Wessel Ebersohn
Mysteries
New in crime fiction: A guide to the latest thrillers and mysteries
Margaret Cannon
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published
Last updated
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The October Killings
By Wessel Ebersohn, St. Martin’s, 312 pages, $28.99
It’s been nearly 20 years since Wessel Ebersohn’s last mystery set in his native South Africa, more than 30 since he introduced the psychologist Yudel Gordon in A Lonely Place To Die. The October Killings brings Gordon back in a brilliant novel of memory, reconciliation and revenge. Ebersohn was always one of South Africa’s best, and this new book – the beginning of, I hope, a series – shows why.
We begin in 1985, the final decade of apartheid, with a raid on a group of anti-apartheid activists, and then skip 20 years to the new South Africa. Abigail Bukula is an icon of the new black majority. With her western university degrees, she’s a coming star in the Department of Justice. Her husband is the editor of a prestigious newspaper. She is also a survivor of that 1985 raid in which her parents died.
Abigail survived because Leon Lourens, a 19-year-old white soldier, spoke in her defence, saving her from a massacre. She has not seen him in 20 years, and when he appears in her office in Pretoria, all that history is revived. He is neither rich nor powerful, but he needs a friend who is. Someone is killing, one by one, the soldiers who participated in the raid. Each Oct. 22, one dies. There are now only two left, himself and the colonel who commanded. The colonel is in a maximum-security prison. Leon knows that this Oct. 22, it’s his turn. He has a wife and children.
Abigail knows who the murderer is and so does Leon. No one knows where he is. To find him, Abigail will have to meet with the imprisoned colonel, and for that, she needs the help of Yudel Gordon, now a part-time consultant at the prison.
Ebersohn never loses the narrative thread, and there isn’t an extraneous syllable in this tight, intelligent novel that weaves history and politics. Definitely one of the best mysteries of the year.
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The Sentry
By Robert Crais, Putnam, 306 pages, $33.50
Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole series is one of the best in American crime fiction. Fans always knew that Joe Pike was the most interesting of the many fascinating Crais characters, and they were delighted when Crais took Pike out of the background and made him the hero of The Watchman and The First Rule. He’s back in The Sentry (Cole gets second billing), one of Crais’s best.
Pike witnesses a savage beating by a neighbourhood gang. The victim is the owner of a local L.A. store. Pike learns that the man and his niece, Dru, are refugees from Hurricane Katrina. He offers his aid and protection and is surprised when they refuse. Naturally, Joe Pike isn’t going to let go, which puts him on the cold trail of a dangerous criminal.
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The Second Son
By Jonathan Rabb, Farrar Straus Giroux, 336 pages, $29.95
This is the final book in the Rabb’s trilogy featuring Berlin policeman Nicolai Hoffner, set in Europe between the World Wars. This is well-trod noir ground, but Rabb does a decent job of weaving history and cop slang.
It’s the eve of Hitler’s Olympics and Hoffner is unemployed. As a half-Jew, he’s no longer a chief inspector of the Kriminalpolizei. His eldest son, race notwithstanding, is a fervent Nazi and a rising star. His second son, Georg, is missing, lost in Spain where the Civil War is raging. Georg’s last sighting was Barcelona, so Hoffner, determined to save his son, heads for the Spanish cockpit where socialists, anarchists, democrats, communists and fascists from half a dozen countries kill and die. Everyone lies in Barcelona, but Hoffner has to trust someone and unravel the clue Georg has left him.
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Grayling Cross
By Gayleen Froese, NeWest, 303 pages, $19.95
Grayling Cross is the second novel by musician and author Gayleen Froese, and it combines the latest in supernatural talents with mystery. If you can believe in Edmonton as a hive of magicians and psychics, then this is for you.
Psychic Anna Gareau works with PR expert Collie Kostyna. Their job is to keep the lid on any information about the local magicians, particularly their biggest client, the underground supernatural society known as the Embassy. When a teenage psychic goes missing in the ghost town of Grayling Cross, Gareau and Kostyna are hired to liaise with local supernaturalists and help find the missing kid. When an employee of the Embassy is found murdered under deeply suspicious circumstances, it appears that Gareau and Kostyna’s client is the killer.
This is a lively novel filled with action, both real and unreal. Froese’s dialogue is a bit leaden, but that doesn’t drag down the plot. It appears that Anna and Collie are scheduled to return.
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A Bone to Pick
By Charlaine Harris, Berkley, 262 pages, $32.50
No one does eccentric southern Gothic quite like Charlaine Harris. Of course, Sookie Stackhouse and the vampires of Bon Temps, Louisiana, are now the stars of HBO’s True Blood. But Harris’s talents go far beyond fangs and fancy, and A Bone to Pick hasn’t a Goth in sight. Instead we have Aurora Teagarden, librarian of the small southern town of Lawrenceton, attending three weddings and a funeral.
The funeral is for her friend Jane Engle, whom Roe knew through their membership in a local (now disbanded) crime study club. It appears that Jane has left her very substantial estate to Roe, and it includes a house with a skull hidden in the window seat. The clues fall fast in this clever little puzzle, but it’s the strange characters who keep the story running.
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Sitting Lady Sutra
By Kay Stewart, TouchWood, 254 pages, $26.95
RCMP Constable Danutia Dranchuk made her debut in A Deadly Little List, which Stewart co-authored with Chris Bullock. Stewart is on her own in this very good sequel, which has Dranchuk up to her elbows in a murder at Vancouver Island’s popular Sitting Lady Falls. Evidence leads her to two more suspicious deaths which may or may not be connected. Meanwhile, three other characters cross Danutia’s path: a parolee, a busboy and a confused young art student.
There’s a touch too much plot in this slight novel, but Stewart, a former English teacher and the author of two writing textbooks, keeps the action moving and the characters peppy.
