Life Or Death by Michael Robotham
Life Or Death by Michael Robotham, Little, Brown, 434 pages, $22.99
Why would a man who has spent 10 years in prison, doing very hard time, then break out the night before he's due for release? That's the premise of this sensational thriller from Michael Robotham, whose mastery of the dark and threatening is on full display here.
The story begins with a man who can't swim attempting to float across a lake on a pontoon made of plastic bottles. Could it work? I won't try it to see but it's plausible. It's also only the first of the ways that Audie Palmer, convicted thief and suspected murderer, skirts the edge of death. Audie knows all about death; it's dogged him every day in prison. He was the driver on a heist gone wrong. His brother escaped with the haul, and everyone, from cons to cops, believes that Audie knows where the money is and they want to beat the location out of him.
How Audie escapes – and why – is the plotline, but it's the twists and moves that keep the pace going. This is one you won't put down until the final word.
The Burning Room by Michael Connelly, Little, Brown, 388 pages, $31
The Harry Bosch series has never had a bad day but The Burning Room is one of the best ever in this lengthy series. Connelly spikes the action by giving Harry a snappy new partner, Lucia Soto, and sending them out on a very old, very cold, and very, very hot political case. Orlando Merced was a mariachi musician, playing at the wedding of an up-and-coming politician, when he was shot in a random drive-by. He lived, but as a paraplegic plagued by everything from bedsores to blood poisoning. Now, 10 years later, he's dead. The bullet in his spine is what killed him and so, a decade after the event, it's murder. This one has everything that has made Connelly one of America's best crime authors.
None So Blind by Barbara Fradkin, Dundurn, 384 pages, $17.99
Some series begin to sag when they hit book 10, but Barbara Fradkin's latest Inspector Green installment isn't one of them. Two-time Arthur Ellis Award winner Fradkin serves up a superb plot as Green revisits an old cold case. Twenty years ago, he helped convict one of the professors of a co-ed who was found murdered. The man insisted on his innocence and continued to send letters to Green. Within days of his release on parole, the professor is dead. Revenge? Or was Green wrong all those years ago? As he digs into the old records, the possibility that he destroyed a man's life and may be responsible for his death gives this case special meaning.
Malice by Keigo Higashino, translated by Alexander O. Smith, Minotaur, 288 pages, $28.99
The Japanese have a long tradition of fine crime writing but for decades, the west only saw touches of talent buried by bad translations. That time, fortunately, is past, and Malice, a brilliant locked-room mystery by Edgar-nominated Higashino, is a tightly written mystery with all its wit and sensibility intact. The corpse is of Kunihiko Hidaka, one of Japan's best-selling novelists. He is brutally murdered on the night before he planned to leave Japan and resettle in Vancouver. Detective Inspector Kyochiro Kaga spots a likely suspect early on, but getting the evidence, and, more importantly, discovering how a man was murdered in a locked room in a locked house, means clever ratiocination. This is perfect for readers who like puzzle plots.
Bodies And Sole by Hilary MacLeod, Acorn, 320 pages, $22.95
We're back in The Shores, the lovely spot off PEI where there's an ocean view in every window and a lobster in every pot. It's the village's 200th anniversary and tourism liaison Hy McAllister has her hands full. There's a provincial tourism official trying to turn the village into a 17th-century theme park and Hy wants local expert Gus Mack to write up a book of historical memories. He's refusing. Then there's the skull washing about in the tide with a tooth missing, and when that tooth turns up it sends Hy running to Mountie Jane Jamieson with a tale about death and a dysfunctional family that may or may not have something to hide. MacLeod's gentle local mysteries are like a good old afghan on a winter night. Curl up and enjoy.
Black Karma by Thatcher Robinson, Seventh Street Books, 275 pages, $17
If you missed the first Bai Jiang novel, White Ginger, plan on running out for it as soon as you finish Black Karma. You're going to want to know all of Bai's blistering history and adventures in this slick little San Francisco series. This time out, Bai has more than her hands full. She's in the sights of an international intelligence agency that knows how to make people talk and, worse, make them disappear.