My favorite type of non fiction. Some new detectives make the grade while a few older ones should think about hanging up their badges.
What I Really Liked 
.GIF "Thumb(1)")
The widow killer (Pavel Kohout) translated Neil Bermel
I’m cheating by including this one given it unlike the other books it isn’t a 2005 release but is in fact a translation of a Czech novel that appeared (I think back in 1999/2000). It bears a few similarities with the 1960s WW2 set novel (and subsequent film starring Omar Sheriff) “Night of the Generals” but is a far superior effort.
It is set in 1945 in German occupied Prague with the Russians advancing ever closer and the Czech resistance becoming ever bolder in their attacks on the occupying force. The streets of Prague are however being menaced by a serial killer of terrible violence .A number of women’s bodies start appearing hideously mutilated and the task falls to local Police Officer Morava an his Getstapo counterpart Buback to catch the killer. The author Kohout (who I think is Czech) resists the temptation to paint everything in black and white – Buback is a reasonably sympatethic character and the revenge of the Czech underground on so called collaborators (real and imagined) matches the brutality of the Nazis in nature if not scope. The German and Czech must put aside their differences if they are to catch the killer.
Great plot. Interesting characters. A different story of friendship and a great movie thriller waiting to get out. Highly recommended for thriller lovers.
Drama City – George Pelecanos
If you like your crime fiction hardboiled US style then you won’t get much better than Pelecanos. More recently he has been moving into film production and writing for TV (scripting a number of episodes of “The Wire”) but he did find time to get one book out this year, the by his standards relatively peaceful “drama city”.
In “drama city” Pelecanos introduces a new character after the two quartets of books featuring Greek P.I Nic Stefanos and Washington P.I Derek Strange. This is another novel set in the meaner streets of Washington. Former wannabee gangster Lorenzo is out of jail and determined to stay out. He gets a job with a centre looking after animals and travels the streets picking up stray dogs and working with the police to try and shut down the huge underground network of dog fights taking place in the city. His parole officer is the lovely Rachel who on the surface has everything under control but who in reality is a raging alcoholic prone to blackouts and picking up strangers in bars. Their stories are linked nicely as Lorenzo tries to do the right thing without ending up behind bars again. Not as violent or dark as preceding books with a minimal body count but still worth reading. If you’re a squeamish dog lover I’d probably avoid mind
: .
Wolves Eat Dogs– Martin Cruz Smith
Cruz Smith’s Russian detective Arkedy Renko remains best known for his first outing “Gorky Park” (filmed with William Hurt and Lee Marvin) but the series has improved with age and this fifth one is another fine outing. Russia is a society in chaos. The former U.S.S.R has broken down and a new generation of super wealthy has arisen. It is therefore a major headache for the police when Pasha Ivanov one of the wealthiest of these nouveau riche is found dead on the sidewalk below his impreganable penthouse suite having apparently jumped since no one has entered the building. It seems an open and shut case but the ever questioning Renko is bothered by a huge pile of salt in the man’s bedroom and further investigations reveal that the truth is less than straightforward.
The first half of the book is various people trying to thwart the investigation in Moscow (ex KGB, local thugs and former business partners) but the action steps up a gear when Ivanov’s business partner is found strangled in a cemetry deep within the “hot zone” of Chernobyl’s exclusion zone. The book really takes of here. It is apparently the first book set here and Smith spent some time within the zone (publishing excellent photograhs in a Sunday magazine). The zone supposedly off limits is in fact inhabited by a mixture of scientists, businessmen and those too old or too poor to move. Wildlife has returned (a nuclear disaster being a lot less destructive to animals than hunters someone explains) and everyone is trying to make a rouble whether through selling on contaminated meat or cannibalising the parts left behind on the thousands of abandoned clean up vehicles (themselves highly radioactive). The zone is tense and claustrophobic with Renko methodically hunting down the killer. Not as good as “Polar Star” but the setting is different, the minor characters as interesting as ever and the dedicated Renko trying his best to keep the mean streets clean.
What I Liked
Jacquot and the Angel– Martin O’Brien
Second outing for Marseilles based detective Jacquot after the excellent “Jacquot and the Waterman”. Definitely one of the more interesting detective creations of recent years, Jacquot is an ex French national squad rugby player who has never quite made the grade and has instead joined the police. Idiosyncratic and a loner he is investigating the brutal murder of a German family that is somehow linked in to WW2 German atrocities. He is joined in this one by a female psychic called “Angel” who seems to be a lot more accurate in her predictions than the average tarot card trickster. Bloody and tense until the end and even better than the first one.
Dark Fire – C.J.Samson
This is the second book to feature the hunchback lawyer Mattew Shardlake in the late 1530s. In terms of setting and atmosphere this book is as good as it gets. You’re reminded almost from the first page of the short and relatively brutal nature of life in the medieval times when Shardlake ponders retirement to the country as he nears the
old age of 40 
. Following the traumatic events of the first book “Dissolution” Shadlake is trying to keep a low profile when Henry VIII’s right hand man Cromwell calls him in to investigate the extremely messy murder of two alchemists. They have been working in secret on the creation of “dark fire” (in reality Greek fire an ancient precursor to napalm that seems whose “recipe” was lost around 100 years earlier). Cromwell blackmails Shardlake by obtaining a stay of execution on the torture of a young woman whom Shardlake represents who has been accused of murdering her nephew. If Shardlake finds the “Greek Fire” Cromwell will stop her being tortured. To assist (or spy?) on him he gives him the skinheaded swordsman Barak as his assistant. Cromwell has foolishly promised Henry an exhibition of a great new weapon in two weeks and so the two are given that length of time to solve the cases.
This is another fine book from Samson. Not as gory as the first but equally tense as the two struggle against the deadline. The period detail is brilliant and unlike a lot of historical detective fiction the character’s don’t seem to have 21st century attitudes out of step with their own times. Shardlake’s religious beliefs and his crisis’s of conscience appear strange to the modern reader but convey very clearly the importance of faith and religion to many 500 odd years ago. Shardlake is beginning to lose his religious faith and his belief in Henry’s and Cromwell’s religious reforms but with torture and murder everywhere he must bite his tongue. The relationship with Barak is also well drawn as they go from hostility to mutual respect. Shardlake’s is angry as ever with his deformity and his view of the outside world is has troubled as ever and once again he gets nowhere near the girl
. Looking forward to the third already.
Disappointing
Fleshmarket Close – Ian Rankin
15th Inspector Rebus book and one of the worst. Rebus and sidekick Siobhan have been sidelined to a new precint with barely a desk between them. This one is as much social commentary on Scotland’s immigration policies as detective novel which I wouldn’t have a problem with if the detective story was as good as they used be. It’s not. The main threads involve the murder of an asylum seeker about to reveal some unsavory secrets and the discovery of what turns out to be a plastic skeleton in an edinburg bar. I’ll probably get the next one only because Rebus’s long promised / postponed showdown with local crime boss McCafferty finally looks like being resolved. Get it secondhand if you like Rebus.
Very, very disappointing
Black Angel – John Connolly 
Fifth in the Charlie “Bird” Parker series that blur the line between horror and detective with an ever greater lurch towards the horror side. Becoming more and more obvious that the tormented
Parker is in fact a fallen angel/devil
. This one involves Parker and his various ill matched sidekicks trying to stop assorted neo-nazis and other low lifes excavating a statue in a monastery in the Czech Republic that supposedly contains a demon imprisoned in the middle ages. Even as I type this I’m laughing (and not in a good way)
. After the brilliantly different and inventive first novel “every dead thing” it was all downhill for Connolly and Parker. Still he sells loads with this sthcick so someone obviously likes it.
Some Christmas Books – Detective Novels
