Depths of Evil, Roots of Crime, in THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND, Stuart Neville

Stuart Neville is the master of "Belfast Noir," gritty crime fiction set in and around Belfast, Northern Ireland. The port city is a living memorial to "The Troubles" -- the political and religious fever that drove Neville's earlier series, where violence kept emerging in successive family generations, responding to the horrors and repression of the 20th century (which, let's face it, were rooted in turn in the "Potato Famine" oppression).

In THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND, Neville forsakes his series and its close ties to recent history. Instead, through two powerful women in law enforcement and a pair of very damaged brothers, he probes the nature of evil and the way it spreads. The contagion of the murder committed by 12-year-old Ciaran Devine and his older brother Thomas has infected DCI Serena Flanagan, who received Ciaran's confession eight years earlier.

Flanagan's never quite believed the confession, though. Maternal instincts, perhaps? The young foster child seemed too vulnerable, too much manipulated by his darker brother. And it's clear to Flanagan that Ciaran's insistence on being the only killer of the boys' foster father -- leaving Thomas as accomplice -- has saved Thomas from a lengthy prison sentence and made sure that Ciaran's own was "just" the eight years assigned to a child.

Flanagan's kept her doubts close to her chest. But that, in turn, has festered: Her return to police work at the same time of Ciaran's release from prison is a return from radiation treatment for breast cancer. Although she's not especially introspective, Neville leaves little doubt that Flanagan's urge to pull young Ciaran -- now a hormonally confused young man -- to her breast may be a toxic mistake.

Then there's Paula Cunningham, the dedicated Probation Service officer who'll escort Ciaran out of prison and into the monitored life ahead of him.

Cunningham had entered the Probation Service twelve years ago ... As a postgraduate student, she had spent summers working on the wards of psychiatric units, then a year in Maghaberry prison, counselling inmates. She had learned things in those days that would stay with her until her last breath, like the terrible cost of casual violence, and how poorly the system dealt with those who inflicted it.

But was the action of the Devine boys casual violence, or was it planned revenge? And what revenge may the surviving family member of that long-ago foster household desire?

While the twisted menace of Ciaran and Thomas is a meticulous portrait of how abuse can blossom as violence, Neville's compelling investigation of what drives DCI Flanagan becomes the counterstroke of the plot.

Flanagan had seen many murder scenes. The ugliness of the act, the indignity of it. ... Sudden and violent death rarely visited those with stable lives, with loving families, with purpose to their days. More often than not, murder happened on drunken nights between friends brought together by their mutual dependencies, petty arguments exploding into bloodshed, kitchen knives buried in throats, heads cracked open by heavy objects. No planning, no intent, only rage unleashed.

But this was different.

Flanagan's effort to get Ciaran to tell the truth involves showing him that he can survive without being a puppet of his malicious older brother. But by threatening the bond of the brothers, Flanagan unleashes a tide of rage and violence against all the people around them -- especially these two women in law enforcement. Is it worth it? How good are her instincts? What evidence can there be, or what subsequent admissions?

Don't look for quintessential "Irishness" in this one -- aside from the scraps of Belfast language and the slightly different criminal justice system, THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND could take place in any harsh urban environment, even in a suburb. And that broad application, coupled with relentless insight into abuse and its consequences, is what makes this book an instant classic of crime and investigation.

There's a rumor that Flanagan will be a series character herself. That's good news: Stuart Neville's decision to confront crime's long roots may benefit us all. And to publisher Soho Crime, again -- thanks.

Indelible Darkness: THE HOUSE OF ASHES by Stuart Neville

In a fierce and powerful twist away from his crime fiction that roots in Ireland's "Troubles," Stuart Neville's September 7 release THE HOUSE OF ASHES (Soho Crime) is a stand-alone stirring the tides of domestic violence. Narrated in two time periods -- a dread-saturated present-day one of Sara Keane, newly arrived in Northern Ireland with an abusive and criminal husband (and his much more frightening father), and a set of multiple murder recollections from 60 years back, in the mind of the elderly Mary Jackson, more or less incarcerated in a "care" home -- this hardboiled thriller paints a shattering image of how absolute power becomes absolute control. Of life, itself.

More than the actual plot, the power of THE HOUSE OF ASHES comes from its blunt revelation of men's potential brutality. It's hard to connect this to the politically scented preceding Neville novels: There's nothing in either Sara's abusers (vintage mob-style dominators) or Mary's (three men who treat women as rape-able animals and kill of their babies) that can be tied directly to the emotional trauma of Irish life. Except one morsel, delivered early in the book through Sara's eyes:

[Sara] had met Damien at the University of Bath, he a postgrad architecture student, she in her second year of studying for a social work degree. She would never have imagined, even after they married, that she would come to live in the place he never ever called Northern Ireland. Always the North, the North of Ireland, sometimes the Six Counties, but never Northern Ireland. As if to speak its name would shame him.

Their move to a house that Damien's father has purchased and rebuilt for them—from a fire-struck wreck—is supposed to be a fresh start, removing Sara from the place where she'd had a breakdown and installing Damien as an architect in his father's property development firm.

But the arrival of a confused elderly woman at the house shatters Sara's preoccupation with staying obedient and blind, and as Mary Jackson's background becomes clear, Sara can't close her eyes to her own situation.

This is a work of psychological horror, drenched in blood, death, and sexual abuse. Perhaps only Stuart Neville could bend the arc of narrative in such a way as to make the story compelling. The terrors revealed and persisting match the book against such classics as Silence of the Lambs, but Neville leaves open the possibility that either Sara or Mary may escape the surrounding real-life nightmare.

It would be comforting to think that this fictional version is a wild exaggeration of abuse that doesn't actually take place in real life. Unfortunately, despite the persisting paranormal threads that are so classically Neville's, this crime novel makes real situations violently present and unforgettable. Read at your own risk ... but trust that the author also knows what impels survival and escape.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Release Day: THE FINAL SILENCE, Belfast Very Very Noir, from Stuart Neville

The fifth book in Stuart Neville's Belfast, Northern Ireland, series reached publication today. That's a very good thing. THE FINAL SILENCE continues the harsh, difficult saga of (now former) police inspector Jack Lennon, as he fights for a medical pension, for a chance to raise his own daughter, and for his self-respect.

But all his battles happen on the killing ground of murderers and perverts, and this one opens in the home of a recently dead man, Raymond Drew. His niece Rea Carlyle -- herself the daughter of an up-and-coming politician, Graham Carlyle, who's so close to what he wants that he can't afford to let anyone stand in the way -- sees her own chances improving when her parents offer to give her the newly vacant house where Raymond lived in solitude for so many years. It's easy enough to clear out the few impersonal items her uncle lived with. But a locked door to one more room commands Rea's attention, and when, solo, she manages to pry the door open, the journal of perversion and murder that she discovers turns loose the forces of darkness around her.

A recent roundup of "Nordic noir" by New York Times reviewer Marilyn Stasio pointed out that the crush of dark Scandinavian mysteries and thrillers that recently raced to translation into English (following the path of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) build their power from the force of politics in those wintry nations. It's not just their national entanglements with Germany during the two "World Wars" that pounds through these books, but also mass murders, ethnic prejudice, torn social fabric in the transformation of rural peoples into crowded urban lifestyles. (I recommend it: here.)

Similarly, Neville's Belfast series has taken the pain and horror of Northern Ireland's history and used it to construct malicious gangsters, potent sociopaths, family networks of poisonous loyalties. Through Inspector Jack Lennon and his intermittently psychic daughter Ellen, and a few other "sensitive" if dangerous acquaintances, Neville has poured the horrors of the Irish past into both killers and hauntings. He's made it clear that the ghosts that threaten us are the guilty crimes of our pasts -- and he's done it with adept storytelling.

Now, in THE FINAL SILENCE, Neville lets the force of history slip backstage as he focuses on Jack Lennon and the crushed and disgraced career that Jack's dragging behind him like a deadened limb. Somewhere in the discovered journal and the devastated family that's linked to it, Jack Lennon sees the "one more crime" that demands his skills, whether or not he's officially on the case. But how successful can a man be whose life is such a train wreck? One of the few retired officers who still believes in Jack Lennon is his old colleague Chief Inspector Uprichard -- but even he turns blunt with Jack, despite sharing a shard of personal loss with him. What does it matter if such a sorry wreck as Jack Lennon says he's sorry for Uprichard?

"I don't need your pity," Uprichard said. "I just need you to understand that I won't help you if you won't help yourself. You've been digging yourself into this hole for how long now? When are you going to reach the bottom? You've all but lost your career. Your daughter's gone. You've got a cop after you for murder. How much worse does it have to get for you, Jack, before you stop digging?"

And yet with all that -- and all the blood and threat around Jack -- there is, as it has been before in Neville's work, a question of the dogged human capacity for loyalty and love that might, just might, put an end to a series of deaths.

But really -- what will it take for Jack Lennon to give up self-medicating and forge a new partnership with a real investigator? And what else does he have to lose?

Neville's pace and relentless pressure on his characters create a book that can't be put down (at least, if you're willing to read your way into such darkness to start with). A police manhunt by broken people who can't help fighting for justice ... yes, that's well worth reading, in this latest Belfast neo-noir. And no, you won't need to read the other four first. But each of them is different, and powerful, and I recommend them all. From Soho Crime, once again.

SO SAY THE FALLEN, Belfast Noir from Stuart Neville

Last year around this time, Stuart Neville's Those We Left Behind brought us Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Serena Flanagan on the Belfast police force, an investigator whose personal commitment to determining the truth of a crime takes her into "contagious" contact with evil that drains from a generation of malice. In SO SAY THE FALLEN (Soho Press), Flanagan's struggling to find her way out of an explosive episode of posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD. It looks like she's going to lose at least her marriage and probably her children as she clings to the structure of work to hold herself together. Work, and overwork. Who hasn't been there, done that -- or at least witnessed it?

But when work involves murderers and other malicious narcissists  -- blackmailers, cheaters, liars -- embracing it is dangerous to the soul. Flanagan's son doesn't want her to put him to bed or even read him a story. Her daughter's even more blunt: "You're never here." She knows her husband is almost ready to leave.

With a crisis like that at home, she ought to let go of the death that her supervisor wants declared a sympathetic suicide, the slide into death-by-pills of a gravely injured and maimed man. But the case clings to her, with those small indications that pull a good detective into compulsion to investigate. Along the way, torn in spirit and emotion, Flanagan confides something of her own despair to the local church rector, the Reverend Peter McKay.

And here is where Neville's powerful ability to explore what haunts us becomes vivid and compelling -- not with the paranormal strands of his earlier series, but in heartache and despair and the struggle for something to believe in. In Flanagan's confession, the pain of life along the harsh edge of community spills out in, for her, "every rotten thing that festered in her soul."

McKay has his own secrets, as we readers already know. But as he listens to Flanagan, he sets aside his urge to likewise confess, and instead becomes the blunt but kind voice of a true spiritual advisor:

"If your job's making you miserable, then quit," he said. "Simple, isn't it?"

Flanagan shook her head, fumbling for an answer. "No, it's ... it's not ..."

He smiled that kind smile of his, the one that warmed his eyes. "No, it's not that simple, is it? We have this in common, you know. Neither of us has a nine-to-five job we can leave behind at the end of the day. We don't work in some office, watching the clock, waiting for home time. You don't stop being a police officer when you go home any more than I stop being a priest. ... Then you are your job, your job is you. Same for me."

"And I am my family. I need them, even if they don't need me."

His fingers tightened on her wrist, a small pressure. "Then the answer lies somewhere between the other two. It's like two sides of an arch. One can't stand without the other."

"Then what do I do?" she asked, another sob catching in her throat.

"What you came here for," McKay said. "You pray."

Given that support, it's no surprise that Flanagan also binds herself to the catastrophe that unfolds for this kind, if somewhat naive, man.

But Neville takes her through brutal confrontations with the force of psychopathic evil, before Flanagan has a chance to try to make things right.

I am still asking myself -- because I found Neville's "Ghosts of Belfast" series so compelling -- whether this twist toward Flanagan in the Belfast author's newer series is as indelibly marked by place as the earlier books. The more I ponder SO SAY THE FALLEN, the more I think Neville is indeed framing a narrative of loss and potential redemption that belongs in this war-wounded landscape. And consider me committed to this author crime novels, here and in the future, as a way of examining the important question of what makes our lives (and deaths) not only human, but worth the effort.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Sequel to The Ghosts of Belfast: Stuart Neville, COLLUSION

UK cover on left, US cover on right.

Dave is almost used to it by now: I plow four chapters into a really good dark thriller/mystery, then pause for air (and to put on a cup of tea) and give him the death count. In COLLUSION, Stuart Neville's breathtaking sequel to The Ghosts of Belfast, my count was five deaths by page 14.

As it happened, I was wrong. But I couldn't know that until five pages later. And there were so many to follow -- and significant deaths, at that -- that the numbers stopped having a lot of impact.

But every death in this violence-haunted book matters and is pounded into effect with vivid detail, as two professional killers circle under the whip of Bull O'Kane, unfortunately still alive at the end of The Ghosts of Belfast. And both Detective Inspector Jack Lennon and the tragic figure of Gerry Fegan commit their lives and souls to saving the people they love and putting an end to the killing.

Unfortunately, Lennon and Fegan, for different reasons, already know they're not good at loving. Oh, they do love, from the bottoms of their murder-stained hearts. But the people they love suffer terrible losses, and it's not hard to see that Lennon and Fegan open the doors to these disasters.

Neville writes from and of Northern Ireland, where bigotry and imperialism and corruption seeded a legacy of bitter feuds and killings. After reading so many books set in Ireland this year, I have a longing to go there, to sample the geography of myth and music. But I would carry with me some sense of the pain of this small nation's people, and I'd stay out of dark places, for sure.

Ironically, Neville's own portrayal of the killers, even the hell-drenched Bull O'Kane, has the intimacy of love. Meticulous details of what killing looks like, feels like, and endures like -- these drive the book as powerfully as its plot, which opens with deadly force and threat, and never lets up for a moment.

But in this second volume (and yes, you'll get a lot more from it if you read The Ghosts of Belfast first -- it will help you bleed more for Gerry Fegan, as well as for Jack Lennon), Neville plunges the blade beneath the skin and muscle of today's Northern Ireland, to the bones that shape the conflict. And they turn out to be not religious difference, not social standing, not even history, but greed: hunger for power and wealth that drives multiple factions into a rotting, festering symbiosis that Neville and his lovers/killers name collusion. It emerges first from an explanation of one of the least likeable people that Lennon has to tackle, the corrupt attorney Patsy Toner, a man rotting with fear:

"I kept telling myself it was over and done with, all settled, all swept under the carpet. But I knew. I knew someone would come for me. And then I heard about Kevin Malloy, so it was just a matter of when. I knew they wouldn't let me go."

"Who's they?" Lennon asked.

"They?" Toner gave a short, sharp laugh that choked in his throat. "'They' is f***ing everyone. The cops, the Brits, the Irish government, the party, f***ing Bull O'Kane."

Lennon eyed Toner, wondering if he had lost it. "That's a lot of people," he said.

"Collusion," Toner said, his voice dropping to a low, angry hiss.

Lennon persists in running interference on the killings, not as a cop or "peeler" but as a man desperate to save a child, and with this, to save something of his soul. "I have a chance to make it right," he explains to an informer before beating him brutally to get the information he needs to track down that chance.

Both Lennon and Fegan -- who I won't describe more here, because there's no way to do so without spoiling both this book and its predecessor -- put their bodies and souls on the line repeatedly in order to ransom their past horrors. And they are unforgettable. They are men who burn with singular passion in spite of all the threats marshaled against them. Lennon will lose and regain his position in the police force repeatedly here, as different factions force him to act in their favor. Fegan will sacrifice what's left of his heart.

But the darkest figure in this volume, the Traveller -- an old term for gypsy, with an evil tint of antisocial malice -- is the one who'll haunt readers, bringing his increasingly infected and damaged eye and his "undead" version of strength to bear across the landscape of graft and crime. Bull O'Kane's liaison with the Traveller exhumes the corpses of the old and newly dead, sending an expanding breath of foul stench that steals the air and sunlight from the land and its people.

COLLUSION is scheduled for hardcover release on October 1 in the United States (it's already available in the UK under the same title -- note that the UK title for The Ghosts of Belfast is The Twelve). An e-version of the book comes to the market sooner, on September 16, also available in a package version with Neville's other title.

If you like 'em dark, here's an necessary addition to your collection. And if you don't think you like "dark" but have read this far ... well, give the book a try. Between the powerful characters, the compelling plot, and the undeniable underlying truths of what violence grows from and into, this is far more than a "crime novel." It's a necessary exploration of our time.

STOLEN SOULS, by Stuart Neville: Irish "Very Noir"

Readers looking for emotionally sweet material, skip this one. Those interested in how true evil erupts and how it's effectively battled via determined police work (of the honest sort), this one's for you. Make sure the door is locked and the motion-detector lights are working, though. Stuart Neville holds back nothing in crafting high suspense and terror. If you can survive the intrigue and risk, there's a highly satisfying result.

This is the third in Neville's Belfast series. Like Leighton Gage's Brazilian police procedurals, its portrait of the local underworld, international crime connections, and sacrifices called for from investigators are the last thing the local tourist bureau would want you to read. But for courage and dogged determination to "serve and protect," STOLEN SOULS is right on track. There's also a steady dose of the paranormal here, as in the two books that preceded this one (The Ghosts of Belfast and Collusion, prize winners both). From what I've read so far among today's Irish mysteries, whether sweet or dark, that seems to come with the territory.

In STOLEN SOULS, it comes with the child Ellen, to whom Detective Inspector Jack Lennon is a late-arriving but legitimate father. Ellen's night terrors erupt when her dreams include the violence that persistently connects to Lennon and to Ellen's mother's family. She doesn't seem to see the future, but experiences instead the horrors of the present for a selected set of victims.

Lennon knelt beside the bed, placed a hand on her small cheek. He had learned not to take the child in his arms when she awoke pursued by night terrors, the shock of it to much for her.

"It's me," he said. "Daddy's here. You're all right."

Ellen blinked at him, her face softening. He'd almost forgotten how old she looked when she emerged from her nightmares, a girl of seven carrying centuries of pain behind her eyes.

Neville never over-explains, but through all three books, it's clear his characters aren't the only ones carrying centuries of pain. It's the Irish condition. Come to think of it, any kind of peace in Ireland is a miracle, considering what's happened over those centuries.

This time there's a serial killer who, for a wonder, is not directly after one of Lennon's own. But the detective inspector commits to dealing with the twisted mind of the criminal and capturing him. It's not always a wise route he's on, as he reflects late in STOLEN SOULS:

Jack Lennon was an idiot when he joined the police. He was an idiot when he refused to accept a commendation for saving the live of a fellow officer under fire. He was an idiot when he left his unborn daughter when she was still in the womb. He was an idiot when he drove a killer called Gerry Fegan across the border to settle a score.

Lennon knew he had been an idiot all his life, but it never stopped him. He drew his pistol and made his way deeper into the house.

A Lithuanian criminal syndicate, human bondage, brutality -- how much can Jack Lennon tackle? Who'll support him when he risks his life again and again?

Already available in the UK, STOLEN SOULS hits the US market on October 4. Worth ordering in advance, really. I'll be one of the readers looking for a chance to meet this author of consistently powerful crime fiction, who paints a soul freighted with some of history's worst nightmares. Check out Neville's website for details on upcoming appearances over the next few months; his first US tour for the book is ending this week, as he heads back to the Emerald Isle for its Irish premiere.

Hauntingly Delicious Irish Crime Fiction: THE TRAVELLER AND OTHER STORIES, Stuart Neville

Devouring and pondering the character-rich crime novels from Stuart Neville has been a delight since his debut in 2009 with The Ghosts of Belfast. Not only does he give us criminals and investigators torn by their loyalties and losses, but he evokes the abiding presence of The Troubles — Ireland's violent internal war — as a force that nurtures long-term resentment, revenge, and personal damage. When his characters brush up against an opposite force such as redemption, it's often with a raised shoulder or calloused fingers.

After interrupting this string of powerful novels with a couple of thrillers in a different direction (under the nom-de-plume Haylen Beck), Neville returns this season to his earlier characters and scenes in THE TRAVELLER AND OTHER STORIES. Of course, of course, this author must have written short fiction along the way, but it's been less visible. Now the stories are gathered for easy access, along with a hitherto-unpublished novella, The Traveller. In his introduction, Neville notes that it is 

a response to the messages I've received over the years asking what happened to Jack Lennon and his daughter, Ellen, after the events of The Final Silence. Although I've always known exactly where Jack wound up—the coastal village of Cushenden, working as a security guard—I'd put off writing about it for several years This collection  offered the opportunity to finally put that right, as well as tie up several loose ends, including the eponymous villain coming back to take his revenge.

Each of the dozen shorter tales offers insight into other characters, suspense and delight in the reading, and a sideways squint into the author's diverse interests. "The Last Dance," following up on the life of Gerry Fegan from The Ghosts of Belfast, is a great gift to Neville's regular readers.

If you want to give friends an unexpected and highly memorable trick-or-treat, get a couple of extra copies of this collection. Make sure to ink your name into your own copy, so it won't walk away lightly. It will be, indeed, haunted.

[Released this week from Soho Crime, an imprint of Soho Press, with a fascinating foreword by the remarkable John Connolly.]

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Coming in January: Stuart Neville, RATLINES

UK cover on left; US cover on right.

The first three Irish crime novels from Stuart Neville -- The Ghost of Belfast, Collusion, and Stolen Souls -- drew me into the dark compulsions of Irish history. Liberally threaded with belief in the paranormal, these three make up the "Belfast  Trilogy" and convinced me that escaping the presence and pressures of history is rare, unusual, and maybe even impossible. The darker that history has been, the more the souls of its descendants have been scorched and warped by it. It's hard to picture a form of reparation that can atone for the horrors of oppression and poverty that Irish generations have sustained.

In Neville's newest thriller, RATLINES (Soho Crime, Jan. 2013), a different darkness emerges to drench the Irish in guilt and terror: that of Nazi collaborators and even Nazi leaders, welcomed into the island nation after the war, if they'll leave their past behind and contribute generously to the wealth of the communities around them. The book opens in 1963, with the Emerald Isle planning to welcome U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the land of his roots. Thus, when the third murder of a foreign national occurs within a short time in Ireland, just as it's vital to present the country as civilized and safe, Lieutenant Albert Ryan of the Directorate of Intelligence gets the call to investigate and quickly put to rest the crimes.

But there is no simple route for Ryan as he uncovers an intense, even incestuous, network of collaborators, still living the personal habits forged by Nazism  and Fascism in pre-war Germany. Ryan's obligations to his superiors and his assignment force him to protect German Colonel Otto Skorzeny, a task that turns his stomach. More pointedly, Ryan's personal life, from his aging parents to his wartime record to his accidentally acquired girlfriend, become hostages to his performance of his duty. Skorzeny is a terrible enemy, and even a treacherous and dangerous ally, as one informant tells Ryan:

Papers scattered as she slapped the tabletop with her palm. "If Otto Skorzeny desires a man's death, or a woman's, then death will come. Don't you know this? He plucked Mussolini from a mountaintop. He f**ed Evita right under Perón's nose. Then he robbed the fascist bastard blind and was thanked for it. This is his power. Not an office, not a title. No law will stop him."

But when duty leads to the preservation of evil people and works, and the repression of justice -- where does personal loyalty lie?

I highly recommend this book, to the point of suggesting a pre-order for it, so you'll have an early copy when January arrives.  I found myself arguing with only one page out of 352 -- and even so, I realize that page may be intended to launch a sequel, a thought so exciting that I can forgive one soft page after all. The rest of this book is tense, taut, and terribly insistent: Evil exists. What can we do but make our choices and strive to protect our lives and loves?

Third Cat Kinsella Crime Novel from Caz Frear, SHED NO TEARS

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Frear’s writing has the sharp dark tang that Tana French exhibits, and she updates the British crime narrative to the dangerous conflicts of loyalty that Stuart Neville paints best, with their hungry roots in the ever-decomposing past.”

The third British crime novel in the Cat Kinsella series, Shed No Tears, strikes two powerful storylines: one of a serial murderer, imprisoned, whose full set of crimes may not have been uncovered yet, and the other of Kinsella’s personal closet of secrets. Though she’s steadily making her way as a member of London’s Metropolitan Police (she’s now a Detective Constable), her dad was and is connected with major criminals, and she’s managed to keep this out of sight in her own career. Until now.

The pressure’s on. The body of Holly Kemp, long presumed to be a victim of a convicted killer, turns up in the wrong place, in the wrong condition, and with a manner of killing that just doesn’t fit. Sure, serial killers can change their modus operandi. But the alleged killer can’t make up his mind whether he did or did not commit this murder, and the more Kinsella and her partner Luigi Parnell probe, the more the case problems keep leading back to the original investigation. And investigators.

Nobody could fault Kinsella for being slow to put together the pieces here. Her own heroes in the police force have done some of the manipulation that’s hiding the trick. Plus her dad’s been in the hospital, her sister is way too nosy, and her boyfriend can’t understand why she won’t introduce him to her family. One reason is, he might realize the crime connection; the other is, Kinsella broke the rules by pursuing this guy when he was a crime victim, and her sister is all too likely to divulge a much worse complicating factor (yes, dear old dad again, in another form).

Frear’s writing is intense and suspenseful, with a perfect balance of red herrings and dogged pursuit of the truth. She spills Kinsella’s stresses a bit at a time, from a first person point of view that always hides something:

“I’m going to be the best aunt in the world.

Because I can live with the Bad Sister tag. I’ve been living my whole life with the Bad Daughter tag. But the Bad Aunt tag—when it’s occasionally flung—stings like a bitch.

Although not as much as the Corrupt Officer tag.

The most poisonous tag of all, known only to me.”

The case turns at last, thanks to Kinsella’s insistent doubts about a “perfect” witness whose clearly memorized spiel of seeing Holly Kemp enter the killer’s home is too darn perfect. Her partner, without exactly countering her, comments, “You’re doing your suspicious face, Kinsella. I’m not even looking at you and I know you’re doing your suspicious face.”

But in uncovering what motivated the witness, Kinsella puts her own careful stack of cards at risk, not just of physical danger but of baring all her secrets.

Frear’s writing has the sharp dark tang that Tana French exhibits, and she updates the British crime narrative to the dangerous conflicts of loyalty that Stuart Neville paints best, with their hungry roots in the ever-decomposing past. If there’s a single weak spot in Shed No Tears, it’s in the overly optimistic ending. Yet with Frear’s record to judge from, it’s a good bet that the sequel to come will turn out to be more menacing and dangerous than Kinsella could have guessed, even from her own family’s experience.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.  

More Crime Fiction to Track Down: Christopher West's China Series, and the British Crime Fiction of Ruth Dudley Edwards

I just finished reading an advance copy of Henry Chang's November release, RED JADE, which is the third in his Chinatown trilogy featuring Detective Jack Yu. Jack's home turf is New York City's Chinatown; RED JADE picks up the trails of two killers that eluded Jack in Chinatown Beat and Year of the Dog. Sometimes it takes me a while to decide how to shape a review, so while I mull this one over, I've been looking around ... and pulled off the shelf the Summer 2006 issue of Mystery Readers Journal. This issue features "Murder in the Far East" (wish it said "Asia" instead). Ten articles and an extra sidebar introduce work by authors who link their mysteries to Japan and China, and others go to India, Laos, and other Asian locations. It's a stunning collection of articles, packed into 80 pages of focused, passionate writing; look around for a copy or see if you can get a back issue from Mystery Readers International (http://www.mysteryreaders.org).

The trouble with browsing here, of course, is discovering authors I hadn't realized I'd missed. Now added to my list: Christopher West, whose books set in China begin with Death of a Blue Lantern (HarperCollins UK 1994, Berkeley Prime Crime 1998). I also found West's web site (http://www.christopherwest.info -- careful with the suffix, there are other authors named Christopher West), and the very enjoyable linked blog.

Most frustrating: This is the second time this week I've found an author whose books have flown onto the "must catch up" list. The other one is Ruth Dudley Edwards. Born in Dublin, her mysteries are set in England, as far as I can tell from a quick look at the one we've got here (Matricide at St Martin's) and at her website, which emphasizes her roles as journalist and satirist and her enduring connection to Ireland. And what makes me convinced that I need to read her work is the presence of a note of thanks to her in the acknowledgments in Stuart Neville's new book Collusion. Anyone thanked so simply and sincerely by Neville has to be worth tracking down and reading, I figure.

I'm not just reading "foreign" mysteries this week -- I doubled up and read an advance copy of the newest Vermont romantic suspense novel from Carla Neggers, and it's a keeper. Reviews ahead, as things settle into place. And I haven't forgotten about that Dennis Lehane one ... what an amazing season of mysteries being released. Sure wish this were the only thing I needed to get done.

Oops -- heading back to the kitchen to preserve some of the garden's harvest. That's the really tight deadline, with the second half of September just arriving.

Top British Espionage Fiction: Mick Herron, NOBODY WALKS

The classics in British espionage fiction are by John Le Carré and Graham Greene, and if you love the genre, I hope you've found Charles Cumming and Charles McCarry. I could go on with the authors whose spy novels brush against Britain, too, like Olen Steinhour. Such good books, to feed that hunger for complexity, political savvy, and long-term insight into our world!

And then there are the less known authors who'll surely climb to these heights over time. Of all the contenders at the moment, Mick Herron is one of my top picks. His two books in the Slough House series, Slow Horses and Dead Lions, gave me laughter, heartache, and insight, and I hoped Soho Crime would bring us more in US editions.

The start of NOBODY WALKS seemed like a new series -- working in a meat processing plant in France, rough ne-er-do-well Tom Bettany gets a cellphone message that his 26-year-old son Liam has fallen to his death, and because Bettany lives such a hard life, the message barely reaches him in time to let him get to the funeral in England. Detective Sergeant Welles, investigating the death (Liam was stoned on a balcony -- alone? or not?), actually gives Bettany a ride to the funeral service, where there's nobody he knows, and one lone name that he recognizes, that of his son's apparent girlfriend, who'd also left him a voicemail.

Slowly, Bettany's past flickers into focus, and it's violent and laden with secrets. Could his son's death be related? Hadn't Bettany walked away from his government-related career as well as his family, immersing himself in gory, physically demanding work in another country -- wasn't that enough?

But nobody walks away from that kind of career, it seems. And gradually I found connections between Bettany and the espionage setting of the Slough House series, in the same way that a Tana French book will lead back to the Dublin Murder Squad, or a Stuart Neville crime will relate to the Troubles and the resulting criminal syndicate -- there is a violence and brutality underneath the civilized English veneer, and it may add up to worse than the slaughterhouse that Bettany knew in France.

Soon Bettany's trudging along grimy, gritty urban streets and alleyways, his son's ashes toted with him, looking for someone to blame -- maybe the drug dealer who'd sold the weed to young Liam?

Bettany walked on, tote bag in hand.

Invisible, painless bullets struck him dead every step of the way.

He visited more pubs, asked more questions. Nobody was glad to see him. Even those who might have cared, who didn't take him for a cop but a parent tracking a runaway, wanted him gone. 

And some of those are willing to hurt him, even kill him, for asking such questions.

The path toward clarity involves professional gamers and game developers, the casual liaisons of the young, and slowly revealed, the cynical cruelty of a profession Bettany thought he'd left far behind him. Herron's narrative style is tightly paced, with every scene, every seeming digression, turning significant ... and what he puts forward about power in the secret rooms of British government is dark, dirty, and all too believable. Not many laughs in this one, except for the choked bitterness of discovery. Liam's death at the start of the book strongly suggests there can be no "happy ending" to Bettany's quest. And things can indeed get worse.

But there's an art to darkness and revelation, and Herron is a master of these. This book goes on my "read it again and again" shelf with Herron's others. I'll be watching for the next. Meanwhile, if you're collecting espionage with depth, suspense with meaning, a good story with a reason for telling it -- get a copy of NOBODY WALKS. Release date February 17, so grab those first printings while you can.

THE LOCK ARTIST: Steve Hamilton

Steve Hamilton's Alex McKnight series of seven books took awards right from the start. Then in 2007 his stand-alone, NIGHT WORK, came out to great reviews. And now it's 2010, and THE LOCK ARTIST is getting more than great reviews. It's a deep, dark, stirring book, a permanent road marker in significant noir fiction.

Right from the start, Michael is as open with the reader as he can be: He's been in the news before, and now he's served nine years of jail time, orange jumpsuit and all. But the story of how and why he's in prison isn't one he can tell sequentially -- it's too hard in too many ways. He'll tell it instead in three directions: from the events of 1999 and those of 2000, and gradually, imperceptibly, opening the door to the tragedy of 1990 that launched his life of pain and sacrifice. He's a boxman -- a safecracker -- a lock artist.

And within the box of his soul, one notched wheel after another has to be turned, pressing all the lock pins carefully into loaded positions, to open the final secret.

Although the entire novel is told by Michael, from his inner eye, we know by the second page that words and images on the page are his only speech; since 1990, he hasn't spoken a word out loud. Think about it: How safe could a mute person be as a repository for secrets, for pressure, for crime? And he's the perfect foil for someone who needs to talk, because he won't interrupt, won't say, "that's nothing, you should hear what happened to me ... " He's the Miracle Boy who .. well, in his words:

I won't drag you through all the doctor visits I sat through. All the speech therapists, the counselors, the psychologists ... Looking back on it, I must have been the ultimate wet dream for these people. To every one of them, I was the sad, silent, totally lost kid with the messy brown hair and the big brown eyes. The Miracle Boy who hadn't said one word since that fateful day he cheated death. WIth the right treatment, the right coacing, the right amount of understanding and encouragement ... that doctor or speech therapist or counselor or psychologist would find the magic key to unlock my wounded psyche, and I'd end up bawling in their arms while they stroked my hair and told me that everything was finally going to be all right.

That's what they all wanted from me. Each and every one. Believe me, they weren't going to get it.

As Michael soon admits, "For whatever reason, I had simply decided to stop talking."

Yet his gifts and talents lead him simultaneously toward teen love and toward a terrible captivity within a life of crime, where his ability to listen extends beyond sound, to the movement within locks and safe mechanisms. And from there -- well, the people who want to use him and his skills are nearly merciless. Knowing he won't talk back confirms their power over him. So does the ultimate leverage that gets applied against him.

The further I read, the more silent I became, and the more reluctant I was to put this book down. Aching with loss and the cost of freedom, it never steps wrong, never loses the tension and suspense. There are few criminals who can earn this sympathy, and who can evoke this anguish.

This is one of the two masterpieces of noir that are must-reads on my 2010 list; the other is Stuart Neville's THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST, which has been reviewed so often and so well that I won't go into it here. But each of these confirms what a really good work of noir can do: make you heart-wrenchingly grateful for the small, precious things that still go right in life. 

And for the chance to read a book like this one.

Crime Novel from Calabria, Italy, BLACK SOULS, New from Soho Crime

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

Across the decades of the narrator’s life, Black Souls becomes as mysterious as a set of cave paintings or yesterday’s “tags” on a building.

Nordic noir, French crime fiction, Japanese, South African—none of those are as surprising as the new crime novel from Calabria, Italy, Black Souls by Gioacchino Criaco. Deep and slow, it ranges over the youth, coming of age, and violent criminality of a nearly nameless narrator. His love for the landscape and the men in his family is a warm and restless ocean in which the crimes of the book roll, surge, and multiply. From early kidnappings and killings that balance the powers around the farming family, they ease toward urban connections and at last the cream of the crime crop, the drug trade.

But in Criaco’s hands, this becomes a literary exploration of a timeless land where fathers and sons form the ultimate bonds of the community. Calabria is one of the “oldest” occupied parts of Italy (today the label is for the “toe” of the nation’s “boot” shape), with some 700,000 years of human presence. Once redolent with many languages and histories, it has become both more Italian and more intensely occupied by the ‘Ndrangheta, a family-based crime network now darker and larger than the Mafia.

Criaco binds this criminal nature to the natural landscape and the eons of myths that permeate the consciousness of the peoples there. When the novel’s narrator slaughters a wild bull, he spends a harrowing night in and out of sleep:

I thought I could hear a mournful bellowing. I saw the bull’s head staring at me with that terrible, artificial eye in the middle of his forehead. … An immense pain overtook me, I was aware that I was trapped in a nightmare, I tried to wake up and couldn’t, I got up and fell back down, and only when the pain had traveled to my core could I shake myself awake.

I found myself sitting up in the dark. Bino tenderly pressed a cup of hot coffee into my hands. "Did you hear them? … We are a part of the mountains, not their masters. Sometimes practicing evil is necessary to survive. Taking a life is always wrong But if you don’t give your conscience an alibi or a decoy, it will scream at you every night. Come, we have to appease them."

This mythic connection to centuries of choregraphed murder and revenge echoes through the book. “Black souls” are not cleansed, but held in balance, and evil is negotiated. Some innocence is allowed to remain, protected, and begins to represent the reason to struggle to reach that balance in each new round of crime and punishment.

Across the decades of the narrator’s life, Black Souls becomes as mysterious as a set of cave paintings or yesterday’s “tags” on a building: The connections among people matter here more than anything else, even more than avoiding evil itself.

There are few comparable crime novels today. Stuart Neville’s haunted fiction set in the Troubles of Ireland may come close; so, however, does Dostoevsky with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Make room for this book in the form of the “precious gift” that this criminal’s success is finally able to give to his father: “That money, even if it came late, too late for me, restored my father’s dignity.” 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Espionage and Insight in Northern Ireland, in NORTHERN SPY from Flynn Berry

 

[Originally at New York Journal of Books]

“Author Flynn Berry landed major awards for her two earlier thrillers, and Northern Spy merits more of the same.”

Unashamedly focused on loving and savoring her six-month-old son Finn while also working as a news producer, Tessa Daly can’t believe it when the police claim her sister Marian has joined the IRA. Though the enduring aftermath of the Troubles marks every day for Tessa, her mother, her child, and yes, her sister, it’s impossible that their lives in Northern Ireland could become militarized and criminalized in this way.

Until, somehow, it isn’t. Whether her sister’s a sort of hero for fighting against the government forces, or somehow playing a “doubles” game to move both sides toward peace, Tessa needs to know which choices are right and necessary. And whatever her own position becomes, she’s got to protect her baby first, and Marian second.

Author Flynn Berry landed major awards for her two earlier thrillers, and Northern Spy merits more of the same. Taut and passionate, it’s a plot-driven and morally demanding narrative full of threat and heartbreak. The fiercely portrayed reality of life in a divided land and the costly choices everyone faces make this into a page-turner. Berry also excels at keeping her protagonists smart and even wise—so when things do go wrong, it’s not because of foolish mistakes.

Most importantly Tessa holds her focus:

“I wonder, would a good mother take Finn away from this place, or keep him close to his father? Would a good mother work for peace, or stay away from the conflict? Would a good mother be preoccupied with terrorism during every minute she has spent with her son this week?

I don’t want my son to have to forgive me for anything, but I can’t even tell what that might be, so how can I avoid it? … I want someone to tell me what to do. If we can stay or if we need to leave tonight, right away, the sooner the better.”

By staying in place, and maintaining loyalty to her family, Tessa’s soon a person of interest herself. The detective chasing the terrorists makes that clear: “He shakes his keys in his suit pocket, then fixes his gaze on me. ‘Tessa, what does nitrobenzene smell like?’ I blink at him. ‘I have no idea.’ Fenton considers me for a few long moments, the turns to go. He knows I’ve just lied. Nitrobenzene smells like marzipan.”

Northern Spy will be a hit for readers of Dublin noir and tartan noir, as well as those who’ve already discovered Stuart Neville’s Belfast noir with its grit and darkness. But because Berry opts to view the pain and violence through a young mother’s eyes, there’s less in-your-face blood and guts, and perhaps more agony in spite of that. Denise Mina and Tana French readers can also find familiar ground—but so in fact can any readers who treasure a well-plotted mystery with a powerful sense of how place and the near past can force a person to cross the lines they once felt were sacred.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Long Effects of Evil in BLOCK 46, Johana Gustawsson

US cover

Sometimes the movement of a good (or great) crime novel from Europe to the United States takes a while. Then again, some of them never come across the ocean. Still, the three-year transit for BLOCK 46 from French crime writer Johana Gustawsson was too long a wait for such a blockbuster of a novel.

UK cover

Like the generation-long effects of abuse and murder in the Irish "Troubles" so hauntingly portrayed by Stuart Neville, Gustawsson's terrain of Nazi terror creates people and events steeped in evil. But this author doesn't simplify in any sense -- while the serial killer in BLOCK 46 seems to reenact some trauma of Buchenwald's killings, the novel is told from three voices: his, and those of two women.

Emily Roy, a top-tier Canadian criminal profiler who works for the British police force, demands detailed support services and instant access to crime scenes and information. Considering that she's working on a killer who has already piled up three bodies in two nations when the book begins, she needs every crumb of information and insight possible.

Alexis Castells, a close friend of the first adult that the serial killer tackles, can't walk away from the murder of jewelry designer Linnéa, who at first is the lone victim in Sweden. Haunted by an earlier crime she's been unable to finalize emotionally, Alexis determines to tag along with Emily -- who, surprisingly, allows her into the pursuit process.

The book's three-voice construction is brilliantly balanced by Gustawsson. Her details of torment at Buchenwald -- the "camp" where her own grandfather suffered -- are acute and perceptive, but also rapidly exchanged for the more civilized scenes in London and Sweden as the investigation takes place. As reader, I found myself eager to return to Emily and Alexis and the assorted police officers they're teamed with. And yet after a few pages in their company, I was also ready to look again at the cold, bitter, twisted landscape and events in the concentration camp, wanting to know how (or whether) Erich Ebler, a medical student imprisoned and debased in the camp, was surviving.

BLOCK 46 was a huge hit in Europe; the author's website exposes interviews and background that fascinate almost as much as the book. Like this:

These places define me as a woman and writer: I'm not only Marseillaise and French, but I am also a Londoner and an aspiring Swede! I arrived in London in 2009, after seven years in Paris. At the time, I was a journalist, freelancing for French magazines. I immediately felt at home in this city of various villages steeped in history, great parks and ancient pubs, all mixed with a cosmopolitan culture that inspires you. Hampstead is my favourite part of town. It is truly a haven that feels just like Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead. As for Sweden, it was my husband who brought the Scandinavian influence to our family. He introduced me to the rough beauty of the west coast, the Nordic folklore and the divine  chokladbollar !

Well done, Orenda Books, in bringing this debut crime novel across "the Pond." I will be watching for the next installment.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Top Ten Books -- The Lists Arrive!

Today's New York Times included in the Holiday Gift Guide several great lists of "top ten books" by subject or reviewer. I jumped up and down in excitement when I saw two of my favorite 2010 mysteries/crime fiction on reviewer Janet Maslin's list: Tana French's stirring FAITHFUL PLACE (Irish noir, worth reading multiple times) and the newest Lee Child/Jack Reacher title, 61 HOURS.

My own list (if I could decide!) would definitely also include Stuart Neville's COLLUSION (his second, and I do recommend reading its predecessor, The Ghosts of Belfast, first for maximum enjoyment) and Lisa Brackmann's very modern, sometimes funny, and often gripping suspense set in today's China, ROCK PAPER TIGER.

I'm in the midst of reading R. A. Harold's remarkable HERON ISLAND -- a Vermont book that turns out to be a tightly plotted mystery. More on that, tomorrow. Considering how excited I am at the halfway point this evening, this is another I might add to my "best of 2010" list ... as well as an armful of the international mysteries from Soho Crime, and the latest Donna Leon (the comfort food of crime fiction), the weird wonders by Dave Zeltserman, my discovery fof how very good indeed Carla Neggers and Charlaine Harris are on the "other side" of the mystery genre (the romantic side), and several espionage titles. I'll be posting the nicely refined 10-item lists of many other writers and reviewers as we move toward the end of 2010. What a great year for good books!

NYC Legal Thriller, THE DEFENSE, Steve Cavanaugh (Debut!)

Steve Cavanagh's debut crime novel is a legal thriller set in New York City, mostly at the Manhattan courthouse on Chambers Street. It's a page-turner, at a wild pace, and full of twists, suspense, exhilaration, and highly satisfying conclusions. I would never have guessed THE DEFENSE was a debut -- but then again, Cavanagh has been writing for years ... as a lawyer in Belfast, Ireland.

It's not all that unusual for a British author to place a crime novel in the United States. And some authors seem to switch-hit on both sides of the Atlantic -- consider John Connelly, Irish but setting his Charlie Parker detective series in Maine. Then think about Adrian McKinty, another Belfast author who's also lived in Australia and the US. As it happens, Cavanaugh's first US debut, for a short story, came in the collection Belfast Noir, co-edited by McKinty and another extraordinary Belfast author, Stuart Neville.

All of which are great signs for what Cavanagh can produce, given the company he keeps! But if I hadn't checked on him, I never would have guessed Irish from reading the adept switches among New York urban dialects and the language of the Russian mob in THE DEFENSE.

Here's the premise: Eddie Flynn used to be a con man, but a situation changed his direction to law school and he practiced law for nine years. As THE DEFENSE opens, that hasn't been an option for months now -- some kind of disaster in one of his cases gave him a shove into deep alcoholic self-pity, his marriage is on the rocks, his 10-year-old daughter can't see him much, and he's definitely not going back to court as an attorney.

Except: Suddenly the Russian mob has him wired into a jacket of explosives and is demanding his performance at the courthouse -- starting now! -- and to make sure Eddie won't just yield to his king-size case of despair and opt for suicide by Russian mobster, they've kidnapped his daughter.

Eddie's life has been is a roller coaster of strengths and mistakes. But it happens he does know how to handle having psychopathic mobsters as criminal defense clients. Good thing, because he needs to be at the top of his game almost instantly, against a clever and well-prepared prosecutor, for the life of his little girl.

"Is Mom there with you? Can I ... please ... I want to talk to her. I want you ... I want you and Mom to come get me, please. I love you. Please come get me, Daddy ... please ..." She broke down completely, each shrill cry bringing her closer to hysterics. Her sobs grew fainter as the phone was taken from her.

What would you do under that level of threat? Yep. So will Eddie. And it looks like an impossible task, but after all those years, Eddie does have a few friends, and at least one of them is in the same courthouse.

A top-notch thriller with relentless suspense and highly memorable! And although the finale put a bit of a dent in my own recent memories of that same courthouse, I have to admit it's a good fit. I'm looking forward to more from Steve Cavanagh ...  and I see his next crime novel,  The Plea, is scheduled for next March. Nice to have Flatiron Books (linked to Orion and Macmillan) bringing these across the "pond."

A Locked-Room Mystery at Sea: THE LAMPLIGHTERS from Emma Stonex

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“With such dark and treacherous secrets, the men of The Lamplighters echo the force of the seas around them. The deepest mystery that Stonex then offers is: What use is the love each of them has known, if it can’t finally rescue them?”

Emma Stonex is not a debut author—she’s written nine other books under three pseudonyms—but with The Lamplighters she steps forth proudly with a novel she’d prepared for in all that time, the first under her own name. It opens as a locked-room mystery, with the added quirk of the room being a lighthouse, and all three victims, if victims they are, missing from the deserted scene. Clocks halted at 8:45, table set for two (not three), every surface clean and bright. But the three keepers of this isolated lighthouse, known as the Maiden, off the Cornish coast of Britain cannot be found.

It’s hard for the rescue team from Trident, the corporation in charge of the lighthouses, to grasp, since their orders suggest they are cleaning up some form of crime scene or at best isolation-induced madness: “Bring them off quietly, Trident said. Do it discreetly. Find a boatman who’ll keep it under his cap; don’t make a fuss; don’t make a scene; nobody needs to know. And make sure the light’s all right, for God’s sake somebody make sure about that.”

Then, exploring both 1972, when Arthur, Bill, and Vincent vanished without a clue to why or where, and 1992, when a persistent novelist insists on interviewing the three women involved—two wives and a fiancée—Stonex offers a boatload of possibilities. Yet the two that the rescue crew expected, murder and madness, consistently rise to the surface as the women slowly release details that they’ve hidden for two decades. The book rocks back and forth between those option like a ship rolling on waves, tilted now this way, now that.

Arthur’s wife, the oldest and most dominant of the three women (after all, her husband was the PK, the principal keeper of the light), refuses at first to coddle the investigating writer’s notions. “Lightkeepers aren’t romantic people; they don’t get nervous or look into things too much. … Arthur was never afraid of the sea, even when it was dangerous. He told me how, on a tower, the spray from the waves can come right up to the kitchen window during a storm—bear in mind that’s eighty or eighty-five feet above the water—and the rocks and boulders roll against the base, so it shudders and shakes. I’d have been scared, I think. But not Arthur; he felt the sea was on his side.”

Arthur’s inevitable secret turns out to be one he and his wife Helen bear together. But she has another source of guilt that she thinks he doesn’t know—although Bill, the second keeper does, and Bill’s wife Jenny may be more aware than you’d guess. As for Vince, it’s not a big secret that he’s spent time in prison, although only Michelle, his fiancée, will eventually know the worst of his criminal life.

So whose secret has tipped the ocean-isolated threesome into dangerous waters? What violence erupted from the frictions and faults trapped in the tower, so compactly that even the sleeping bunks require a man to curve his spine to fit against the outside wall? And assuming that someone finally cracked—then what happened to all three men afterward? The Maiden Rock is an impossible place for a casual passing boat to try to visit, and what about the locked door, the absence of evidence?

Ruth Rendell, Shirley Jackson, Stuart Neville, all come to mind as Stonex ramps up the tension and hauntings. The Lamplighters holds its secrets close, forcing the investigator and the reader to pry determinedly at those deep-driven slivers of loss, jealousy, anger, and yes, even the violence of the cold and powerful ocean, until the last layers of revelation finally are torn apart.

With such dark and treacherous secrets, the men of The Lamplighters echo the force of the seas around them. The deepest mystery that Stonex then offers is: What use is the love each of them has known, if it can’t finally rescue them?

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.