Review The Last Six Million Seconds by John Burdett
Hodder £16.99 and Pbk £6.99  
This is a fast-moving action thriller set in the run-up to the hand over of Hong Kong.  The story begins when three severed heads - mutilated to render them almost identifiable: the allusion to Gorky Park has to be deliberate - are found in the sea off Hong Kong.  The novel's hero, Chan Siu-Rai, an Eurasian detective with a hatred of Communism, is put on the case, though it is not long before various powers start trying to stop his investigations.  There is plenty of imaginative gore and some sex, including an underwater encounter.  Reversals abound - Hong Kong, with its competing elites of Triads, soon-to-depart Brits, incoming mainland Chinese and local billionaires, offers good scope for twists, and the author exploits this to the full.
 On the downside, although the author clearly knows Hong Kong's geography and institutions, he has failed to capture the atmosphere of modern HK.  He portrays the colony as terrified of the coming hand over: the reality is less dramatic - people are more puzzled and resigned than afraid.  This over dramatizing also leads him to create a comic-book villain in General Xian that Sax Rohmer would have been proud of. There is a cynical tone to the book, that builds up to the last long speech that we hear: 'freedom, democracy and liberalism are quaint nineteenth century concepts that have passed their sell-by date.  In the very near future...what will be required will be an extreme of callousness that will make the west faint...  Xian is not a mere thug or warlord. He's a visionary.  He IS the future.'  Such cynicism is fashionable, but superficial and dangerous.  It's a shame that a well-paced and (in most ways) well-researched thriller turns out to be in thrall to such silliness. Christopher West

Review Playing for Thrills by Wang Shou
No Exit Press Pbk £6.99
Playing For Thrills is a haunting, contemporary novel set in modern Beijing.  The book's hero, Fang Yan, inhabits a world of wheeler-dealers, small-time crooks and vulnerable good-time girls that must have Chairman Mao turning in his grave.  Face (an age-old Chinese concern, resurfacing in the 90's as 'cool') matters a lot to these people, but appearances begin to crack when Fang finds himself accused of an unsolved murder from ten years ago.  The case builds against him: he has to prove his innocence, but he is hampered by his own boozy amnesia.  Those seven key days after he was last seen with the victim - what was he doing, and where?  In trying to piece this little bit of his past together, Fang Yan begins to come to terms with his life as a whole...
The weaknesses of the book are structural.  There's too much coincidence (for my taste, anyway) in the early, surrealistic part of the story, and, worst of all, the mystery is effectively solved two-thirds of the way through: the rest of the book is a series of flashbacks more relevant to Fang Yan's inner search than to the plot.  These are interesting in themselves, but, unsupported by tension, they rather float.  And was the last paragraph of all put there to reassure the Chinese censors?
On the (strong) plus side, Wang Shuo understands the weaknesses and yearnings of his characters well, and makes us like them despite their showiness and immaturity.  The real story of the murder is a good one, appropriate and rather pathetic.  It deserves a fuller build-up and a later revelation.  Best of all, we're given a glance of a China we rarely see: young, boastful, insecure, cynical-sounding but actually quite sentimental, above all confused.  It's a China neither its politicians nor its Tourist Board want us to see. I recommend a look. Christopher West  

Review Death under Par by Dennis Casley
Constable £15.99
The vice captain of a golf club is found buried in one of the tees and a beer  drinking Chief Inspector is called in to investigate.  Sounds familiar?  However, in this case the golf club is in Nairobi and the detective is the Kenyan, Chief Inspector Odhiambo, a member of the Luo tribe.
This is the fourth in a series of books featuring Odhiambo written by Dennis Casely, a former colonial officer now living in Cornwall.  The portrayal of post-colonial Kenya seems authentic and the author has clearly drawn upon first hand knowledge.  We are presented with a country which has yet to find its own way in the world and where the division between white and black Kenyans still remains.  Asian Kenyans are excluded from society altogether.  There are no Asian golfers at the Royal Ngong Golf club. The plot is certainly well crafted and there are plenty of twists and turns on the way to the final denouement. Suspects abound, ranging from a group of decadent, sexually promiscuous white Europeans to the members of various political factions.
The story is set against the background of an attempted coup d’etat during which Odhiambo has to go under cover as his own life style is threatened by competing factions.  Despite this he still continues the investigation.  Every Holmes has a Watson and Odhiambo’s is Robert McGuiry, an old Scots white hunter whose courage is as formidable as his appetite for Scotch Whisky.  The Moriarty of the story is ex-colonial R.D.Price-Allers, the sinister government security officer who has Odhiambo’s wife kidnapped as part of his own machinations.  Some of the characters are two dimensional and in some cases e.g. McGuiry, almost verge on caricature. However, the speed of the narrative renders this a fairly minor criticism and it is true to say that I was both gripped and kept guessing to the end. Howard White

  Review .The Satisfaction House by Ray Bryant
Warner Pbk £5.99
Feminists beware! This is your worst nightmare of a world in which male wrong-doings are attributed to the female race and in particular, one evil, albeit fictional superior being known hear after as "The Wicked Witch".  Johnny Smith is an unremarkable and very ordinary little boy who from a very early age, is indoctrinated by a mother of incalculable cruelty. She terrifies him by reading fairy tales, the content of which she distorts in order to convince her son that only boys are nasty. Johnny grows up not knowing
anything of a parent's love until when, after his Mother's mysterious disappearance, his kindly Aunt Pat fosters him. He is eleven when this occurs.
Although Johnny has been taken to a warm and secure environment, he still suffers the scars of his formative years and has frequent nightmares about an unfortunate childhood accident in which, by a quirk of fate, he lost Ben his best friend. Johnny is distinguished at nothing until he receives a calling to avenge the death of Ben. Slowly, he begins his quest for revenge whilst more and more of his disturbing childhood memories come back to haunt him.
The book begins with Johnny Smith's statement, issued from Broadmoor, twenty four years after his committal which ordered that he be detained there for an indefinite period. He then tells his tale which carries a few characteristic twists at various intervals.
It is a very easy book to read and well written. It did not surprise me that it won a 'Write a blockbuster novel competition' as there are elements of originality in a story that holds the reader's attention. But the thread of misogyny ever-present throughout the tale was irksome as was the fact that all female characters were either brain dead bimbos, dragons or at best fussing, cooing aunts. With the exception of the main character the majority of the male characters were decent, kindly men and even Johnny's behaviour was partly exonerated as he allegedly acted on the orders of "Her", a superior female.  There is also an irritating dedication by the author "to wonderful mothers everywhere" at the beginning of the book.
Read this if you can live with women being portrayed in this way and if you like dark, psychological thrillers with a few twists and turns.
Lynda Ross

Review An Inconsiderate Death by Betty Rowlands
Severn House £16.99
Sukey is a Scene of Crime photographer and is called out to the murder of Lorraine Chant in the picturesque Gloucestershire village of Marshdean. Lorraine has been strangled and Sukey's friend and admirer, DI Jim Castle, is in charge of the investigation.  There are signs of an assisted break in - a window has been left unlatched - but no robbery has taken place, according to Lorraine's husband, Arthur Chant.  The police are unconvinced, particularly when an item of jewellery, identified by Arthur Chant as
belonging to his wife, turns up.  Castle suspects that money was also stolen and that Chant is cheating the Inland Revenue.
Lorraine had a lover, Hugo Bishop, a prosperous business man with a shady past and a false name.  He is really Charlie Foss and he was involved in a bank robbery some years ago.  He had escaped with the loot, but his two accomplices had been caught and jailed.  One of them, Terry Holland, is now out of prison and seeking his share of their ill-gotten gains.  He finds out where Hugo lives and confronts him.  Hugo musters up all his charm and gives Terry an initial payment of £500 in cash.  His aim is to implicate Terry in what Hugo plans as a robbery at the Chant's house.  This would ensure that Terry would do another stretch in prison, while he would be able to pursue his comfortable life of shady dealing and womanizing.  He has met Sukey at a Health Club and has begun the process of seduction by asking her to undertake some photographic work at his home in an attempt to get to know her better.  She calls at the house and takes her pictures, but Hugo is not there and she is attacked by a man in a motorcyclist's helmet. A second death follows shortly after this and Sukey becomes more and more involved.  Her life is further complicated by her concern about her teenage son and her relationship with Jim Castle.
Each strand of the plot is neatly dovetailed and Betty Rowlands switches confidently from one group of characters to another, giving the reader an insight into the various relationships: Sukey and her teenage son on the verge of manhood; Hugo Bishop and his submissive but seething wife, Brenda, now called Barbie; and Terry Holland and his worried wife Rita who wants him to go straight.  DI Castle and his police team play a subordinate but necessary part in the investigation and in  the eventual unmasking of the murderer.
This is a well-written mystery with a very attractive heroine in Sukey. It will please all those readers who are tired of the blood and violence which feature in so much of today's crime fiction. JOHN BOYLES

Review Hearts and Bones by Margaret Lawrence
Macmillan £16.99
It is America in 1786, ten years after the War of Independence.  In a small town called Rufford, on the edge of the Maine wilderness, a young woman called Anthea Emory is brutally raped and mutilated and murdered. She leaves a note incriminating her three attackers.  One of them is Daniel Josselyn, a wealthy Englishman and a wounded War veteran who had changed sides during the War to fight for the American cause. 
Daniel has been the lover of Hannah Trevor and is the father of her child.  She is the local midwife and a woman of fiercely independent spirit.  She cannot believe in Daniel's guilt, despite the marks of a hand with only three fingers on the dead woman's neck.  Daniel Jossslyn has such a ruined hand, as Hannah knows only too well, and in an attempt to prove his innocence she joins with Will Quaid, the local  constable, in his investigation into the murder.
Other murders follow.  Anthea's husband Donny is found dead in a camp in the wilderness and Artemas Siwall, another war veteran whose name appears in Anthea's note, is killed by someone wielding Daniel's sword. It looks as if Daniel may be responsible, but Harinah is unconvinced.  Why would he kill Artemas?  He had served with Captain Siwall during the War and had been with Artemas when he had become "distracted in his wits" at Webb's Ford.  In his later years Artemas had been kept chained by his elder brother Hamilton and in his crazed war guilt had continually enacted his own execution.
It becomes clear to Hannah that the murders are linked to what had happened at Webb's Ford and she and Daniel gradually piece together the parts of the jigsaw.  The story moves inexorably towards a confrontation between Hannah and Daniel and the men of the town who are determined to mete their own rough justice on Daniel.
Margaret Lawrence has chosen an unusual setting for her first novel and evokes the time and place of an emerging America with convincing detail.  The snow-bound land is bleak and hostile and unforgiving.  Even the confrontation at the end is handled with an assured touch, though whether the mob might have waited in reality for the truth to be explained to them is debatable.  The blurb promises another novel, Blood Red Roses  featuring Hannah Trevor.  We shall look forward to it.
JOHN BOYLES

Review The Trapdoor by Andrew Klavan (writing as Keith Peterson)
John  Wells, cynical and world weary ace crime reporter is sent on a journey into small town America to uncover the real story behind a group of teenage suicides.  The sub-plots are multi-layered and quick to be developed making Wells' journey become one of personal development as the emotional cripple seems to confront his memories and fears of his own previous inadequacies as a husband and father.
The characters are well-drawn and alive even if fairly stereotypical and the ingredients are all here for a good fast paced read.  The story develops several twists and turns ensuring that nothing is as it first seems.  What looked to be suicide might Just turn out to be murder.
Not concerned by the constraints of ethics  The Star’s editor rewrites Wells' submitted stories to add some sensationalism and sell more papers.  This destroys the credibility and trust which  Wells' sensitive professionalism had established with the victim's families, leaving him as the loner to face the anger and hatred of the town ...as well as the murderer who now feels exposed and threatened.
Add to this the attempts to convince  Wells that the supernatural is involved and the story neatly treads the thin line between thriller, horror, suspense and crime.
Andrew Klavan writes cleanly and sparely, with an eye for descriptive detail to capture location and mood.  The dialogue is realistic, gritty and direct, allowing characters to react naturally to situations and express real feelings.  The character of Wells himself is particularly well-handled and doesn’t become either too heroic and moralistic or too sentimental and mawkish to be real.  He admits to fear and failure: he makes mistakes but is driven by  this to succeed.  He has a sense of humour and a basic sense of decency which makes him a character with whom the reader can readily identify.
The book examines the pressures individuals place upon themselves when they have a position and reputation to uphold and suggests how fragile both may be.
Andrew Klavan succeeds in producing psychological thriller which in some ways is as much an examination of the relationships between parents and their children as it is a story about murder. Only The Trapdoor stands between them………………… Frank Brown