More Mysteries from the Masters
Categories: Mystery & Suspense , Staff Picks , Fiction
I wrote last week about a John Harvey mystery, an expert British police procedural. I’ve picked up two more dynamite mysteries since, one new, one old, also by masters of the genre. Some writers really know how to do it—I hope you’re reading these series.
The first was Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais. Crais’s Elvis Cole mysteries just crackle with sharp writing, eerie violence, and a hero who hits the perfect note of sarcasm that so few have gotten right since the early days of that other p.i., Spenser.
The second was Jan Burke’s Kidnapped, the 2005 volume in her series featuring California newspaperwoman Irene Kelly. Once again, wow—Burke spins a complicated plot as breezily as though she’s spinning plates, but she’ll have you deeply invested in the fate of all of her characters.
Elvis Cole is investigating Lionel Byrd’s suicide. Byrd’s body was found by cops while they were clearing a neighborhood threatened by wildfire. In front of his body they found a grotesque album of death photos, clear proof that he was a serial killer. Cole helped get a court case against Byrd dismissed years ago, on retainer for Byrd’s defense attorney, by checking timelines and alibis. Did Cole’s work then set Byrd free to kill again? He has to find out, however open and shut the case seems to the cops.
Irene Kelly is writing stories about abducted children, including the notorious case in which teenaged Mason Fletcher was convicted of murdering his father and kidnapping his young sister, who has never been seen since. That story brings Irene into the orbit of the large and powerful Fletcher family. Curiously, so does a crime scene that Irene covers when a body is found in the woods—one of the forensic anthropologists working the scene is Mason Fletcher’s brother, Caleb. Coincidences and complications mount from there, involving Irene in a widening ring of investigations where children are in peril.
If you want to start at the beginning of either series, The Monkey’s Raincoat introduced Elvis Cole and Goodnight, Irene was the first Irene Kelly volume.
