My April 2nd mystery column for the Chicago Sun-Times never made it onto their website (although it did run in the newspaper), so I'm including it here for those of you who might want to read it.
Welcome, old friend
By David J. Montgomery
It has been six years since Myron Bolitar last made an appearance in a Harlan Coben novel, and his return in Promise Me (Dutton, 384 pages, $26.95) is welcome news for his legions of fans.
For Bolitar, a former pro basketball star turned sports-and-entertainment agent, the intervening years have been dull. He gave up his avocation as a righter of wrongs and has been focusing on his career instead. He’s even thinking about settling down, enjoying a quiet romantic life with Ali Wilder, a 9/11 widow.
The old urges are difficult to ignore, however, and when the teenage friend of Wilder’s daughter goes missing, Bolitar breaks out his tarnished old suit of armor and rides off to help the damsel in distress.
Bolitar may have lost a step or two since we saw him last, but his creator certainly hasn’t. The past six years of writing high-concept thrillers have taught Coben a thing or two about creating page-turning suspense, something that this book has in spades.
Reading Promise Me is like spending time with an old friend that you hadn’t realized you missed. The reappearance of Myron Bolitar is welcome, indeed.
Kris Nelscott’s Days of Rage (St. Martin's Minotaur, 336 pages, $24.95) is the sixth book in the series featuring Smokey Dalton, an unlicensed private detective working in Chicago during the late 1960s. The trial of the Chicago 8 in the wake of the Grant Park disturbance during the 1968 Democratic convention holds the city in its grip, and the accompanying protests and demonstrations threaten to tear apart the already polarized community.
Against that backdrop, Dalton is hired to investigate an abandoned apartment building whose manager died under suspicious circumstances. Dalton soon discovers that the building’s basement is a chamber of horrors, hiding dark secrets that stretch back for decades.
Days of Rage is interesting, but also frustrating. The story takes much too long to get moving, and even when it does, there is little sense of mystery or suspense. While the author’s prose is excellent, the tale is just too anemic to succeed as a detective novel.
Through four previous novels, former Los Angeles Times reporter Denise Hamilton has led her heroine, Eve Diamond, on a series of adventures throughout the City of Angels, paying particular emphasis to the area’s various ethnic subcultures.
With her latest book, Prisoner of Memory (Scribner, 384 pages, $24.00), Diamond explore L.A.’s Russian community. Like her creator, Diamond is a journalist by trade, and her pursuit of the story behind a young Russian emigre’s murder leads her down paths both provocative and dangerous.
Compared to the previous Diamond standouts, Prisoner of Memory is a disappointment. While Hamilton’s exploration of contemporary Los Angeles is as intriguing as ever, the plot isn’t her best. Although the story is still entertaining, it lacks the magic of the rest of the series.
Ever since his breathtaking debut novel, Gun Monkeys, Victor Gischler has quietly been carving out a career as one of the best practitioners of quirky comic noir. His latest novel, Shotgun Opera (Dell, 304 pages, $6.99), enhances that reputation.
Back in the ‘60s, Mike Foley worked as a mob enforcer in New York City, but he gave that up years ago. Now he spends his days in seclusion, tending to the vines on his hardscrabble Oklahoma winery.
As is always the case with violent pasts, Foley’s returns to haunt him. His nephew has run afoul of dangerous characters, causing an unimaginably deadly assassin to be set on his trail. Who else could the boy turn to but his Uncle Mike?
So begins a symphony of violence, punctuated with the dark humor that characterizes Gischler’s work. Shotgun Opera is not for the faint of heart. It is, however, the perfect book for anyone who likes their action fast, furious and funny.
James Sallis’ Cripple Creek (Walker & Company, 272 pages, $23.00) is the second novel to feature ex-cop and ex-con Turner, now working as a deputy sheriff in Cripple Creek, Tenn. When Turner’s boss arrests a stranger caught speeding through town and finds $200,000 cash in the trunk of his car, a deadly chain of events is touched off.
The plot is almost secondary to the prose, and that is where Sallis distinguishes himself. In addition to his masterly novels, Sallis is known for his work as a poet, and the lyrical beauty of his words shines through his pages. The story unfolds with the cadence of the down-home music that plays such an important part in the characters’ lives, weaving stories from the past through the narrative of the present to create a harmonious melody.
It’s a crime that a writer this good isn’t better known.
David J. Montgomery is the editor of Mystery Ink (www.mysteryinkonline.com).
