Mysteries and Procedurals:

Sometimes you read novels, and the story and characters are so good you never want to reach the ending. Sometimes you find the story tedious, but you still want to discover how it all ends. Sometimes you give up and throw the book away. Sometimes you resent the author for providing an unsatisfactory denouement. With mysteries and crime novels, you run the gamut; and this month's selections include some aces, some deuces, and some jokers.

First up is the expertly plotted NOT IN THE FLESH (2007) by Ruth Rendell. This police procedural, set in Sussex and starring stalwart Inspector Wexford, revolves chiefly around two long-dead corpses discovered in an overgrown garden, Gimble's Field, by a man and his truffle-hunting dog. Area residents, some rather colorful and garrulous, come under suspicion. A subplot deals with the possibility of genital mutilation as a cultural practice in a nearby Somali neighborhood. Wexford's saddened world view appears justified in this tale of greed, suspicion, and anger.

Meg Gardiner's THE DIRTY SECRETS CLUB (2008) has a great title, but the novel itself is a bit of letdown, largely because there aren't that many secrets. However, the San Francisco setting, complete with nicely timed earthquakes, is handled well; some of the characters, even though maddeningly suicide-prone, are pretty interesting, or at least they are to psychologist heroine Jo Beckett; and the prose, quickly paced with short scene jumps, has a certain quirkiness. The bad guy goes by the name "Pray."

Forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell keeps planning to board a plane back to the U.S. from Beijing, China, in Peter May's THE FOURTH SACRIFICE (1999). Yet somehow there's always something keeping her in town--a beheaded corpse or four, a trip to Xian to see the 2,000-year-old stone soldiers, or a chance to work a case with dedicated cop Li Yan. There's lots of local color in this rambling procedural, but eventually the black hats are revealed and prevented from killing off Campbell and Li in a thriller-style conclusion.

Two Vermont-based mysteries by Archer Mayor came under review this month, THE SKELETON'S KNEE (1993) and THE PRICE OF MALICE (2009), both featuring redoubtable detective Joe Gunther. In the earlier work he pursues identification of a long-buried corpse by seeking information on an artificial knee. The pursuit leads to a trip to Chicago, complete with car chases and subway rides, but ends up back in the tiny New England state, where the chase scene there is staged in a warehouse for giant puppets. In the newest work, Gunther leaves most of the local crime solving to his team and follows up on a personal investigation begun by his girlfriend whose relatives were apparently killed in Maine. Most of this story is taken up with communicating and coordinating the parallel inquiries. Place descriptions are a strong point for this writer.

Leaving the reader at loose ends is Susan Hill's THE PURE IN HEART (2005), for the kidnapped boy from the start of DCI Simon Serrailler's next case is never found. Families facing up to heart-wrenching problems, whether a missing child or a long-term disabled one, is a major theme in this novel. An ex-con nearly ends up back in jail because of the sorry attitude of his family. A child is born to a happy family. A stalker pursues an uninterested former lover. This novel is fairly cerebral and mostly sad; for everyone, but the mother of the kidnapped child, presumes the little boy left at the gate waiting for his ride to school is dead and hidden.

An unusual murder weapon, a petrified-wood statue, mars a near-idyllic vacation in the Eastern Townships area of Canada for Chief Inspector Gamache in Louise Penny's clever A RULE AGAINST MURDER (2008). The dysfunctional Finney-Morrow family reunion celebrates the sculpture of their patriarch Charles Morrow, until the heavy statues falls off its marble pedestal to kill Irene, one of Charles' four children. How the statue manages to tumble and who is responsible stump Gamache and his Montreal-based team, but only for a little while. A child in this story is kidnapped but is saved from falling off a roof in the nick of time. Everyone else in the story appears to have dark motives and/or a hidden past. Even Gamache's late father comes into play, as the arrogant Finney-Morrows pointedly remark on Honore Gamache's purported treason and cowardice during WWII.

Minette Walters' THE DEVIL'S FEATHER (2006) is more a character study than a standard crime novel, although there is a serial killer on the loose. The character in question is foreign correspondent Connie Burns, now in recovery mode in rural Dorset but showing signs of post-traumatic stress as she hourly inspects the locks on doors and windows. She had been kidnapped while on assignment in Iraq; but, unlike other captured journalists, she had been released fairly quickly and could provide no information about terrorists. This is because she realized her abductor was a mercenary whom she knew from other war zones, chiefly in Africa, and whom she suspected of being a brutal murderer. It turns out that her paranoia was justified, as the bad guy, MacKenzie, does eventually show up, but only to be outfoxed by Connie, her friend Jess, and Jess's dogs. What exactly happens to MacKenzie never becomes clear, although a severed arm does wash up along the Dorset coast.

Lastly, there's CHASING DARKNESS (2008), a hard-boiled private-eye thriller from Robert Crais. There a plenty of bodies in this one, as intrepid investigator Elvis Cole tries to figure out why Lionel Byrd, a man Cole had cleared of one murder three years earlier, is now dead, a suicide, and directly implicated in six other killings. Cole is determined to get to the bottom of the case, despite roadblocks from the Los Angeles police task force, convoluted political connections, and lies from nearly everyone but trusted sidekick Joe Pike. This one is fast-paced and neatly plotted, although the outcome of the last-chapter rendezvous with the killer is likely to be pretty obvious to confirmed crime novel buffs.

For your information: these books were purchased by me or by relatives from local stores or online. This month's selection of novels includes works from the following publishers: Random House, Dutton, St. Martin's, Knopf, Pocket Books, and The Overlook Press.