Crimefile: Between his serious novels, Graham Greene liked to write what he termed "entertainments", such as Our Man in Havana and Travels with My Aunt, and I believe Ken Bruen is operating in the same mode.
He has penned a number of hard-hitting noir thrillers featuring ex-cop Jack Taylor and set in and around the city of Galway, but he also likes to dabble in the London underworld, locating these more fanciful works against the high jinks of the southeast city police squad. In Vixen, the upholders of the law are pretty indistinguishable from those who strive to do it down. Sergeant Brant, for example, is a loose cannon, a Filthy, rather than a Dirty Harry. And Constable Falls, bitter alcoholic that she is, is no better. And as for their superiors, well, think corruption in neon letters. The story, what there is of it, revolves around the efforts of the eponymous Vixen to extort ransom from the authorities by causing explosions in public places. But it is not the plot that matters here but rather the method of its exposition. This is done in a series of word explosions that just about reverberate on the page - one-liners, smartass quips, foul language, and a pace that kills. Vixen is not for the faint-hearted, but those who like their crime novels down and dirty - get to it!
Blow Fly is the new Kay Scarpetta novel, and that's probably enough to send Patricia Cornwell's fans scampering out to buy, buy, buy. All the usual suspects are here: the bulky policeman Pete Marino, the great forensic scientist herself, her niece and FBI agent Lucy, and another of the regulars who is actually resurrected from the dead. The plot is as complex and unbelievable as always, with not one but a host of serial killers operating as a coven in an old dark house. One of these fiends is familiar from earlier books, none other than Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, the Hannibal Lecter-like psycho, now operating from his cell on death row. Scarpetta herself has hiked it off to Florida and has settled into a new life as a private forensic consultant. Cobwebs from the past continue to envelop her, however, and she is soon up to her scalpels in blood, dismemberment and high-pitched screeching. Cornwell's prose style is most definitely her own, but she does keep the reader's interest by creating surprise after surprise, the result being a cracking good story. Vegetarians, though, should beware, for the butchered meat quota is high.
Next up is Blacklist, by Sara Paretsky. Enter Chicago-based Private Eye V. I. Warshawski once again. A certain autumnal feel to the book; it is just after 9/11, V.I.'s correspondent lover, Morrell, is in Afghanistan, and work is scarce. Then our intrepid dick gets a call from her most important client, the businessman Darraugh Graham, to investigate the fact that his 91-year-old mother has been seeing lights flashing in the dead of night in the grounds of the family estate. No sooner has our protagonist donned her prowler outfit and gone hunting than she comes across the body of journalist Marcus Whitby in an ornamental pond.
She also encounters 16-year-old Catherine Bayard, the troubled daughter of wealthy Edwards Bayard, the magazine magnate. The cops, showing their racist propensities, believe that Whitby stumbled to a drunken death, but Warshawski, stubborn as ever, thinks differently, keeps delving and eventually unearths a Gothic conspiracy of violence, sex and the thirst for power. A professional job this, with a likeably eccentric heroine, believable dialogue and a plot that holds the interest nicely.
Heart of the Hunter, by Deon Meyer, comes all the way from South Africa, and the exotic locale alone should guarantee a tale above the ordinary. But then again there is very little new that crime writers can put down on the page, and this story of an ex-assassin endeavouring to rescue an old friend and prevent a computer disk, containing extremely sensitive data, from falling into the wrong hands, contains very little that is original. Thobela Mpayipheli - and that's a mouthful, for a start - is the ex-agent who believes he has put his past behind him. Now working in a commonplace job and living with his girlfriend and her young son, he is dragged back into his old life by the daughter of his kidnapped friend, one Johnny Kleintjes. She asks him to help her deliver the disk to someone in Lusaka, his agreement setting off a train of events that results in flight, violence and double cross. Heart of the Hunter is a routine story, but given a new gloss because of where it is set. Ho-hum.
So writing The Devil's Tune is what ex-Tory Party leader Iain Duncan Smith was doing when he should have been paying more attention to the metaphorical knives being planted in his back? Coming to scoff, one stays to be entertained. Rather an old-fashioned read, much in the mode of other writers with treble nomenclature, such as Arthur Conan Doyle or Freeman Wills Croft, The Devil's Tune will not have you sitting on the edge of your seat or looking warily over your shoulder, but it is a decent effort at a traditional crime novel. The hero is art dealer John Grande, who is in Italy to examine a collection of old masters, housed in a villa and owned by a mysterious wealthy man. This kicks off a convoluted tale with more twists than a land-rezoning tribunal. The action moves backwards and forwards across the Atlantic, and also backwards and forwards in time, detailing art thefts and Nazi chicanery during the second World War, and counterparts in the present time. Duncan Smith obviously has more time on his hands nowadays, so I presume we're soon due for a follow up. How about a politically based one this time?
Finally, a word about a series of re-issues. Earlier this year, to mark Georges Simenon's centenary, Penguin Modern Classics re-published six of his crime novels. Now they have brought out another six, all of them featuring his phlegmatic detective, Inspector Maigret. Simenon, who died in 1989, wrote over 400 novels of detection. They were translated into more than 20 languages, and 40 were filmed for television and the cinema. The books, tightly written and plotted - as I think all good crime fiction should be - hold up very well, and they should introduce a whole new generation to the work of one of the great masters of the genre. These latest six are published in paperback and retail at £6.99 each.
Vincent Banville is a novelist and critic.
Vixen. By Ken Bruen, The Do-Not Press, £6.99
Blow Fly. By Patricia Cornwell, Little, Brown, £17.99
Blacklist. By Sara Paretsky, Hamish Hamilton, £12.99
Heart of the Hunter. By Deon Meyer, Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99
The Devil's Tune. By Iain Duncan Smith, Robson Books, £16.95