Review Mary's Prayer by  Martyn Waites
Piatkus £5.99/£16.99
Stephen Larkin is a tabloid journalist working for a paper that makes The Sunday Sport look respectable. Against his wishes he is ordered back to his home town, the fictitious Grimley, which is near to the non-fictitious Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. His editor wants him to cover the funeral of Wayne Edgell, a notorious drug dealer, but before this occurs Larkin meets up with Charlotte, the ex love of his life. Married and enjoying success as a lawyer, Charlotte asks Larkin to investigate the death of her friend Mary. Although the verdict was suicide, Charlotte harbours strong doubts regarding the truth of this outcome.
Meanwhile, Andy is the photographer who is also there to cover the funeral. The archetypal cockney wide-boy, he is loud, sexist and enamoured of his own jokes. He and Larkin do not get on but as the story unfolds they form an uneasy truce due to a variety of happenings. Larkin is bitter, moody and tough and becomes more so as he is sucked into a mire of violence and corruption. To assist with his enquiries he seeks out an old friend who is known as The Prof. He is an enigmatic, drug-soaked prophet renowned for his access to inside information about most illegal things which happen in the area. The only likeable woman in this story is Jane who gatecrashes a middleclass party which Larkin also attends. In this section  the author's inveterate hatred of bourgeois morality is aired along with an intense dislike of Dire Straits and later, Simply Red. However, what he hates most of all would seem to be the North East and particularly Newcastle. Now as a Nova Castrian, albeit one who has lived in Yorkshire for some years, I am no romantic but could never dwell on so many negative aspects of the place in the space of one book. The gangs of testosterone-laden lads rampaging through the city on a Friday night looking for sex, beer and chips in any order is not endemic to Newcastle any more than are some of the run-down council estates and deprived areas. Yet ironically, with that perversity which seems to accompany any sort of regionalism, Larkin defends the place with vitriol when cockney Andy attacks it. It is obvious that Martyn Waites has lived in the North-East otherwise he couldn't write with such accuracy. Shame he only sees the grim side. As a thriller, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is not written in the characteristic first person used so often in this style but does use the time-displacement technique of an early chapter reporting a later event. I would like to meet the author to ask him three  questions: Firstly, is Grimley Chester-le-Street  secondly, is the author a fan of Sunderland football club and thirdly, what's wrong with Dire Straits?
Lynda Ross

Review Stephen Bogart - As Time Goes By
Pan pbk £5.99
R.J. Brooks Is from New York - a P.I who spends most of his time capturing on film illicit moments of adulterous lovers. This is put on hold when he discovers that Andromeda Pictures are to make a sequel to a classic black and white movie which starred and made famous his late parents. After a furious outburst to the press RJ suddenly finds himself as number one suspect for the murder of the movie’s lawyer. Casey, RJ's love interest, is offered a job on the film which she takes to further her career; a move which does not improve their already unstable relationship. Janine Wright, the producer, is a repellent woman embodying all that is hateful about Hollywood. Her daughter Mary employs RJ to find her real father who has recently been paroled. RJ's investigations are hindered by the frequent but abortive attempts of Lieutenant Kates to send him down for eternity, particularly when the murders continue. RJ's  only allies are an Italian cop and a surrogate father- figure  Portlllo, who looked out for RJ when his parents couldn't. Portillo works for Captain  Davis in LA where much of the action is set. Davis doesn't like Brooks either so is delighted to discover the long held desire of Lieutenant Kates to see him rot in jail. There would seem to be more than a hint of the auto-biographical throughout this excellent novel, especially in RJ's irritation at the overbearing interest of individuals perpetually asking him what his father was really like. There has been some talk of a sequel to  Casablanca (God Forbid) and In reading this book with the author's more than imagined insights into the machinations of the Hollywood money makers, It is possible  to envisage how truly appalling this could be. The  chosen characters for the lead roles in the Andromeda sequel are a muscle-ridden lifeguard and a dense soft-porn star. Says it all really. So along with a gripping thriller is the added fascination of trying to work out what is biographical and what is fiction. It is written In the first person and crackles with excitement from beginning to end. Whether or not you are a fan of forties film-noir you should read this; the style is very close to that used by Hammett and Chandler.  However, it has a very definite character of its own and RJ is the best sort of PI; snarling, gritty but underneath it all, soft-centred. Finally, a warning to any fans of Humphrey Bogart:  If you ever meet Stephen Bogart,  don't ask him what his Father was really like. Lynda Ross

Review Christopher Lee - The Killing of Sally Keemer
Gollancz £16.99
Christopher Lee is a new name to me (at least in the form of an ex-BBC correspondent and radio   scriptwriter) but he has ten books to his name, among them The Madrigal, a thriller published in 1993. This is the follow-up to The Bath Detective (1995) the first book that featured Lee's quirky loner, Detective Inspector James Boswell Hodge Leonard. In this one, as Leonard returns to Bath by train, his reading of Hilaire Belloc is disturbed by the arrival in his compartment first of an engaged couple, then by an ample matron accompanied by some even more ample carrier bags, and finally by the short silk dress of a rather stunning young woman. Apart from an incident that involves the loss of the young woman's handbag, the joumey is uneventful. But two days later Leonard is asked to investigate a murder. The body is that of the owner of the short silk dress...
So far, so good. But I do have a problem with this book. It’s the fact that whole chunks of it come in short staccato sentences. Like this.  . Sometimes with a verb in them. But more often not. It first appeared as an interior monologue. So I thought it was an attempt to convey something. The mind of a particular character. For instance. But then it is associated with another character. And then another. (See, it's catching!). It can go on for paragraphs at a time. Straightforward narrative is also rendered in this way. And bloody annoying it is too. In the early stages particularly, as the police investigation cranks into gear, I was often tempted to hurl the book aside out of sheer exasperation.
It's a pity because in many other ways, this is a good book. Give or take a somewhat unlikely co-oincidence, it is well-plotted. As you might expect from a writer with Lee's track record, the dialogue is sharp and natural; the characters quickly take on a life of their own; the writing is full of unexpected observation. And the ending is well concealed - surprising even the erstwhile Inspector Leonard. But oh!  that style. But then I have seen this book reviewed with absolutely no mention of it. So maybe it's just me.
Bob Cornwell

Review John Penn - Sterner Stuff
HarperCollins £14.99
John Penn fans, I read in a recent bookshop catalogue, are a fervent bunch, so I had better tread carefully. Sterner Stuff, I should say right away, is an immaculately plotted police procedural that will keep most readers guessing right into the slightly disappointing last chapter.
Detective Superintendent Tansey and the Thames Valley Police murder Squad methodically go about the business of investigating the murder of a popular local Catholic priest in his sacristy just before evening mass.
Surprisingly, says the book jacket (but you and I know differently) there is no shortage of suspects. There is Brigadier Wessex who has recently quarrelled with the priest, the local vagabond, Alfred Yorke,
who has taken up residence in the church, cannot be found and, as a valuable chalice is missing, perhaps the motive was robbery? Further investigation reveals that a nurse was seen running from the church. A little later she is found dead. How are the two deaths connected? There's never any doubt that Tansey and his team will sort it out and, of course, I50-odd convoluted pages later, they do.
But that's it. I'm not denying the skill with which the whole thing is worked out, but come on! The prose is straightforward but polite and unambiguous. No unseemly emotions are conveyed. Characters come and
go, leaving no impression on the memory, other than the facts that they are there to reveal. Tansey himself, "a tall, lean, good-looking man" is a blank space, revealed only by the details of his somewhat plodding investigation. We are told that the case gains national notoriety (though Heaven knows why), but there is little sense of the pressure, the buzz that such notoriety would bring in today's sensation-hungry society.
I could go on. The book is, of course, intended as a puzzle - and has no pretensions to be otherwise. lt is just that I find it hard to believe that so many readers are content with that. Of course there is that satisfaction as the reader drops that final piece into place, preferably ahead of the writer.  But forgive me if I prefer. sterner stuff. Bob Cornwell

Review Intensive Care - Leah Ruth Robinson
Macmillan, £16.99
This author was completely new to me. I've not read too much American crime fiction, there always seems so much British writing to absorb, but I'll be looking out for more books from her.
Her style is very fast and well paced. There's plenty of violence, but it's never over-gory, it's all very much in keeping with the main characters, who, as you might have guessed from the title, are hospital staff. The tension is masterfully controlled throughout, with superb characterisation. I should point out that the leading protagonist is the narrator, which is so often a difficult way to tell a story because It’s hard to get into someone else's mind, but Leah does it brilliantly.
The plot is superbly measured, with twists and tums that kept me guessing all the way to the end. New York is suffering from a serial killer who has a macabre method of murdering, leaving a baby doll with each victim. The story begins with Dr Evelyn Sutcliffe being suddenly attacked. Shortly afterwards another victim is found, a girl from the local cafe, who is known to all the staff of the hospital. That is worryingly close to home enough for the emergency doctor, even if she is used to seeing victims of violence pass through her ward daily; she is used to observing and operating with a calm detachment. But when the next victim is discovered, and she realises it's one of her friends from the hospital, she finds it harder to cope. Especially when she becomes convinced that the killer must be one of her colleagues.
Leah Ruth Robinson is a trained and practising emergency medical technician, and her experience and knowledge really comes across. It's all told with a thrilling enthusiasm that forces you to keep tuning the pages. She's also a wonderful observer of human nature, and the insights she gives into political manoeuvring within large organisations, and the way that people try to manipulate a bureaucracy to their own advantage I found particularly good. Her cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter were murderous to a man who really needed to go to sleep - I just had to keep on going to the bitter end, and it was worth it.
 I'd recommend this to anyone. M. Jecks

Review A Multitude of Sins - Pauline Bell
Macmillan £16.99
It's getting harder and harder for authors to find a new idea for a detective: policemen are too common, private eyes seem a little foreign to the British. Pauline Bell has managed to invent the perfect kind of heroine in Zoe Morgan, a Relate (ie what I still think of as Marriage Guidance counsellor, a woman who used to be a police officer herself until she was forced to retire on medical grounds) and I won't say more than that . You'll have to buy a copy to find out why and how!
If it sounds a strange choice of lead character, don't let that put you off. Pauline has given Zoe all the strengths of a policewoman together with her own more than human failings, and puts them over in clear and simple language that keeps the reader - well, this one, anyway - tied to the story. I personally had to devour the book at one sitting.
The story is not a modern hard-bitten one. In many ways it puts me in mind of how Agatha Christie might write if she were alive today, but with infinitely greater depth to the characters. Zoe becomes interested in the death of a client’s husband. He was a keen canoeist, and apparently had an accident while out practising a new stunt. The police aren't worried: accidents happen all the time and a drowning, which wasn’t witnessed, is not a good basis for an investigation. There's no sign of foul play, so no reason for the police to get themselves involved, but Zoe is worried by the widow’s attitude. Her comments show she hated her husband and might have wanted to break free from what was evidently a loveless marriage.
It looks as if she might have been prepared to use extreme measures to dispose of her husband, and Zoe finds herself tempted into making enquiries . . . Mike Jecks