New York

I started reading R.J. Ellory's books with A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS which I absolutely loved.  Then moved onto THE ANNIVERSARY MAN which made my Top Ten of 2010 and eventually, after I worked out a way to finagle the definition, into the two books that I nominated as my favourites for that year in my contribution to an article in Deadly Pleasures magazine.  SAINTS OF NEW YORK is the latest I've been lucky enough to read, and with each book, I just get more and more impressed.

SAINTS OF NEW YORK is veering more towards a traditional procedural crime novel than earlier books, but with Ellory's trademarks of flawed characters, in a dark and murky world, struggling against personal and external demons and pressures.

In Frank Parrish's case, a lot of his demons come directly from the larger than life legacy of his father, one of the original "Saints of New York", the policemen who famously stood up to the Mafia in the early 1980's.  Whilst everybody else regards John Parrish as a hero and legend, Frank stands alone, remembering a man who seemed to care more about the job, and the money, and status than he did about his own family.  How Frank deals with his own day to day life, as a divorced, alcoholic,  desperate and disaffected man, is woven brilliantly into this book as he has been forced to attend daily sessions with a Police Department counsellor.  As these sessions proceed, Frank's state of mind, his background and his life are drawn out, just as he inches closer and closer to the killer of what turns out to be more than just one teenage girl.

SAINTS OF NEW YORK has a wonderfully dark, murky, tense and slightly desperate feel about it.  It sets itself deep in the underbelly of New York, simultaneously taking you deep into the personal world of Frank Parrish.  Violent and dark, there is also an intricate and compelling plot in which a man handles the professional with aplomb and the personal with a staggering lack thereof.  I really have no idea how this author does it, but there's something amazingly compelling about Frank Parrish.  Which doesn't take anything away from a fast-paced, well plotted novel that takes a few chapters to pull you in and then grabs you and holds onto you until the very end.  And then for a while after that. 

HOME BEFORE DARK is the first thriller from UK Author Charles Maclean.  It's the story of a wealthy man, who had it all.  A thriving business, a beautiful wife, doted on daughter.  Until his daughter is murdered while studying in Florence.  Frustrated by the slow and ineffectual police investigation, Ed Lister starts his own.  Doing some of the investigating himself, he is led to a mysterious website, which prompts him to offer a million dollars to a computer expert in the quest to crack the weird online clues that seem to be trying to lead Ed forward.

HOME BEFORE DARK did seem to take a long time to get into.  The early parts of the book, that setup the plot and give you an opening feeling for the characters - particularly Ed - didn't quite seem to work and there was definitely a feeling of having to consciously stay with the thing.  Perhaps that is partially because this could be a film script in the making, with the conspicuously touristy settings (Florence / Paris / London / New York), and with elements of the action themselves - murder on a train seeming like the quintessential noir movie scene these days.  Perhaps it is also because it could take the reader a little while to pick up on a couple of things - why our killer is present all the time, stalking, menacing; and that Ed is ultimately an unreliable narrator.  Interestingly enough it is the pursuit of what it is that Ed is trying to hide that frequently becomes the focus, rather than the death of his daughter.

Being a thriller there are some elements of the plotline that readers will simply have to accept - the lack of police involvement in the investigation, a bit of male-jep (for a change), a psychopathic killer with a "history" and a husband with a guilty secret or two tucked away.  Perhaps one of the things that remains with this reader the most about the book is the way that the women are all elusive.  Ed's wife is around but not really involved; his daughter is dead and whilst mourned and seemingly the instigator of all the angst and pursuit, not discussed or fleshed out that much.  The only female character that has much presence at all is a cyber-character who may not necessarily exist or even be female for that matter.  There's also a few technology aspects that pushed the boundaries of credibility to stretching point, but let's face it, a thriller isn't necessarily bound by the rules of reality.

As a thriller, once the pace got moving and the story started to get complicated, HOME BEFORE DARK definitely got more interesting and ever so slightly creepy.  Not exactly "leave the lights on for a week after you've finished it" frightening, and with some slight quibbles about some aspects of the book, fans of thrillers could find HOME BEFORE DARK an interesting twist on the unreliable narrator.

In THE FINDER Jin Li is a young, beautiful and very secretive Chinese woman. Supposedly a supervisor for a company that cleans office buildings in New York, she is actually an information thief who works for her wealthy brother Chen's Shanghai-based company. Chen uses the data she steals to make millions in the stock market. Good Pharma, a company with some promising new products in the pipeline, discover what Jin Li is up to and arrange for her to die. Jin Li escapes the horrible killing as she is conveniently taking a toilet break nearby.  However, two of her employees die of suffication when their car is hemmed in by trucks and filled with sewage. Realising that she was the intended victim,
Jin Li goes into hiding. Chen is worried over her disappearance, and hires her ex-boyfriend Tom Reilly to find her after Tom convinces him that he has nothing to do with her disappearance.

From here layer upon layer of plots are laid down. Twists and turns abound with enough back stories to explain how the main players got to where they are today. If you allow yourself the chance to stop and think about the things you are reading, you will realise that reality is stretched disbelievingly wide for a non-fantasy novel. But if you can suspend belief, and not question what you are reading, it is a fast paced adventure full of deliciously evil and wacky villains, who make insider traders look like kindergarten kiddies. The ending is odd – not what I would have expected at all after the remorseless build up. I enjoyed reading THE FINDER, but there was something that I couldn't quite put my finger on that stopped me from loving it.

Sawbones is a novella, set in the US, not part of MacBride's series books set in Aberdeen.  There are some similarities though - I harbour a fond belief that this author couldn't write out his shopping list without some sly, black humour involved.

There is plenty of humour in SAWBONES.  There's also a lot of gruesome moments, which again is pretty typical MacBride.  He does love to gross you out, make you laugh, then make you stop and think what the hell am I laughing at for goodness sake!  It's quite a tribute to the skill of the author that he can make that work in 114 pages, whilst he also tells a soberingly believable story.  You see Laura's dad is not somebody to be messed with - he knows people - who know what to do with people, and there's a car full of those people chasing our serial killer across America, tracking the killer that the FBI have nicknamed Sawbones.  Dealing with Laura's boyfriend, handling the interest of local State Troopers, calling in some big favours. 

The reason they call this killer Sawbones - well he's a serial killer, I think you can probably work that one out.  What the pursuers have in mind - well you can guess that without the need for much synapse snapping.  What ends up happening - well maybe you aren't going to quite pick all the elements of that coming.  

The story moves at a very rapid clip (one ancient and clapped out Ford Crown Victoria nothwithstanding).  It's violent, it's brusque, it's unflinchingly gross is some places.  It's funny, it's black, it's in your face in some places.  It's highly entertaining and - I'm probably going to hell in a handbasket - because I just couldn't help but laugh a lot.