clair081

Patrícia Melo took the title of her recent book The Body Snatcher from Robert Louis Stevenson, but the plot is more like Jim Thompson. It sounds like pure noir: the narrator comes upon a crashed plane in the Paraguay River, with a kilo of cocaine and the pilot's body in it. He takes the coke and the pilot's watch, and from there the story set in a remote small town develops with a dark inevitability. He takes a job as a driver with the dead man's family and schemes to reveal the body's whereabouts to them (for a ransom), finds a distributor for the drugs, gets involved with his brother's girlfriend as well as a woman who works in the police morgue, and so on. Through it all, his voice is mostly matter-of-fact (except for some radio signals from his conscience). The book is short and fast, moving from one body to another, to threats from police and the dead pilot's family, and on to a conclusion that is distinctively inconclusive. Melo's take on noir is more ...

Deon Meyer returns once again to his Alcoholic Afrikaans cop Benny Griessel in Icarus, which has a timely theme. A body is discovered in the dunes, and is discovered to be that of the CEO of a website called My Alibi, which provides not only verbal alibis but also documentation for affairs and liaisons (not quite the same as Ashley Madison, and so far that scandal has only produced the end of a CEO's career, rather than something more permanent). Griessel has fallen seriously off the wagon, and his personal struggle leaves space for his partner, detective Vaughn Cupido, to step into the spotlight (continuing Meyer's promotion of secondary characters into more prominent roles). While Griessel sinks into alcohol-fueled depression and Cupido gains new self confidence, the son of a wine-producing family sits in a Cape Town attorney's office making a long confession involving his family history and the story of winemaking in South Africa, linked to the murder, obviously, though ...

Review of latest Lisa Brackmann novel now at The Life Sentence .

My review of the first three Camille Verhoeven books by Pierre Lemaitre is now live at TheLifeSentence.net

My new review of Heda Margolius Kovály’s distinctive Czech crime novel Innocence is now live at The @ LifeSentenceMag

Ken Bruen's Green Hell seems at first to be a series finale, but by the end it leaves open the possibility of future entries focused on his melancholy former Garda Jack Taylor. There's a lot of metafiction in it: an American student becomes fascinated with Jack and abandons his research on Becket to write a biography of the Galway private detective, and a good part of the first half of Green Hell is his research on the project. Bruen himself makes an appearance as a customer/drinker in a bar, and Iain Glen, who plays Taylor in the TV series based on these books, also makes a cameo appearance. There is a crime plot, but it mostly takes place offstage. There are some interesting characters, including Ridge, the female cop who's a running character who has survived (many haven't) and a new Goth who seems a bit modeled on the dragon-tattoo-girl (that seems to be the source of the U.S. cover art fro the book). And as usual there are a lot of references to and quotes from cri...

My survey of the Brunetti series by Donna Leon (on the occasion of her new one, Falling in Love) is now live at The Life Sentence .