“Blindfold Game,” by Dana Stabenow (St. Martin’s Minotaur, 260 pages, $23.95)
In a departure from her two Alaskan detective series, this Edgar-winning author gives us an action- packed thriller about a possible terrorist plot against America originating in Southeast Asia. Hugh Rincon is the CIA analyst who uncovers it, but in the post-9/11 climate, nobody in the agency believes him. Nonetheless, Hugh follows the evidence to his home state of Alaska, where his wife, Sara Lange, is now the executive officer of the Coast Guard cutter Sojourner Truth.
Because of their differing career goals, Hugh and Sara have had a long-distance marriage for much of their wedded life. Sara is as committed to the Coast Guard as Hugh is to the CIA – more so, it appears, as the tale unfolds and Hugh becomes increasingly cynical about the agency’s refusal to back him up. While the terrorists are making their way toward a target in Alaska, Hugh boards the Sojourner Truth, whose crew is working around the clock along the Maritime Boundary Line in the Bering Sea tracking fishing vessels trespassing on U.S. territorial waters and running rescue missions.
Filled with vivid descriptions of the Coast Guard and life at sea, the story culminates in a thrilling chase sequence off the Alaska coast, which is finally resolved in a fjord near Seward. The plot relies a great deal on coincidence and there’s an overabundance of scrupulously authentic Coast Guard jargon, but the rousing finale, ingenious plot and some strong characterizations will reward the reader.
“The Rainaldi Quartet,” by Paul Adam St. Martin’s Minotaur, 310 pages, $23.95
When the elderly violin maker Tomaso Rainaldi is murdered in his workshop in Cremona, Italy, the other members of the string quartet he regularly played in not only mourn his death, two of them vow to find who killed him. Fellow luthier Gianni Castiglione and policeman Antonio Guastafeste travel throughout Italy and England to find their friend’s murderer, but first they have to figure out who would want to kill a harmless old man, and why.
They follow a trail that leads to Venice, where the dead man had met with a very rich and greedy violin collector; to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where Stradivari’s most fabled creation is on display; and to a decaying mansion in the Pennines, where an old lady may hold a key to the location of another legendary violin. There’s another murder and many seeming dead ends before Castiglione and Guastafeste finally solve the mystery.
Rich in detail about the history of violin making and music and the chicanery and fraud that often accompany them, the story is told with uncommon grace, clarity and wit. Gianni Castiglione is a particularly engaging narrator, resigned to a bachelor’s life following the death of his wife, pleasantly surprised at the prospect of a new love he never bargained for and always keenly observant of the world around him.
“The Once and Future Con,” by Peter Guttridge (Speck Press, 295 pages, $14)
Ever the skeptic, freelance journalist Nick Madrid finds it hard to believe that the actual site of Camelot has really been discovered. He’s off to England’s west country to check it out along with his always outrageously outspoken and underdressed editor friend, Bridget Frost, otherwise known as the “the Bitch of the Broadsheets.”
What he doesn’t find hard to believe is the degree to which people will go to cash in on what should be a national treasure. Within days of the find, entrepreneurs are scaling what’s left of the walls hoping to turn the home of the once and future king into a Disneyland-type theme park complete with animatronic knights and ladies, a Sword in the Stone test, an authentic Grail Experience and, of course, a cocktail bar and casino. This blasphemy is enough to summon what appears to be King Arthur back from the grave. Worse, a serial killer appears to be prowling the ramparts.
The humor is broad, often scatological, and the jokes come fast and furiously as Nick pursues the killer through the mists of Avalon, pausing only for the occasional and usually comically unsatisfactory tryst with a very modern maid. Along the way, no one is safe from Guttridge’s barbed Excalibur as he rips apart the social structure of modern Britain with a wit that suggests Evelyn Waugh on speed.
Tom and Enid Schantz write a monthly column on new mysteries.
