Solitude Creek
By Jeffery Deaver. Hachette. $29.99
The Killing Lessons
By Saul Black. Orion. $29.99
No Name Lane
By Howard Linskey. Michael Joseph. $32.99
Thomas Harris has a lot to answer for. His Red Dragon and The Silence Of The Lambs were both excellent thrillers, but they created an enthusiasm for horrific serial killer novels that swamped the crime genre for several years and made it almost impossible in the 1990s to buy a crime novel that did not feature a diabolical serial killer.
Fortunately much of the demand for imitative thrillers about intelligent serial killers who taunt their pursuers has waned, but there are still some good serial killer thrillers around for those who like to be scared.
Jeffery Deaver was a key driver of the serial killer phenomenon and his The Bone Collector is generally considered to be one of the best thrillers of the late 1990s. Some twenty years later and Deaver is still going strong and his latest novel, Solitude Creek, exhibits his usual panache for fast action and diabolical twists.
Disgraced California Bureau of Investigation officer Kathryn Dancer is taken off a major gang investigation and given the routine task of looking into a fire at a local roadhouse. No one was burnt in the fire, but the deliberate blocking of the exit doors and the suggestion of a deadly inferno created an "animal frenzy" that resulted in three deaths. Dancer quickly comes to realise that she is up against a new type of killer who scares people into causing their own deaths.
This is a well concocted and breathlessly paced thriller that takes the reader through a dazzling array of twists and turns to the impossible to predict climax. The characters, apart from the killer, tend to be bland, but Deaver adds some credible depth to Dancer by having the single-mother deal with a series of guilt ridden headaches caused by her 10-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son.
The end result is a slick and entertaining book that will keep you reading well into the night.
In recent years Deaver has tended to avoid graphic depiction of violence, preferring to leave it to the readers' imagination. This is not the case with newcomer Saul Black whose debut thriller, The Killing Lessons, is a bloody, violent affair.
San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart's obsessive pursuit of a pair of killers has pushed her to the edge of a physical and psychological breakdown and destroyed her relationships. Sickened and distressed by grieving relatives and the trail of tortured female corpses with seemingly random objects inserted into them, Valerie is on the verge of giving up when the killers make a mistake. Meanwhile the ten-year-old daughter of the pair's latest victim secretly flees into the snow covered countryside and into greater danger.
The strength of Black's briskly paced novel lies in its nicely lined set of characters, especially the much damaged Valerie and her team, and its relentless storyline. There is not a lot here which is new, however Black handles the dual storyline well and uses it to generate considerable suspense. Some of the twists lack credibility, but they are redeemed by the exciting and blood drenched finale.
More sedate than the books by Deaver and Black is No Name Lane by British writer Howard Linskey.
Set in 1993 in the North East of England this is a well-crafted crime story. Ian Bradshaw is a young, troubled police detective who is out of favour with the top brass and desperate to join in the search for a serial killer who targets young girls. Instead he is assigned to the investigation of sixty-year-old skeleton. Meanwhile journalist Tom Bradshaw is also on the outer. A local reporter who left to work as a journalist on a tabloid newspaper in London, he has now returned to his old stomping ground in disgrace and is desperate to beat the police to the identity of the serial killer.
Linskey has created an intricate and engaging story that moves at a good pace. There are regular twists and surprises and the story gathers momentum as it proceeds. The characters are well drawn, if a little predictable, but the book's real pleasure lies in the vividly described setting of County Durham and Linskey's skilful weaving in of the local dialogue and the wry humour of the inhabitants.
This is a good start to a promising new series that will appeal to fans of Peter Robinson and Mark Billingham.
Jeff Popple is a Canberra reviewer.
