A Case of Matricide
By Graeme Macrae Burnet
I’ve long appreciated the way Burnet’s novels are in conversation with earlier times. “His Bloody Project” and “Case Study,” in particular, mine the postmodern era without pretense and with deep respect. And I harbor a soft spot for his Frenchified crime novels, those initially purported to be written by “Raymond Brunet,” which are in the vein of Georges Simenon’s romans durs and the work of Jean-Patrick Manchette.
The Brunet novels — “The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau,” “The Accident on the A35” and now A CASE OF MATRICIDE (Biblioasis, 243 pp., paperback, $18.95) — all feature the taciturn and befuddled Inspector Gorski, a detective in St.-Louis, France. When an elderly woman claims her novelist son is trying to kill her, Gorski is assigned to investigate. He visits the family often, trying to deduce how someone could be so monstrous, but he realizes all too late how porous the line is between acceptable and extreme behavior.
You can gulp down “A Case of Matricide” in one sitting, as the prose style seems to demand. But linger over Burnet’s novel, and its real pleasures emerge.
Hotel Lucky Seven
By Kotaro Isaka
The hapless hit man Nanao, first introduced in Isaka’s “Bullet Train,” lamented that no matter what job he took, no matter whom he was contracted to kill, it would always, always go wrong. Imagine if Dortmunder, the iconic bank robber created by Donald E. Westlake, met up with Keller, Lawrence Block’s hit man character, and you get an idea of what Nanao was like in that earlier novel.
Nanao (code name: Ladybug) returns in HOTEL LUCKY SEVEN (The Overlook Press, 289 pp., $27) with another seemingly simple assignment: to deliver a framed painting to a guest at the Winton Palace Hotel. But the guest tries to strangle him and then, as Ladybug tells his handler, things went very, very wrong: “Maybe he slipped on the paper on the floor. He went ass over teakettle all on his own,” hit his head on a marble tabletop and died.
Isaka’s style is terse, laden with dark humor expressed with a flat affect — just the right tone for a book that walks the line between comedy and violence. You don’t have to have read “Bullet Train” to enjoy this novel, but why deprive yourself of the pleasure?
Murder Town
By Shelley Burr
It’s a pity that Burr’s latest crime novel, MURDER TOWN (Morrow, 346 pp., paperback, $18.99), wasn’t published under its original Australian title, “Ripper.” That title reflects the way violent deaths tear rifts in the social fabric, especially in small Australian towns like the ones Burr depicts with such authentic flavor, both here and in her last novel, “Wake.”
But I know, I know, “Ripper” too easily evokes that infamous serial killer, even if Burr’s novel is about a different one. Seventeen years after the “Rainier Ripper” killed three people, a tour operator decides the village is the perfect spot for a true-crime tour. “In Sydney I can take a tour to the precise spot of a Razor Gang killing, but half the time the site has been knocked down and rebuilt a dozen times over,” he tells Rainier’s business leaders. “Here, the park, the church, the fountain, the tea shop are all perfectly preserved, almost exactly as they looked at the time.” A couple of hours later, he’s dead, his body hanging from the fountain outside Gemma Guillory’s tea shop.
The fresh murder ties the town’s awful past to an ugly present and forces everyone, including Gemma, to re-examine their beliefs about what really happened years ago. Burr writes with steely force and quiet empathy, a combination that serves this layered narrative.
Big Breath In
By John Straley
Every year I keep meaning to review a Straley novel and every year I somehow fail at this task. Which is in no way about merit: Straley’s series novels, especially those featuring the Alaskan P.I. Cecil Younger, convey the state’s spirit in ways I wish more regional mysteries would do.
BIG BREATH IN (Soho Crime, 277 pp., $28.95) covers emotional territory. It has to, since the main character, a retired marine biologist named Delphine, has decided to surrender to her terminal cancer diagnosis. Her husband has died, and she knows she’s become a burden to her son.
But then Delphine witnesses a violent confrontation between a man and a woman who’s clutching a small boy. “He doesn’t understand when you talk to him that way,” the woman says. “And I don’t appreciate it either. Now let’s get him to the hospital.” When the woman and her son go missing, Delphine’s will to live kicks in. She decides to find them, embarking upon a journey that will show her the worst that humanity has to offer — but also the best.
“Big Breath In” is hard to put down and even harder to shake off afterward.
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