City in Ruins, by Don Winslow.

 

       

     The great Don Winslow, crime-writer extraordinaire, has announced that the above title, the last book in his contemporary trilogy based on Homer’s epic Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid, will be his last.  In the immortal words of John Macinroe – (and millions of fans) HE CAN’T BE SERIOUS!!

            But he is, and the reading public is the poorer for it, because ‘City In Ruins’ has all the excitement, suspense and heartbreak of the preceding novels, set in Rhode Island, and involving a gang war between the Italian Mafia (Greece) and uppity Irish crims (Troy) getting too big for their boots.

            Danny Ryan (Aeneas) is the main protagonist, and he is forced to leave his dying wife behind as he flees with his loyal gang to California, intent on straightening himself out and leaving all the criminality behind for he has a baby son to look after, and nothing can be more important than that:  he wants his son to grow up to be proud of him, and to that end transforms himself into a legitimate businessman.  Now, after various Hollywood misadventures he has transformed himself into a respected Casino owner, one of the richest movers and shakers in Las Vegas.

            But Danny has never been a favourite of the Gods;  every now and then they remind him that they can change his life in an instant, especially  when he makes a rash and impulsive decision to buy an old hotel at a very strategic site – nothing wrong with that, except that the hotel in question had already been sold to someone else, who takes Danny’s absurdly huge impossible-to-refuse offer very personally:  eventually, the loser brings in a Mafia hitman so twisted that said hitman actually disgusts the others of his ilk:  Danny, in his attempts to be an honourable and legitimate businessman of whom his son can be proud, has hit a major snag:  it’s Killing and Maiming time again, and this time, his friends and loved ones are about to be sacrificed:  whether he wants to or not, he has to become a ruthless and deadly killer again to protect everyone he loves.

            No-one can ratchet up suspense more efficiently than Don Winslow as any late-night reader with a speeding heart will attest, and his contemporary retelling of the great epics of Homer and Virgil is masterly.  I still hope his announcement that this is his last novel is a whim of the Gods – and if it’s his whim, please can he be less whimsical?  SIX STARS.

 

The Unwanted Dead, by Chris Lloyd (Book One)

Paris Requiem, by Chris Lloyd (Book Two)

    
     

          I have just read these books back-to-back and, amazingly, in the right sequence:  I am very proud of myself!  And happy to report that Crime Writer Chris Lloyd has produced a new, different burnt-out Detective.  Different because the First World War was the reason for his burn-out and, instead of returning to the French city of Perpignan to manage and inherit his parents’ book shop, Eddie Giral feels more of use battling – and sometimes winning – against ordinary criminals instead of the monstrous warmongers who ordered young men to legally murder each other.

            It is June, 1940, and the German Occupation has begun. Paris, the City of Light, is swathed in smoke and ashes and the only mobile traffic belongs to the German troops;  they are also the only patrons of the many Jazz clubs of Paris, and the local criminals are rubbing grubby hands together at the thought of relieving these young boys of their francs and anything else they can get:  times are hard – we’re all in this together, mates!  And Eddie agrees – up to a point, which is tested when he is called to the main railway yard to investigate the discovery of four bodies in a wagon who have been suffocated to death by the very nerve gas that killed so many of his friends:  who would do such a thing and why, especially as it is revealed that the men were Polish refugees hoping to flee the city before the Germans marched in.  They paid someone money to help them escape, but who?  And the more Eddie digs, the more is revealed about crimes of mass murder in Poland of innocent villagers buried in mass graves.  Who is going to bring this horror to the world’s attention, hopefully bringing the USA into the World fray, not to mention rumours of Jewish persecution beginning to surface?

            Paris Requiem starts a few months later;  the great city is full of thin grey ghosts, for rationing and coupons have started and no-one is getting enough to eat – except the German Occupiers.  Needless to say, they don’t have to queue for hours for a piece of bacon rind or a baguette, nor do they have to eke out for days whatever they were lucky enough to purchase.  Eddie is particularly irked by the delicious food left lying in his presence by his current nemesis, Major Hochstetter of the Abwehr, German Intelligence.  Major Hochstetter is particularly intrigued – as is Eddie – by the fact that a murder victim found in a closed nightclub was serving a two-year jail sentence:  Eddie remembers the case well, for he put him there!  Now he has to investigate his particularly grisly end.

            As a writer, Chris Lloyd is a bit rough around the edges;  he uses contemporary expressions which are out of keeping with the time, but he has created a very fine hero in Eddie, one who is weighed down by all the sorrow of what might have been, the estrangement from his family, the terrible randomness of one’s fate, but still he battles on with a suicidal fearlessness to right wrongs as he sees them, Hochstetter be damned!  FIVE STARS.  

 

Fox Creek, by William Kent Krueger.

 

            Yet again, I have driven myself mad by starting at the latest book in a series, instead of at the beginning – I have to say that I didn’t realise that I had picked up the newest book in the Cork O’Connor series, BUT!

            I am so glad I did.  William Kent Krueger has signposted clearly and concisely for new readers major events that have gone before in his series, and he is such a fine writer that ‘Fox Creek’ reads almost like a stand-alone novel, but for his obvious affection for his characters – and what characters they are:  in the main First Nations people who live in various small reservations or towns in Minnesota, a State that borders Canada and in this story, the scene of the disappearance of a successful First Nations lawyer, and the pursuit of his frantic and worried wife by unknown mercenaries.  They have already approached Cork O’Connor for information as to her whereabouts, for Cork now operates as a Private Detective – when he’s not flipping burgers. 

            And he’s astute and experienced enough as an investigator to know that nothing about these men is likely to benefit the woman if they find her, and when he discovers that she has visited ancient tribal Healer Henry Meloux for information and guidance and that Rainy, his own precious Healer wife is ‘assisting with enquiries’, he knows that this will be a life and death pursuit,  for the mercenaries have a brilliant tracker guiding them, a man almost as clever as Henry himself.  Can Cork track down these mystery pursuers and find his loved ones before innocent blood is spilled in Minnesota’s pristine forests, or will the mercenaries find and eliminate them first:  for Cork it hardly bears thinking about, and the reader is right with him, every hard step of the way – and just as horrified and repulsed when the mercenaries’ real reason for the pursuit is revealed.

            William Kent Krueger is a masterly writer:  a master of suspense, and a master wordsmith for the still-pristine environment of North America – and its underdogs, those who are still ready to lay down their lives for the Land.  SIX STARS