Crucifixion Creek by Barry Maitland

Minotaur, 336 pages, c2015

Author Barry Maitland has a long-running series starring British detectives Brock and Kolla. He currently lives in Australia and has handed in his first book set in Sydney. His main character is a police detective, Harry Belltree. It really is only incidental to the story that Harry is of Aboriginal descent. There are several interesting notes about this character which gives the story an element of surprise, but none really have to do with his ethnicity. He is simply Australian for all intents and purposes.

Harry is married to Jenny. Jenny lost her sight three years ago when she was a passenger in a car driven by Harry’s dad, Judge Belltree. Both the judge and his wife were killed. Harry always has believed there was something suspicious about the accident. His wife cannot remember anything about the event. In his spare moments he tries to piece together information about what his father — assuming it was murder and the primary target was his father — was involved in at the time. He has drawn a blank and feels people’s tolerance of his obsession ebb over time.

When Harry and his temporary partner, Deb Velasco, are called to investigate the murder of what appears to be an ex-bike gang member, it is the first link to Crucifixion Creek. At the scene, he is accosted by Kelly Pool, a reporter who has had flashes of brilliance but is now a backwater reporter. 

Kelly can’t get any information from Harry, so she is tasked with interviewing a woman whose good friends were found outside a cafe, presumptive suicides because of age, impoverishment, or something else? The interviewee lives on the Creek. It is then that Kelly notices a biker fortification at the end of the street. The bikers are The Crows, a particularly lethal group, supposedly involved with meth, but no one has been able to catch them in flagrante. From the interviewee, Kelly learns the dead couple owned many properties on the Creek, including the woman’s house.

In the meantime, we are introduced to Greg and Nicole, Jenny’s sister and her husband. It is shocking when later Greg is murdered, his business torched, and Nicole finds herself with nothing. What happened? Greg had been a successful builder. Later a huge loan was uncovered, leading Harry to Alexander Kristich, a shady money lender and financial guy. By the way, Greg’s murdered body was discovered near Crucifixion Creek.

Crucifixion Creek has a bad history. In 1790, a company of marines went “carrying hatchets and sacks with which to collect the heads of five adult Aboriginal men.” They succeeded in their quest, and the Creek has had a tainted aura ever since.

Harry has two mysteries: what happened to his folks and what happened to Greg. The more he explores those issues, both professionally and as a sideline, the more he begins to see faint tendrils connecting all the Crucifixion Creek events. Could that really be true? Or could it be that the person/people involved in the murders have a large reach? Or could be it that it’s wishful thinking on Harry’s part? Also, he still grapples with the PTSD he suffered from having fought in Afghanistan. It's a bloody mess.

Harry warily accepts the involvement of Kelly Pool in tracking down what has been happening at Crucifixion Creek.

As usual, Maitland does an excellent job of drawing the portraits of his characters. As I said before, Harry continues to pull rabbits out of a hat throughout the book. I really was caught up in the tangle of issues and the satisfactory resolution.

Minotaur released the second book, “Ash Island,” in the U.S. in 2016. The third book in the trilogy, “Slaughter Park” (c2018), has not yet been released in the U.S., as far as I know.

Good-o!

Smoke by Joe Ide

Mulholland Books, 336 pages, $28

Joe Ide’s books are like that potato chip commercial: You can’t read just one.

By the way, if you haven’t read a single IQ book, then this review is not for you. Move along.

The Isaiah Quintabe series has been getting darker. The crimes, committed and contemplated, in this book are vicious and shocking. The first IQ book, “IQ,” was a softer, more humorous look at a young man with some oddities but also with a lot of brain power. But with success comes the burden of more puzzles to solve. He’s not like a T.V. show detective. There are no longer simple, neat and complete endings. Although there is still much humor (mostly courtesy of Deronda and Dodson) in the book, Joe Ide can’t go backwards. Are you ready for the fifth IQ book, “Smoke”?

If you have been a faithful follower of IQ’s adventures, Joe Ide is going to throw a lot more curveballs your way. When we last left IQ, he had driven away from his life because of the bounty placed on his head by some bad, bad people. He knew it was safer for Grace, the love of his life, to live without him. She went to live with Deronda, a longtime neighborhood friend of IQ and IQ’s best friend, Juanell Dodson. Dodson has a lot of new stuff in his life, too, including lessons on how to be a “respectable” person from his mother-in-law, the indomitable Gloria. 

However, IQ’s sacrifice proves not enough to keep people he loves safe. It also doesn’t keep a new kind of horror from landing on his doorstep.

A new, unwanted case breaks into IQ's house and wraps its tentacles around him. It involves the deaths of several women, at least one serial killer, at least one escaped young man from a psychiatric facility, and a lot of pressure on IQ's PTSD resulting from what he has had to do in the past.

Ide alternates Dodson’s story about his attempt to make a legitimate place for himself in the working world in order to support his family and the story of IQ’s search for the killer. Ide does it with seeming ease. (P.S. We know it isn’t easy. Good writing is the product of inspiration and perspiration, as one wit decreed.) His intense killer insight is balanced by his intensely humorous and heartfelt account of Dodson, Cherise, Gloria, and Deronda. There are other characters, and fortunately, that’s exactly what they are, characters.

“Smoke” is meant to be loved. And the book after that is meant to be deeply anticipated.

MBTB star!

On Harrow Hill by John Verdon

Counterpoint, 400 pages, $28

I’ve read almost every John Verdon book. He has a way of creating an authentic-sounding, ordinary world, mostly populated by ordinary people. The odd element in this ordinary picture is retired detective Dave Gurney, formerly of the NYPD, occasional consultant to various counties in upstate New York. The quiet hills and dales have erupted over the years with weirdness, ever since Dave moved in.

Dave Gurney is my detective hero: He’s meticulous, smart, knowledgeable, yet thinks outside the box. These characteristics mean Verdon must write a book-and-a-half where others would only write one book. Dave thinks and re-thinks his cases. If he “feels” things are not right, he will doggedly try to figure out what is wrong and then hound his target to ground. That sums up “On Harrow Hill.” “Hound Dog” Gurney takes off after a scent no one else gets.

Dave and his (long-suffering) wife have a well-kept home, a barn, a bunch of chickens, a field to mow, trees, sunshine, a porch, and one of them has plans for a llama enclosure. Hint: It’s not Dave. After his adventures as an NYPD police officer and an inadvertent late-in-life career as a tracker of serial killers, Dave thinks his home is a haven. That haven has been breached in the past, but so far Dave has taken care of business. He would do happily-ever-after at home, but there has been one devilish serial killer after another crying to be caught.

How about a zombie serial killer, though?

The man who was Dave’s police partner a geologic age ago is now the chief of police at an idyllic town up the road a few hours from where Dave lives. He begs for Dave’s help with a high-profile case.

Chief Mike Morgan of Larchfield is in over his head. What, he wonders, does Dave make of the following? A very rich man in his jurisdiction has died. The man is so rich, he IS the town of Larchfield. He is old and has a young, sullen wife. Or had. He is dead, killed in his bedroom, his throat slit from side to side. His wife heard nothing from her bedroom. Enter Dave to do a favor for his former partner.

There’s a catch. Shortly after Dave’s arrival, fresh fingerprints found in the victim’s room are determined to belong to a dead man.

When all pertinent authorities immediately gallop to the morgue where the body is supposedly stored, they find a broken casket — broken from the inside — along with stolen scalpels and the gruesome possibility that Billy Tate has risen from the dead. People saw him die by lightening and a serious fall. The doctor pronounced him dead. On the other hand, the doctor has been known to tipple, and it was kind of dark when “Billy” fell. Whatever, the morgue video reveals someone breaking out of the morgue — someone who bears a resemblance to, gulp, Billy Tate … 

Larchfield, home to millionaires and their manicured gardens, is suddenly the hotspot for news organizations trying to get a story on the zombie killer.

It’s up to Dave to use his logic. That’s a tall order when another victim is found, with another sighting of the zombie.

Eventually, the mystery appears to be solved, but there are many more pages of the book to go. That is because Dave has a “feeling.” It takes him a while to realize what makes him so uneasy. Then we get a second denouement more in line with the other Dave Gurney books: a spectacular, bang-bang-shoot-‘em-up final twist.

Whew!

Snow by John Banville

Hanover Square Press, 304 pages, $27.99 (c2020)

John Banville is known by another, more familiar name to the mystery world: Benjamin Black. Under this pseudonym, he created the character of a forensic pathologist named Quirke. In “Snow,” Quirke is on his honeymoon, and that brief mention is his only contribution to the story. Apparently, Banville has decided to dispense with his alter ego and just write as John Banville henceforth.

“Snow” begins in the best, albeit very bleak, Agatha Christie way and ends with a very Vladimir Nabokov touch, no double entendre intended. Beware, those who seek a cozy winter novel set in an idyllic village in Ireland in 1957, you will get a nasty twist for all your trouble. Not that I’m giving away anything; a garden gnome could see what was coming. But could a garden gnome write the way Benjamin Black/John Banville does? Not even the finest pointy-headed of the lot could.

Let’s look at the title, “Snow.” In Banville’s story, snow falls heavily, covers everything, damages some things, obfuscates that which should be plainly visible. The clues from the murder – body in the library of a proper crumbling British manor house – the victim, the perpetrator(s), the huffy housekeeper, the sulky stableboy, the petulant, haughty children, the damaged wife, the colonel in the library with the candlestick are all mystifyingly unhelpful.

St. John (“Sinjun”) Strafford (“with an ‘r’”) is the awkwardly inappropriate detective assigned to the case. He wanders around befuddled, befogged, and bemused in the snow, although he is smart. He comes from an old aristocratic background, he is Protestant, and he was maybe promoted too soon.

Och, did I mention the action takes place in Ireland, near Dublin? Strafford is outnumbered by Catholics. Now to introduce the murder victim. He was a Catholic priest, Father Tom. Because of the heavy snowfall, he was kept from returning to his home and was staying the night in the manor owned by Colonel Osborne, Protestant. Father Tom died in a rather dramatic way: his throat was slashed and he was castrated.

Osborne recognizes at once one of his own when he meets Strafford. Strafford’s equally ancient family lives a few counties over. He has disappointed said ancient family in his choice of livelihoods. Imagine, a common policeman. Strafford’s lineage opens doors for him with the family, for all the good it does him. The family members effortlessly turn away direct questions, especially the colonel’s young second wife whose multiple personalities confuse everyone. 

Strafford seems very obtuse and naive about following the clues to their logical conclusion. Maybe because it’s 1957? That doesn’t seem to be a complete excuse. Nevertheless, the murder and its solution are not the point. Banville explores the psychology of the times. He is most excellent at letting his characters define themselves in little sweeps of dialogue or action.

Poor Strafford can barely consider the facts of a case because his own life is in such a muddle. What exactly does he want? What is important to him? He loves no one and no one loves him. He is attracted to the daughter of the house, the colonel’s wife, the rosy-cheeked, plump maid in his inn. He is untethered, as lost in his life as he sometimes gets in the deep snow and woods surrounding the manor.

Banville (and Strafford) does solve the mystery. He provides background in a very well-written, shocking prelude to the murder, which appears towards the end of the book. Banville is a literary force.

To give you a sense of Banville’s mix of subtlety, humor, and gristle, here are some excerpts:

“Thinking of these things, Strafford was once more struck by the strangeness of this killing How could it possibly have come about that a Catholic priest, ‘a friend of the house,’ should be lying here dead in his own blood, in Ballyglass House, hereditary seat of the Osbornes, of the ancient barony of Scarawalsh, in the County of Wexford? What, indeed, would the neighbors say.”

and

“They were, all three of them, bored and cold and eager to get the hell out of this big chilly gloomy bloody place and head back as fast as their black van would carry them, and the snow would permit, to their cozy quarters in Pearse Street. They were Dubliners — being in the country gave them the jitters.”

and finally,

“When there was a lapse [in conversation] like this on the line, if Strafford listened hard he could hear, behind the electronic crackles, a sort of distant warbling. It always fascinated him, this eerie, cacophonous music, and gave him a shiver, too. It was as if the hosts of the dead were singing to him out of the ether.”