Falling More Slowly, by Peter Helton
The author of the Chris Honeysett private-eye books has begun an equally beguiling new series, set in Bristol, England, and featuring newly transferred Detective Inspector Liam McLusky, who’s recovering from injuries sustained in his previous job. A man who’s decidedly rough around the edges but dedicated to crime solving, he doesn’t even have time to unpack or find out where to get a decent cup of coffee before he’s hard at work in his new job.
With the help of his amiable new partner, James Austin (known to all as Jane), Liam sets out to learn his way around a new department and a new city, one that’s daunting for its dense traffic and perpetually gridlocked streets. After wrecking a nearly new car, Liam finds himself assigned to a high-profile case in which ordinary objects — cameras, compacts, beer cans — turn out to be miniature bombs, and those who innocently pick them up become their victims.
As in any good police procedural, other criminals are being pursued at the same time, including a gang of scooter riders who are mugging people for their mobile phones. It’s all as messy as Liam’s own train wreck of a life, but fortunately he seems to thrive on chaos, and as unorthodox as his methods are, he gets results. So no matter how much he may irk his superiors, he’s likely to be around for a while, which is good news indeed for the reader.
Devil-Devil, by Graeme Kent
We picked this book up because we were intrigued by the setting, the Solomon Islands in the 1960s as the British were preparing to relinquish control to the native islanders, but we put it down completely enchanted with its two protagonists, police sergeant Ben Kella, who is also an aofia, or hereditary peacekeeper of the Lau people, and Sister Conchita, a scrappy young American nun.
Kella, a man who lives in two worlds, is having problems. An American anthropologist has disappeared, an old man has been murdered, a student from the mission school has gone missing, and the skeleton of an Australian beachcomber who died in 1942 has been dislodged from its burial place. Kella’s instincts tell him all these things are connected, as are the attempts being made on Sister Conchita’s life. Granted, the young nun’s passion for justice and her often reckless behavior have rubbed many people the wrong way, but who would want to kill her?
The author, an English educator, does for these far-flung South Pacific islands what Tony Hillerman did for the American Southwest. Eloquent in his descriptions of the cultural and geographic diversity of the archipelago a half century ago, he displays a quiet wit, as well, and we look forward to more in this compelling new series.
Heartstone, by C.J. Sansom
The notoriously corrupt Court of Wards is the subject of this newest case for the sharp-witted but soft-hearted hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake, set in 1545 with England at war and Matthew on a mission for his new queen, Catherine Parr. On behalf of an old servant woman, Catherine has asked Matthew to investigate possible malfeasance involving a young ward of Sir Nicholas Hobbey, a task that takes him to Hobbey’s country estate outside Portsmouth along with his hot-headed young assistant, Jack Barak.
Matthew takes the case partly out of loyalty to his queen and partly because it will also give him a chance to resolve the mystery of Ellen Fettiplace, a woman who has been incarcerated in the Bedlam hospital for the insane for 19 years with no apparent family to pay the bills. As he investigates both cases, he becomes uncomfortably aware that something is very wrong in each one, but he can’t unearth the evidence to prove it.
In Portsmouth, the English fleet is gathering in the harbor and the city is overrun with hastily trained troops preparing to meet the French invasion. The descriptions of these momentous events are breathtaking, but as always, the book belongs to Matthew, whose compassion and humanity would be noteworthy in any age but put him well ahead of his time in Tudor England. We would rank the Shardlake books as one of the very best historical series being written today, combining meticulous scholarship with robust characters and a strong sense of the unchanging nature of human folly.
