“Mark of the Lion,” by Suzanne Arruda (New American Library, 338 pages, $23.95)
Jade de Cameron was raised on a ranch in New Mexico and further toughened by driving an ambulance during World War I. She’s a crack shot, an ace mechanic and an expert driver, a woman who embraces life and thrives on danger. When her aviator lover dies in her arms after she has pulled him from the burning wreckage of his Sopwith Camel, she promises to carry out his dying request: Find his brother and learn how his father died.
After she is demobilized, Jade is told by David’s frosty mother that he had no brother, but a visit with his solicitor suggests otherwise. He sends her off to British East Africa, where her new career as a travel writer is a perfect cover for her inquiries.
This is the Kenya of Isak Dinesen, Osa and Martin Johnson, and Ernest Hemingway, and Jade falls hopelessly under its spell, accustomed as she is to the rugged landscape of her homeland. She meets a wide variety of colonists and natives, shocks some of them with her unorthodox ways, wins more over with her kindness and common sense, and ends up on a safari at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro where she faces great danger but eventually fulfills her mission.
This debut novel delivers on its unabashedly romantic premise and for good measure throws in a genuine mystery, albeit with supernatural overtones, as Jade is confronted with a series of murders that seem to be the work of a witch not unlike the Navajo skinwalkers she grew up hearing about. It’s storytelling in the grand manner, old-fashioned entertainment with a larger-than-life heroine far ahead of her time.
“Out of Order,” by Charles Benoit (Poisoned Pen Press, 224 pages, $24.95)
Jason Talley, a 27-year-old loan officer from Corning, N.Y., is the unlikely hero of this thriller set in the teeming streets of India, where an assassin can be purchased for pocket change. When his friends, a couple from India, are found dead in their Corning apartment, the apparent victims of a murder-suicide, Jason decides to honor their memory by delivering an elaborate sari to the dead man’s mother in India.
His travel agent books Jason on a senior citizens tour that is more shopping than sightseeing. With the help of the only other young person on the tour, a lovely Canadian woman with a fondness for trains and making up outrageous lies, he leaves the group only to find himself attacked by knife-wielding, gun-toting assassins at every juncture.
The assassins appear to be in the pay of one or more of his dead friend’s former associates in an Indian software company that went bankrupt after he allegedly stole their plans and sabotaged their computer system. While Jason can’t believe that his jovial friend could be guilty of duplicity, the evidence suggests otherwise.
Part detective story, part thriller, Benoit’s second novel is all the more engaging because Jason is an average joe who doesn’t know martial arts or how to handle a weapon. The result is an adventure story almost cozy in texture, yet still thrilling, with just the right touch of romance. It’s the kind of story Alfred Hitchcock would have filmed.
“The Shape of Sand,” by Marjorie Eccles (St. Martin’s Minotaur, 288 pages, $23.95)
Beatrice Jardine was a pampered Edwardian beauty who vanished from her country home in 1910 after a gala birthday party in her honor. The evidence suggests that she ran off with her half-Egyptian lover, but her husband and children were too traumatized to really investigate the matter. Then, in 1946, when the country house that Amory Jardine sold after his wife’s death is reopened, discoveries are made that cast new light on the tragic events of long ago.
Much of the burden of reopening the investigation falls to Harriet, the sensible eldest daughter, who has found a measure of contentment in the life she has made for herself but still dreads what might turn up. The police play their part, but there are people from the past who must be reconnected with and painful memories to be relived.
It’s a leisurely story, full of flashbacks and tantalizing hints at what really happened, not always easy to follow because of the enormous cast of characters and convoluted plot. But the patient reader will be rewarded with an arresting portrait of two contrasting eras: the golden, carefree days of England before the wars, especially as it was for the privileged classes, and the somberness of the postwar austerity years.
Tom and Enid Schantz are freelancers who write a monthly column on new mysteries.
