Review:
 The Leper Colony by Ron McKay. 
Gollancz £9.99
 A man lies dead in a small run-down house in an unspecified American city.  His son, John Downe, has returned to sort through his parents' possessions.  He finds a photograph of a  young family back home in Glasgow: father, mother and son.  It is his father and mother and himself, but the wrong names are written on the back.   Is he really John Downe - or is he someone else?   There is also a bank book in his name, John Downe, with a large credit balance, far more money than his parents had ever had. As he stands there holding it, "like a child with his first schoolbook", there is an explosion.  The car that he has rented which is waiting in the street outside has been blown up, killing two kids who had tried to drive it away.
 The bomb was meant for him, a maverick agent who is acting alone in investigating the Lockerbie bombing.  He suspects that his masters want to dispose of him because he believes that the Americans, from the CIA up to president Reagan, are behind the Lockerbie bombing.  He escapes to the old country and is immediately oppressed by British Intelligence in the form of an attractive woman, Meg Carpenter.  Downe may be a leper in MI5 parlance, who will infect those around him with his poison, but he is an undeniable asset and Carpenter tries to enlist his aid in the pursuit of a big-time villain, McGurk.  Much against his inclination Downe decides to help and does all that is required of him.  His anger at the end at the way he is treated is understandable.
This is a difficult book to classify and is remarkable for its shifts in point of view.  It is also very violent.   The revenge meted out on  McSwegan by McGurk on page 170 is stomach churning.  Fortunately there is more talk and verbal confrontation than violence of the physical kind and much effing and blinding.  Some readers will enjoy this book.
One very small point, but worth noting.  On page 18 Downe is reminded of Harry Lime and Orson Welles looking down on the city.  Is this a mistake of Downe's or is it the author's?  Orson Welles was Harry Lime.  It was Joseph Cotton as Holley Martins who stood with Welles/Lime looking down on the city.
John Boyles

Review:
 Bad Monday by Annette Roome. 
Collins Crime £14.99
Chris Martin is a reporter on her local rag, the Tipping Herald.  She is recently divorced and well rid of her two-timing husband and is living with Pete, who works "for one of the more notorious tabloids", and her daughter Julie.
She is mainly condemned to covering village fetes and lost cats and is therefore pleasantly surprised when she is given the opportunity to interview Rick Monday.  Rick was the lead singer in a rock group called Bad Monday in the seventies.  He dropped out of sight when the group split up but is now poised to make a comeback.  Chris was one of his admirers and enjoys meeting him and writing the interview.  It will be the "feature of the week", she thinks, as she drives home.
 Shortly after the interview Rick Monday is murdered by someone wielding an ornamental dagger.  Chris must have been one of the last people to see him alive and she is fired up to investigate the crime.  Unfortunately her boss is not keen on her involvement and the police are unco-operative, bumbling and ineffectual.  Indeed the police make a very poor showing in this mystery and one of their number is very antagonistic and even attacks Chris, literally kicking her when she is down.  There are, however, one or two decent men in the force and Chris comes to rely on them as she gets closer and closer to the murderer, suffering some narrow escapes on the way.
The book is told entirely from the point of view of Chris, the leading character.  Her pursuit of the murderer, together with her problems with the police, takes precedence over her personal life which is there in the background and ever present, but not obtrusive.  She may wonder about the shape of her thighs or the length of her skirt or the underwear that is waiting to be washed or the concerns of Pete and Julie, but the investigation consumes her.  It is all very convincing and a welcome change from the unrelenting jogging of so many contemporary female detectives.
This is the third Annette Roome mystery and very well written and well plotted it is, too.  We must hope that there are more to come.
John Boyles 
A TW Recommended Title

Review:
 The Arms Of Nemesis by Stephen Saylor.
Robinson Pbk 5.99
Stephen Saylor is another one of those American writers who is difficult to put down once you've started reading. In America he's far better known than in the UK, but that will soon change if he keeps writing books of the calibre of "Arms of Nemesis". 
Gordianus the Finder is called to visit the Gulf of Puteoli, far south of Rome. The overseer of Marcus Crassus, Rome's wealthiest citizen, has been murdered in Crassus' own villa. Two slaves have disappeared, and that seems adequate proof of their guilt. Crassus is determined to exercise his right to punish all his slaves, having them all publicly executed: he has to. This is the time of the great slave revolt - Spartacus is leading a mob of gladiators in a rampage - and Crassus is determined to show his intolerance of mutiny so that he can win the command of the force sent to destroy Spartacus and his men.
But others consider that destroying so many lives would be wrong. Apart from the senseless waste of money represented by killing so many slaves, some suspect that the two runaways weren't the killers, and if they are innocent, who was the murderer?
We are taken to the playground of the rich and powerful, a kind of French Riviera of the Roman era, to temples, to army camps and to games staged to demonstrate historic battles recklessly wasting the lives of slaves. At the end you have a genuine understanding of this period - and a certain loathing for the callousness of it.
This story drags you in. It's absorbing and compelling, and the plot has more twists than I could possibly hint at. Enough to say that I thought I had the solution several times, and only realised the truth at the very end.
"Arms of Nemesis" is a thoroughly satisfying thriller and murder mystery, and deserves to be a huge success.
Mike Jecks 
A TW Recommended Title

Review: 
A Murder On The Appian Way by Stephen Saylor. 
Robinson £15.99
It was a real pleasure to have a chance to read another of Stephen Saylor's books. Saylor seems to have a knack of finding a particularly thorny period and inserting his hero, Gordianus the Finder, in a believable manner right into the thick of things. I found this novel as compelling as his others. 
This story looks at the year 52BC, which historically was a time of chaos. Pompey and Julius Caesar were competing for power, using any situation to their own advantage. Their supporters in Rome were prepared to allow anarchy to reign to suit their ends. When the populist politician Publius Clodius is killed on the Appian Way, and his arch-enemy Titus Mile is accused of murder, the rival camps form up. Was it murder or was it self-defence?
The novel develops as the violence increases. Rome falls into disorder, there's rioting and arson, and even the Senate House is burned to the ground. Gordianus is forced to tread a wary path between powerful men, avoiding not only the dangers of the unrest, seeing his house ransacked and his servants attacked, but also trying not to become aligned with the great men who play with the city's destiny as he investigates the mysterious death on the road.
Saylor's storytelling is masterful. He maintains the suspense throughout, and his plots twist with a lively deviousness. Of course, one of the attractions of a book like this is the knowledge that much of it is historical fact, but this is not dry history. Saylor has the skill to make the reader involved with the characters, whether it is the capricious sister of the dead man, the devious orator Cicero, the aloof Pompey, or the scheming widow.
Again Saylor has managed to weave a rich tale from real events, and leaves the reader wanting more. I look forward to the next.
 Mike Jecks
  A TW Recommended Title

Review:
 And None shall Sleep by Priscilla Masters. 
Macmillan Crime £16.99
Jonathan Selkirk, a ruthless and very unpopular solicitor, receives an anonymous letter advising him to make a will.  He looks upon it as a threat and suffers a heart attack.  At roughly the same time a young woman cyclist is bundled off the road by a lorry and sustains a broken arm.  She is Detective Inspector Joanna Piercey and she finds herself in the same hospital as Jonathan Selkirk.  And when he suddenly disappears from his hospital bed she is nicely placed to lead the investigation.
With her arm in plaster and assisted by her able sergeant, Mike Korpanski, Joanna follows up the various leads that present themselves and Priscilla Masters is able to give us a rounded picture of a conscientious police officer with an overbearing senior officer in Superintendent Colclough - he only once calls her by her Christian name - and a complicated personal life - her lover is Matthew Levin, a police pathologist separated from his wife and child.  He is keen to marry Joanna as soon as his divorce is absolute, but she does not want the commitment of marriage and children: she is a dedicated policewoman who likes her job.  This puts a strain on their relationship and impinges on her police work.
Selkirk's body is discovered in a nearby wood.  His hands have been tied behind and he has been shot in the back of the neck.  It is a contract killing and Jo is upset when the Regional Crime Squad is called in to take over her case in the person of the formidable Superintendent Karen Pugh. Within half an hour of being given the facts of the case Pugh pinpoints the killer, Tony Gallini, a professional hitman from Sicily,  When he is picked up at Heathrow the case is restored to Joanna and she sets about trying to find out who paid for the hit. Then a nurse at the hospital, apparently on sick leave, is found murdered. The payer of the hit man is the obvious suspect.
And None Shall Sleep is a straightforward detective mystery.  There are no car chases or punchups.  Instead we are offered an absorbing story which keeps us guessing to the very end, though Priscilla Masters provides us with clues to the killer's identity.  This is the fourth appearance of Joanna Piercey.  Her admirers will look forward to the next.
John Boyles

 Review:
 The Lost Get-Back Boogie by James Lee Burke
James Lee Burke is best known for his excellent Dave Robicheaux series, but he has written other books.  The Lost Get-Back Boogie is an earlier work, currently being republished and pushed in the States.
The story is mainly set in Montana.  It's about Iry Paret, a man who has committed a murder, and how he comes to terms with his responsibility for this, largely by contrasting himself with another man who is unable to accept responsibility for his actions.
The outstanding quality of this book is its voice.  The dialogue is razor-sharp, but so is the protagonist's internal dialogue, his clear and poetic view of himself, the people he meets and the situations he gets into.
Another quality is its humanity.  Burke resists the temptation to act in a totally superior way to the redneck fraternity, understanding that narrow-mindedness is a form of defence.  Country music, usually lampooned in upmarket fiction, is understood as a flawed but real art form.
Perhaps a weakness of this book is the plot, which is a bit rambling.  This isn't a mystery, more a straight novel by a mystery author.  It's a wonderful read, though.
Christopher West

Review: 
 The Flower Net by Lisa See.
Century £10.00
Lisa See's The Flower Net is a thriller set largely in Beijing (other locations include Los Angeles and Sichuan Province).  Two suitably gory - and metaphorical - murders lead to a joint Sino-American investigation by a maverick female Public Security Inspector and a male American lawyer.  Naturally, they find themselves caught in a spiral of intrigue and corruption, involving (amongst other things) the trade in illegal and cruelly obtained animal by-products.
The Chinese inspector is a particularly interesting character. Liu Hulan (named after a revolutionary martyr) has turned her back on the opportunity of being a 'Red Princess' - the book provides an interesting insight into the lives of China's 'jeunesse doree' - in order to pursue her own life and career.  I would have liked to have seen more of the story through her eyes.
China makes an excellent setting for a thriller.  It's a land of hidden power, often exercised with great ruthlessness.  Appearance and reality rarely coincide.  The author uses these advantages well.
No book is perfect.  For me (though not, I guess, for Hollywood) The Flower Net is too plot-driven: the characters don't have as much time as I'd like to fill out.  Another bad (in my view) influence is the techno-novel, with its surfeit of raw facts: I learnt more about China from the Chinese characters (often walk-on parts, but always enlightening) than from the excessive chunks of information.
The publishers' hype equating The Flower Net to Gorky Park and Miss Smilla is misleading - this book is neither as well-written nor as imaginative as these classics.  But it's interesting, well paced and enjoyable.  I recommend it to thriller fans.
Christopher West