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U IS FOR UNDERTOW By Sue Grafton, Putnam, 400 pages, $35

This is book 21 for this series, and despite a few bobbles, Sue Grafton still manages to keep the plots fresh and the characters hopping. U is one of her best, relying on a terrific plot built around four families with secrets. Incidentally, we get some of Kinsey Millhone's own history as the tale takes us back to 1963, when she was a high-school student.

Grafton has kept her characters chronologically correct. That means that book 21 is set in 1988, when Kinsey turns 38. There are no computers, cellphones or BlackBerrys, and the fax is much in use. This can be unnerving, but what's remarkable is that Grafton keeps control of all the tiny descriptive elements that, if confused, would blow the whole scene. That's also true of the events set in 1963.

The "current" event is Kinsey's latest client, a young man named Michael Sutton. Michael remembers a terrible event from his childhood, the disappearance of a six-year-old girl. He also recalls two men he saw digging a hole and one with a large pack slung over a shoulder. Was he witness to a murder? Or a burial?

Kinsey takes the case for a single day, but events compel her to continue, even as Michael's family brings forward very convincing arguments that it is all the delusion of a very mixed-up man who craves attention and will go to extremes to get it.

As Kinsey searches, Grafton takes us back to 1963 and the socially prominent Unruh family, their disappointing son, his girlfriend, Shelley, and another set of events that will change a family forever. As that story unwinds, we meet the members of other families, students at Louisville high school, and how Kinsey Millhone fits into all this.

Grafton's great talent is in keeping the story moving and the reader engaged. Fans know that Kinsey, orphaned young and raised by her emotionally distant aunt, has recently discovered a family she didn't know she had. The revelation hasn't been terribly joyful on either side, but now they want to know Kinsey. This subplot is reflected in the complicated and vexing family circumstances she's investigating.

The action doesn't stop, the wisecracks snap, and Grafton's sure pacing keeps it all moving. After all this time, Kinsey Millhone still has her spark.



THE PRICE OF MALICE By Archer Mayor, St. Martin's/Minotaur, 308 pages, $31.99

The Joe Gunther series, set in Vermont, is one of the best around, so it's always a shock to me to discover how many readers haven't discovered it yet. With its excellent noir touches, terrific plots and really interesting central character, it ought to appear to be at the top of most lists. If you haven't already jumped on the Archer Mayor bandwagon, The Price of Malice is the perfect place to start.

Gunther, head of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation homicide team, is faced with a bloody and merciless murder. The victim, Wayne Castine, was tortured and then stabbed repeatedly. The murderer clearly hated Castine and that leaves a lot of suspects, because he was a child molester, a serial offender, never caught, never convicted. Even the hardened investigators of the VBI admit that whoever killed this one took evil off the streets.

This is not, however, Joe Gunther's concern. Regardless of cause, murder is murder and the perpetrator must be caught. As he begins the search for clues, Joe is faced with a serious crisis in his own life. His lover, Lyn Silva, is in search of the resolution to a mystery of her own, one that Joe unwittingly created. It appears that her adored father and brother, presumed lost at sea years ago, were murdered, possibly because they were involved in drug smuggling.

As the VBI team hunts for a killer, Joe races back and forth between his duties to the current case and his need to maintain his relationship with Lyn. Mayor doesn't let this clash between duty and love become too gooey. This is a grown-up series with grown-up conflicts.

And don't be misled by the pretty rural setting. Archer Mayor, an investigator for the Vermont chief medical officer, knows that crime is ugly no matter how lovely the surroundings.



POISONVILLE By Massimo Carlotto and Marco Videtta, translated by Antony Shugaar, Europa, 240 pages, $18.50

Italian business, politics and gangsterism make for a potent stew, one in which reality long ago outstripped the fictional imagination. Massimo Carlotto has made a career of stories ripped from Italian headlines and thinly rewritten as fiction. This is noir with a vengeance, the kind of fiction Dashiell Hammett believed in.

Poisonville, taking its name from Hammett's Red Harvest, is a statement about wealth, politics, crime and corruption, set in Italy's northeast, the country's wealthiest and most advanced area.

On a Wednesday like any other, a beautiful woman named Giovanna is on the way to meet her lover. She is about to be married to another man, but she craves her purely sexual partner. They meet, they make love, she relaxes in the bath, and she is murdered.

Giovanna's fiancé is Francesco Visentin, son of the second-richest man in town. He is an elegant snob, filled to the brim with his own entitlement. He associates only with other wealthy and connected people. Giovanna was to be his jewel. Her death forces him to face some nasty facts, all of which are carefully put to him by his doting and protective father, Filippo.

This is a novel where no one comes off well. The victim is a beautiful woman corrupted by the society that bred her. Francesco is the kind of man we love to see get his comeuppance. All of it is a metaphor for the wealthy and corrupt Padua-Vicenza area of Italy, which was the industrial engine of wealth for the entire county and then began losing jobs and factories to cheaper labour in Eastern Europe and China.

It's also about people who want to maintain power at any cost. In Red Harvest, the rich and powerful capitalists fouled their own nest by bringing in criminals to break a strike. Poisonville brings that grim story up to date and does it superbly.



RAGGED CHAIN By Vivian Meyer, Sumach, 221 pages, $16.75

This is the second outing for budding Toronto PI Abby Faria, and it shows that Vivian Meyer is no one-book wonder. Faria's debut in Bottom Bracket, set in Toronto's Kensington Market, was a delightful romp. Ragged Chain, which takes us on a bike tour of one of British Columbia's gorgeous Gulf Islands, is just as clever, and Abby is as engaging a central character as one could desire.

The story begins with Abby, her friend Anita (the survivor from Bottom Bracket) and her boyfriend, Dr. Andy Jaegar, at the airport headed for a well-deserved holiday. Then Anita is terrified when she sees someone from her past ordeal. Is it possible that danger is still following her? Worse, the man is having an animated chat with Andy. When Abby intervenes, he seems a positive paean to the normal, cheerily recommending bike trails and fun visits.

Once installed on luscious Peregrine Island, Abby, Anita and Andy are ready for sun, scenery and fun, but there's the noxious odour wafting over from the nearby paper mill, and then the dead body of the local pulpwood magnate is discovered. Abby is soon up to her ears in ecological warfare and murder.



A CHRISTMAS PROMISE By Anne Perry, Ballantine, 193 pages, $22

The seventh Christmas confection by Perry is, like the others, a charming Victorian Christmas card disguised as a mystery novella. This one, featuring 13-year-old Gracie Phipps, is more precious than usual. The setting is London's famous East End. The date is 1883 and Gracie discovers Minnie Maud Mudway, 8, in search of her best friend Charlie.

The search for Charlie, a donkey, leads Gracie to the scene of a particularly gruesome murder (Perry's interest in gore transcends the holiday season). Charlie's owner, Minnie Maud's uncle and a well-known rag-and-bone man, is the victim. The two children set off to find and rescue Charlie, following Uncle Alf's final trip, and that lets Perry take us into the heart of Victorian London from a child's point of view.

A Christmas Promise is, as always, a gift to Perry's many fans, but it's also a solid little story that will delight other mystery lovers as well.



MURDER ON THE CLIFFS By Joanna Challis, Minotaur, 304 pages, $31.99

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

That line, the opening of Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca, is one of the most famous in all mystery fiction lore. It sets both mood and place. The "again" is the perfect note of anticipated suspense, and it introduces us to the unnamed narrator who will take us on the journey. In short, it is a superb start for a great novel. In contrast, we have Joanna Challis's attempt to reconstruct it. Alas, "The storm led me to Padthaway" doesn't satisfy the same way.

Challis, an Australian, is the latest author to attempt to turn a famous author into a detective. We have Jane Austen tripping about and Virginia Woolf had her brief outing. Now we have Daphne du Maurier skipping along the cliffs of Cornwall and discovering the body of a drowned woman, who is, of course, the fiancée of the local lord.

The lord lives in a marvellous Elizabethan mansion (the Padthaway of the opening), which will later inspire the author's Manderley. Du Maurier, daughter of a famous and aristocratic father, is welcome to invade Padthaway and snoop to her heart's content. Many secrets are hidden and revealed in appropriately melodramatic prose before the truth of the woman's death is revealed.

Fans of Daphne du Maurier may not like this book, but those who haven't discovered the glories of Rebecca and Jamaica Inn will love it - and, I hope, read the real stuff.

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