Category Archives: Detective/Mystery

Mr Paradise - Elmore Leonard

Mr Paradise, Hardback CoverThe first thing you need to know about Elmore Leonard’s characters is that they are all impossibly cool. Even when they aren’t in a situation where they need to be cool, they just are. And this is what makes them so very readable. These people maintain their sang froid in situations that would leave people like you and me gibbering wrecks. You know, murders, interrogations, kidnaps, beatings, that sort of thing. And yet, in spite of all this, the characters are human and people we can relate to. They still have their human problems - divorce, insecurity, fear, loneliness.

This brings me to Mr Paradise. Tony Paradiso is an aged lawyer who hires a call girl and a friend to perform topless cheerleading while he watches recordings of football games. One night he is gunned down in his own home by an apparent home invasion. The police are called and quickly can see that they can clear up a number of seemingly unrelated crimes in one fell swoop. Such a seemingly simple story is told beautifully in Leonard’s spare style. No words are wasted, every sentence feels as though the author spent time examining them to see if they fit with the rest of them. This is deceptively simple writing which makes the story come alive.

Leonard writes contemporary stories, but his style makes these books appear to be set in the Roaring Twenties or Thirties. You can easily imagine any of the old time black and white movie stars bringing the books to the screen. It’s only when he mentions something modern - a music group or album, a film or TV show - that you realise that it’s set now. It’s odd, but all of his books seem to take place in a limbo, where gangsters and straights mix while wearing fedoras.

If you enjoy crime/detective thrillers and haven’t come across Leonard (and why not?) I recommend picking up at least one of them. My first foray into his crime writing was the excellent “The Black Dahlia” and I haven’t looked back.

Ask The Parrot - Richard Stark

Richard Stark is one of the pen names used by the master story teller Donald E Westlake. It should be noted that Westlake is often named as the favourite crime author of the top crime authors - high praise indeed.

This novel begins at the end of the 2004 Parker novel “Nobody Runs Forever”. Parker is on the run after a botched bank robbery and the police are closing in. He is met by one of the locals who needs Parker’s help with a robbery. Since Parker’s need for a hideout and the local’s need for help with his robbery coincide, Parker agrees.

Parker is a bad man. He is a professional thief, sometimes violent and prepared to kill as a last resort. We are not given a picture of an angel with a dirty face, we are told over and over that this is a bad man. And yet, he is a likable character. Parker is always on the run from a botched robbery or is being forced into a bungled robbery or is taking revenge on someone for something to do with a robbery.

As we have come to expect from this author, this a very fast moving, well plotted story. There are no sub-plots to divert us from the main story and, as such, this means that we can stay with Parker until the job is done.

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High Profile - Robert B Parker

This is another very strong book from Robert B Parker - the sixth in the Jesse Stone series. Here we see a high profile murder (hence the title) occur in Paradise and the continuation of the romance of Stone and Sunny Randall - herself the main title of her own series. As one would expect from this series and from Parker in general, we have a lot of wisecracks, some great action sequences and the whole thing wrapped up in the end.

This book is, like all of Parker’s other novels, very fast moving and not too superficial. Parker has three main characters in his books - Spenser, Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone - and they are all either in therapy or dating a therapist. In fact, aside from all these characters being wisecracking, fast shooting, hard punching sensitive souls, therapy is the underlying theme between them all. Admittedly, it is a good way to move the plot along, but I am sure there are others that could be used. Older novels would have utilised the street snitch a la Johnny in Police Squad! This appears to be the Twenty First century version of that.

That aside, this is another tightly plotted murder story with a lot of human interest. The characters involved all develop further and they will continue on with this in the next books of their own series. Notably that fact that Jess and Sunny actually first got together in Blue Screen, the fifth Sunny Randall novel.

Stone is a pragmatic, quiet, recovering alcoholic who is the police chief in the supposedly quiet town of Paradise. Although, there have been several murders there now so I don’t think the town can still be called quiet!

read this if you like detective novels with a touch of humour and humanity in them.

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Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child

Number 11 and the latest in the Jack Reacher series, this book takes a small departure from the norm and puts Reacher at the head of his old Special Investigations Unit again, when they reform to investigate the deaths of part of their old team.

In some ways, this story is a natural progression in the series - Reacher is meeting up with his old friends and has seen that they have all settled down and joined the rest of the world with mortgages, pensions, families and the like. Of the team, he is the only one who has not settled down, the only one with no fixed address. He realises that he is older and not the man he used to be. But that, in my opinion, is where the book falls down. In the previous ten books we have a picture of Reacher as invincible and absolutely confident in his abilities. He fears no one and is sure that he will prevail. And in this book we have Reacher admitting that he’s slower and less than he was.

Additionally, Reacher is part of a team in this book - not just leading it, but an equal part. This is not the Reacher we have grown to know. Our Reacher is a loner, a maverick, a leader, an outsider. This Reacher is democratic and allows himself to be lead. He’s also unsure of himself, which is understandable since he’s catching up with friends who appear to have more than he does. But it’s just not right. We’re used to Reacher being Batman without the uniform, not this, this, mortal.

This one was a lot slower to get started than the previous novels and, as mentioned above, was a fair bit different than the rest of the series. Read it if you, like me, are a fan and want to know what else happens to Reacher, but don’t use it as a way into the series.

Additionally, my copy had a Reacher short story: James Penney’s New Identity at the back of it. Well told short story, but not canon. Lee Child has made it very clear that the one country Reacher has never really visited or worked in is the Unite States. And yet here we have a short story with Reacher working in and travelling around the US. It may seem like nit-picking, but this is the sort of thing you notice.

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The Watchman - Robert Crais

In this book, the author continues the exploration of his mysterious character Joe Pike which began in earnest in the book LA Requiem (though it could be said that the exploration has been there in all the books). For the uninitiated, this is the first Joe Pike novel - Pike normally playing second string to the author’s main character Elvis Cole.

Joe Pike is an enigmatic character, while being a classic tarnished knight. He had an abusive childhood, is an ex-Marine, is a martial arts expert, is an ex-policeman and is a sometime mercenary. He is also very intelligent and capable of extreme gentleness and compassion. He is, on the surface, a similar character to Win in the Myron Bolitar Stories (Harlan Coben) or Bubba in the Gennaro/Kenzie stories (Dennis Lehane). He is there to move the story along, to take the actions our detective cannot/will not take - he’s the big guns brought out for extreme circumstances.

The Elvis Cole novels are known for their characterisations and the humour the author can bring to the story. he continues this in this novel. Pike is asked to bodyguard a spoiled rich girl and, as one would expect, things take a rapid turn for the worst. In this novel the plot almost takes second place to the characterisations and to the gradual drawing out of Joe’s backstory and that of Larkin Barkley.

Reading any Robert Crais novel is a pleasure and reading this one especially so. Joe Pike, already solid in the minds of the fans, is further fleshed out in this novel. The Daily Mirror said “Read this, then read all his others” and I have to agree. Unless you already have all the others in which case I say read them in order and stop jumping to the end.

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Dead Simple - Peter James

I enjoy a good mystery/thriller story and Peter James does not disappoint. This is the first in a new series by Peter James (I would have to say that the link is the word “Dead” since his second one is called “Looking Good Dead“) and his characters are, in many ways, a breath of fresh air.

The lead detective, DI Roy Grace is all too human. This is an experienced detective who is competent at his work - with flashes of brilliance - and knows how to see when someone lies. And this is something I may use myself. When we lie, we tend to look in the direction of our creative mind. When we tell the truth, we look in the opposite direction. Early on in interviews Grace will ask “What did you have for lunch?” and see which way the suspect looks. From then on he is aware that when the suspect (or witness) is lying, they will look the other way. This is a genius quirk, in my opinion, it’s something we can all visualise and try out. Have fun, won’t you :)

Of course, no detective can be whole without some tragedy in their life - Grace’s is that his wife disappeared from the face of the earth some years previously and he can’t let her go even though it’s likely that she’s dead. The author gives us a real sense that the couple were indeed happy and that this blights Grace’s life horribly. We care. Well, I do.

The story is very simple but filled with the twists that we want - a man has a prank played on him at his stag do. He is buried in a coffin and told his friends will return in a couple of hours. Unfortunately, his friends are all killed in a road accident. Can the police find the missing man before it’s too late? Very simple tale, expertly told. I recommend this book to fans of the genre.

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