half the fun of reading a Hawke novel is Hawke himself, a wealthy, dashing, elegant, super-smart fellow who makes James Bond look like a regular guy. Loads of fun.

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James Abel’s Protocol Zero (Penguin, 418 pages, $14) finds troubleshooting marine physician Joe Rush investigating the deaths of a family living near a scientific research facility in Alaska. As he collects evidence, Rush begins to suspect that something that seems unbelievable might actually be true — and that the U.S. army is not only involved in the family’s deaths, but is so determined to keep a lid on the tragedy that they will stop at nothing, not even murdering Rush himself.

This is the second Joe Rush novel, after 2015’s White Plague; a third, Cold Silence, is now out in hardcover. They are uniformly excellent: smartly plotted, populated by a cast of memorable characters and written in a lean, unadorned style.

The writing here is so good that you might forget you’re reading fiction.

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Christopher Reich’s Invasion of Privacy (Anchor, 479 pages, $14) starts with a tragedy: the murder of an FBI agent. The man’s wife, wanting to understand why he was killed, soon becomes convinced the FBI is lying to her, and that her husband was working on a top-secret case that got him killed. She teams up with a down-and-out newspaper reporter to try to find out the truth about her husband’s murder.

This fast-paced thriller isn’t quite “ripped from the headlines,” as they say, but it sure is timely. Its villain, the super-powerful Ian Prince, is a technology giant who’s poised to launch an entirely new kind of surveillance system; his ruthless behaviour and scenery-chewing dramatics are a bit over the top, sure, but in the story’s context they feel just right.

Reich keeps the pace moving at a brisk clip, shifting our focus from heroes to villains and back again, ending chapters on cliffhangers to keep us flipping the pages as fast as we can. A seriously good thriller.

Halifax freelancer David Pitt’s column appears the first weekend of every month.