Tangled Web UK Review March 2000
Void Moon by
Michael Connelly
pbk out October 00
(Orion)
at £5.99
One last job; the big score that turns out to belong to the Mob; the chase; the growing respect between hunter and hunted. Michael Connelly, as Andrew Taylor has observed, is not one to avoid some of the more obvious clichés of genre fiction. So why is Void Moon, Connelly's latest non-series book, which features all of these devices, once again such a riveting read?
For a start there is Cassie Black, once a 'hot prowler', a specialist in the burglary of occupied Las Vegas hotel rooms, occupied preferably by a successful punter and protected by the best security systems the casinos can afford. She's out on parole after taking the rap for Max, her beloved long-term partner who threw himself from a high window in an effort to escape after a job goes wrong-and wound up dead.
We first meet her selling Porsches and checking out a new home in Laurel Canyon. Is Cassie going straight or will the buzz of the 'prowl' and the big score prove too attractive? We know the answer of course, but the decision springs logically and credibly, more than we know, from the expertly built characterisation. One detail amongst many: she hears 'the sense of yearning' in the songs of Lucinda Williams, the ballsy bruised troubadour of the Louisiana trailer parks.
Then there is the malevolent Jack Karch, a coldly intelligent psychopath with fond memories of Frank Sinatra with whom his magician father once appeared, and a private detective employed by the casino bosses to recover the money.
Essentially a two-hander, all this is new ground for Connelly,including the Las Vegas background, food for one or two lovely gags about the varied architecture of the place. New also, at least at this length, are the detailed expository passages in the first third of the book, succinct and full of fascinating detail, if occasionally "instruction manual" in style, as Cassie puts together her equipment and pulls off the job.
And that is just the start. Once Karch arrives on the scene, the pace never flags, Connelly upping the ante chapter by chapter, whilst at the same time delivering not only a series of stunning plot twists but, setting up the final confrontation, a heart-stopping moment which shakes Cassie to the depths of her soul.
A void moon? Astrological mumbo-jumbo. Didn't believe a word of it (though Connelly makes you believe in the people who do). A virtuoso performance.
(
Bob Cornwell
)
New Books by Michael Connelly at Amazon.co.uk
Secondhand and Out of Print Books by Michael Connelly at Alibris.com
