Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 6. Whole No. 778, June 2006

The Jury Box by Jon L. Breen

Copyright © 2006 Jon L. Breen

How broadly can the crime-mystery-suspense genre be defined? Consider two new novels, one written for an audience of adults, the other for teenagers, but both able to cross those boundaries and find receptive readers. Whether they are truly crime novels is arguable, but they are certainly structured as mysteries. Both have apparent supernatural overtones, the extent uncertain to the end, and include some unconventional detection. Pigeonholes aside, both are highly recommended.

**** Sally Beauman: The Sisters Mortland, Warner, $24.95. In a complexly constructed, beautifully written novel that is just as unconventional a family saga as it is a mystery, multiple narrators cover three decades in the life of the titular sisters, whose summer of 1967 ended in gradually revealed tragedy at the family home, a medieval Suffolk abbey. The book is longer than it needs to be — few 432-page novels aren’t — but the characters and their relationships are enthralling, believable, and constantly surprising. Most of the questions posed are answered, but the reader is left wondering about the motivation for the central act and how much of the supernatural element is real and how much purely psychological.

**** Brent Hartinger: Grand & Humble, HarperTempest, $15.99. Two high school students — one a popular athlete and Senator’s son, the other a geeky outsider — are troubled, by premonitions and nightmares respectively. In alternate chapters, they are brought to an astonishing surprise ending, unlikely to be anticipated but fairly clued for the reader detective. The immensely talented author is a master of structure, but even without the stunt conclusion, the well-realized characters would grip readers of all ages.

**** Max Allan Collins: Road to Paradise, Morrow, $24.95. It is now 1973, and Michael Satariano (Michael O’Sullivan) has the relatively legit job of managing a Lake Tahoe gambling resort when holdovers from his criminal past necessitate his killing once again. This remarkable piece of sustained storytelling is the best of the trilogy that began with the graphic novel (later great film) Road to Perdition. (Collins is so generally good on period detail, it’s a shame one of his characters misuses the phrase “begs the question” in the currently trendy and abominable fashion.)

**** Lisa Scottoline: Dirty Blonde, HarperCollins, $25.95. Federal Judge Cate Fante’s compulsion to pick up men in sleazy bars threatens her career when murder and blackmail follow her reluctant decision in a case charging theft of a TV series concept. Of the many legal thriller writers in current practice, Scottoline ranks in the top handful by virtue of her people, plot, humor, and vivid Philadelphia background. This is among her best.

*** William Bernhardt: Capitol Murder, Ballantine, $25.95. In a Washington, D.C., federal court, Ben Kincaid defends Senator Todd Glancy, Democrat of Oklahoma, on charges of murdering intern Veronica Cooper, with whom he had a video-documented sexual relationship. Bernhardt’s trial action is so excellent, some buffs may resent leaving it so often for the investigation of a vampire cult. The main clue is admirably fair, but experienced readers will already have guessed the killer, unless they think the least-suspected-person gimmick is too ancient for contemporary recycling.

*** Kerry Greenwood: Cocaine Blues, Poisoned Pen, $23.95. The first novel about roaring-’twenties amateur detective Phryne Fisher, published in Australia in 1989, concerns Melbourne’s drug and abortion industries. The tricky plot, lively writing, likable flapper sleuth, and superb sense of period will delight readers who have already read (or will be motivated to seek) later books in the series already issued by Poisoned Pen.

*** Stuart M. Kaminsky: Terror Town, Forge, $23.95. Chicago cop Abe Lieberman works on cases involving a troubled former Chicago Cub, a murdered single mother with un-explained sudden wealth, a street-preaching son of a rabbi who may be madman or conman or both, and an inner-city savior with political aspirations but a closet full of skeletons. Though this one lacks the resonance of some other books in a distinguished series, Lieberman is always stimulating company.

*** Linda Fairstein: Death Dance, Scribner, $26. In a case with acknowledged similarities to a real-life 1980 murder, the Metropolitan Opera House again becomes a crime scene, as a prima ballerina first disappears and later is found dead, with a multiplicity of possible suspects for D.A. Alex Cooper and her police colleagues. Part of the plot involves a proposed musical based on the early-20th-century Harry K. Thaw-Stanford White-Evelyn Nesbit case. Always determined to give her readers their money’s worth, Fairstein provides a wealth of detail about New York theater history along with the crime problem.

The spirit of Ellery Queen lives on in a new character from Jim French Productions, that prolific provider of radio mysteries. The sleuth in Hilary Caine Mysteries ($9.95 for a CD of three shows), as written by M. J. Elliott and played by Karen Heaven, is an engaging and original character. The resident “girl detective” for a 1930s English tabloid will amuse some listeners, irritate others, and have both effects on many, in the mode of Golden Age sleuths like Lord Peter Wimsey, Philo Vance, Roger Sheringham, Reggie Fortune, and the early EQ. (The similarity of name, as made clear in the first episode, is a deliberate homage.) The plots are ingenious and fairly clued, though amenable to nitpicking; the tone humorous and ironic.

Among the reprints is one of the best formal detective novels of the past twenty years, Aaron Elkins’s 1987 Edgar best-novel winner Old Bones (Berkley, $6.99), about Skeleton Detective Gideon Oliver. One of the top paperback characters of the 1950s, Stephen Marlowe’s Washington, D.C., private eye Chester Drum, is revisited in the un-usual and suspenseful Violence Is My Business (1958), paired with the earlier non-series Turn Left for Murder (1955) in a new omnibus (Stark House, $19.95) introduced by Marlowe.

The fifteenth edition of the loose-leaf Edward D. Hoch Bibliography (Moffatt House, P.O. Box 4456, Downey, CA 90241-1456; $10 plus $5 postage and handling), compiled by June M. Moffatt and Francis M. Nevins with several essays by Marvin Lachman, covers 1955 to early 2006 in an exhaustive 161 pages. For the statistically minded: Captain Leopold leads all Hoch series characters in appearances with 106 since March 1957, while Simon Ark is unchallenged in longevity with 59 cases since December 1955. Other long-lived and busy characters: Ben Snow (41 since 1961), Jeffery Rand (83 since 1965), Nick Velvet (84 since 1966), and Dr. Sam Hawthorne (68 since 1974).