Books Reviewed by Val McDermid
Winner of theGolden Dagger Award for 1995
All reviews originally appear in the Manchester Evening News and are kindly supplied by the author. Photo of Val by Jerry Bauer. 

Out of Reach, by Elizabeth McGregor
(Headline, £16.99)
Kate Jones is a respected feature writer on a local paper. But behind her private facade lies a tragic secret that would make a better story than any she'd ever written. Ten years ago, her eight week old baby was stolen, never to be seen again. The loss cost her marriage, career and almost her sanity. When anonymous letters start arriving with the message, 'I know where he is,' the abyss opens before Kate's feet again. Then murder arrives in her local community, reaching out long fingers into her own life. It seems the only thing between Kate and complete mental breakdown is therapy. But in Elizabeth McGregor's compulsive and claustrophobic thriller, nothing and no-one are quite what they seem. Deceptively low-key, the writing sucked me in, embroiled me in Kate's fate and, like a bulldog, refused to let go. Just when it seemed the suspense had reached its peak, McGregor turned the ratchet another notch and forced me to read on. Neatly plotted, peopled by chillingly credible characters, this made me turn pages with an eagerness that defied sleep.

The Confessor, by Jack Curtis
(Orion, £16.99)
Henry Parr Olsen is a serial killer nobody knows about. He's dedicated his life to the mystery of death, but because he chooses his victims with exquisite care and plans his executions meticulously, nobody suspects his existence, never mind his identity. But it's a lonely life, and now Henry wants to share his achievement. So he calls the local police station and the luck of the draw hands him DI Joe Morgan, a troubled policeman with a rare sense of honour and a wife who doesn't know what she wants any more. As Henry's confessions grow more detailed and revelatory, almost as if he wants to be caught, Joe's life spirals downwards in parallel. And the person most at risk doesn't even know the killer or the hunter. The first half of the book is engrossing and intriguing, and the climax is spell-binding. But in between, Joe and Henry come face to face and the narrative loses its grip. Henry's recounting of his career slows the pace to a crawl and the earlier tension is replaced by irritation that this repetitive material is neither advancing the plot nor our understanding of the character.

The Four Last Things, by Andrew Taylor
(HarperCollins, £15.99)
The recent disappearances of two small girls make even more poignant the scenario in Andrew Taylor's new novel. Lucy Appleyard has disappeared, seemingly vanished into thin air from her child-minder's back yard. Lucy's world has turned terrifyingly upside down. Her sociopathic captors, Eddie and Angel, seem to want to offer her a perverted caricature of family love. But it seems that their adoration has a dark side, even darker than Eddie himself suspects. Lucy's frantic parents Sally -- a vicar -- and Michael -- a CID sergeant with a question mark hanging over him -- feel powerless to help recover their child. Then frozen body parts start turning up in seemingly random places. Gradually Sally and Michael's theologian godfather start to understand that there is a strange and unholy logic behind these events, a perverse link that might just help save Lucy's life. Andrew Taylor is a master of the corrosive passions that fester beneath conventional facades, and this first novel in what is to be a trilogy showcases his sensitive exploration of human emotions. At one level a tense and shocking psychological thriller, The Four Last Things is also a meditation on what religious belief means in times of extreme crisis, and a fascinating unravelling of the horrors the past can visit on the present. If the novel has a flaw it is that it perhaps leaves too many questions to be answered by its successors. On the other hand... I can hardly wait!

Out of the Blue, by Steven Knight
(Viking, £10.99)
Matthew King's estranged mother died in poverty, scratching out a living on a Greek island. But she left him £25 million, with no clue where the money had come from. Ten years later, an assassin's bullet slaughters his daughter in the middle of her birthday party. And only Matthew believes the two events are connected. Ignored by the police, abandoned by his devastated wife, alone except for his money, Matthew makes a vengeful pilgrimage to Skiathos to find out exactly how and why the money and the murder are inextricably linked. It's a journey that teaches him harsh lessons about himself and his family as well as making it clear that if money is a curse, so is love. But Matthew's personal odyssey has wider implications. And those implications plunge him headlong into a tense battle of wits with unknown and unseen enemies who seem capable of reaching out and threatening him any time, any where. Culminating in a dramatic and harrowing Mediterranean journey with a startling, adrenaline-packed climax, this is a cracking good read.

Give Us A Kiss, by Daniel Woodrell
(No Exit Press, £6.99)
Every now and again a novel jumps head and shoulders above the crowd. Nine times out of ten, it's because the writer's voice is so different that it demands attention. Daniel Woodrell's exotic and evocative Give Us A Kiss is a perfect example. Set in the hillbilly country of the Ozarks where life is harsh and individual lives are bound up in clannish communities, it yanks the reader into another world and doesn't let go until the last dramatic page is over. Doyle Redmond's moderate success as a writer of noir slice-of-life novels was his ticket out of the Ozarks and into the lush life of California. But for a man whose loyalties and morality are in the blood, being a pussycat among the literary lions was never going to work. Back home, he finds himself embroiled in his older brother's scheme to make a quick illegal buck with a cash crop of marijuana. For Doyle. it could be the chance to buy himself the time to write a novel that will make him a star. Instead, it's the trigger for a series of disasters and challenges that turn Doyle's life on its head, thrusting him back into his past before he can find any kind of future. In a brutal and savage world where life is cheap and family honour is dear, he finally finds a set of answers that were not what he expected. Rich, raunchy and riotously readable, Daniel Woodrell is one of the most exciting writers I've discovered in a long time.

The Fig Tree Murder, by Michael Pearce
(HarperCollins, £14.99)
Colonial Egypt under British rule might not seem the most promising setting for a series of sharply observant and wickedly witty crime novels. But Michael Pearce has consistently defied expectation with this entertaining sequence featuring the Welsh-born Captain Owen, Mamur Zapt (head of the secret police) of Cairo. A foreign syndicate is driving a new railway out into the desert to service the new resort city they are building at Heliopolis near Cairo. It promises to be a delight for the international jet set as well as the local pashas. But not everyone is thrilled at the prospect. The ostrich farmer fears his land will be taken over for racing gallops; the Mecca pilgrims are horrified at finding the fleshpots next to their traditional gathering place; political agitators believe it's against Egypt's interests; and a holy relic of the Virgin Mary is under threat. So when one of the railway workers is found murdered on the line, there is no shortage of motives or suspects. Especially since he was a notorious ladies' man too. Weaving his way through the labyrinth -- and juggling with jealous lovers himself -- is almost too much for Owen, who finds pleasure can be rather like hard work. Urbane, intelligent and never patronising, Pearce writes about Egypt with the observant eye of the lover who sees yet forgives all faults.

The Bone Collector, by Jeffrey Deaver
(Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99)
One of the reasons readers cite for reading crime fiction is that it's a great place to acquire all sorts of information painlessly. If adventures in forensic science is your thing, forget Kay Scarpetta and check out Lincoln Rhyme, the central character of Jeffrey Deaver's latest nail-biter. Quadriplegic following a line-of-duty accident, ex-cop Rhyme is contemplating assisted suicide when his former colleagues seek his help on a bizarre double kidnapping and gruesome murder. But this is a killer who leaves deliberate clues at the scenes of his crimes, clues so cryptic that only a polymathic forensic expert and historian could possibly unravel them. Using the beautiful but screwed-up patrol cop Amanda Sachs as his eyes, ears and legs, Rhyme uses only his brain to battle against his toughest foe in a fight where his own will to live becomes central. Like the Sherlock Holmes stories, The Bone Collector is at one level preposterous -- the cops just don't use "consulting detectives". But like Doyle's marvellously fascinating stories, this novel doesn't just suspend our disbelief, it sends it on a fortnight's holiday to Barbados. Engrossing, entertaining and fizzing with energy, this is a suspense thriller to keep narcolepts awake.

The Monk's Disciples, by Jeffrey Robinson
(Little, Brown, £15.99)
Once upon a time, the Holy Grail was a religious relic hunted by the deeply devout. Now it's the elusive gene that controls body weight, hunted by corporations desperate to be first with the equivalent of the pot of gold at both ends of the rainbow. Worth untold millions to the company that secures the patent, it will also spell death to the diet industry and a mortal blow to the pharmaceutical giants in the slimming business. Genetic scientist Roger Bickerton appears to have committed suicide. But his last act was to send a £1000 cheque to a lawyer he met on a plane who said he could help him get even. That lawyer is Vince Barolo, American exile in London. Sometime boxing promoter, occasional lover of Greta the art dealer, part-time transatlantic father to computer whizz teenager, Barolo has even more entertaining anecdotes than hot dinners, which is saying something for a book that enjoys its food this much. In between the assorted crises of his life and roller-coaster career as a shoestring lawyer, Barolo unravels a cleverly constructed mystery that keeps us guessing to the last page. The Monk's Disciples is a warmly funny, richly human novel crammed with great characters and wonderful digressions. It's like going out to dinner with your most entertaining friend and ending up talking till dawn because the company's so good. If John Major could figure out the feelgood factor of this book, the Tories would be in power till the next millennium!

Killing The Lawyers, by Reginald Hill
(HarperCollins, £15.99)
Someone is murdering the lawyers of Luton. And who could blame them? But it's a problem for redundant lathe operator turned private eye Joe Sixsmith, because Detective Inspector Chivers thinks its him. Which is all a bit of a nuisance, since the only thing Joe and his furry sidekick Whitey the cat are trying to do is earn an honest living working out who's trying to nobble the town's top international athlete, Zak Oto. The trouble is that everybody looks suspicious. Zak's minder has a record, her sister has a chip on her shoulder the size of Dunstable, her ex-trainer is promoting the event, her mum knows more than a mother should about Far East betting syndicates and her manager is... well, exactly what you'd expect a Cockney wide boy to be. As if that's not tough enough, somebody starts trying to kill Joe himself. Nobody does irony better than Reginald Hill, but his wry take on the lunacies of modern life never spills over into cynicism. There is at the heart of all his work an honest humanity that reminds the reader that without hope, we have nothing. And Hill provides hope in large dollops with his unsentimentally funny comedy of life at the blunt end in Britain today, complete with a richly memorable cast of oddball characters. If you love someone who loves crime fiction, improve your chances of a happy Valentine's Day by giving them this.

Verdict Unsafe, by Jill McGown
(Macmillan, £16.99)
Some cases affect police officers more than others. That's why Detective Inspector Judy Hill wants to watch the trial of serial rapist Colin Drummond. She wants to make sure that he gets what he deserves and won't be on the streets to carry out the threats he made against her. But eighteen months later, the Court of Appeal decides his conviction was unsafe and releases him. That's when the threatening phone calls start. But a lot can happen in eighteen months. Allegations have surfaced of corruption among the officers who arrested Drummond; two cops have been sacked, one jailed and there's more to come. A key witness at Drummond's trial is living beyond her means, a new broom is trying to sweep the CID clean, and somebody somewhere doesn't want the rape investigation re-opened. Then another woman is raped. But this time, she's murdered and Judy Hill finds herself under threat in ways she could never have imagined. With serpentine suspense, McGown weaves a net around her suspects, turning their lives inside out as she casts suspicion first one way, then another, baffling and bewildering the reader at every turn. And at the heart of the novel, Hill and her long-time lover DCI Lloyd try to work out how their relationship can possibly continue. Thought-provoking, solidly plotted story-telling.

The Echo, by Minette Walters
(Macmillan, £16.99) 
A homeless alcoholic takes the trouble to sneak into someone's garage so he can die of malnutrition and in death becomes more interesting to the mainstream than he ever was alive. But why choose the garage of Amanda Powell, whose own husband disappeared mysteriously years before? Why would a vagrant choose the alias of William Blake, artist, poet and visionary? And why had the man repeatedly thrust his hands into the fire to destroy his fingerprints? Journalist Mike Deacon stumbles into the story six months after the troubling death, and he finds humself caught in Amanda Powell's driving obsession to uncover what lies behind the vagrant's choices. As he is sucked deeper into the secrets and lies of the lives around him, he is forced to confront his own buried truths. The mystery in The Echo is as much about what drives Deacon and how his life will be affected by his pilgrimage towards the truth. Along the way, he ecounters a diverse and involving group of characters that regularly counfound our expectations.
In many ways the most thoughtful of Minette Walters' bestsellers, The Echo demonstrates that she is capable of moving away from her roots in romantic fiction into character-driven suspense where the reader is almost more interested in the journey than the arrival. As different from its predecessors as they are from each other, this is another sure-fire hit for Walters.

Red Leaves by Paullina Simons
(Flamingo, £16.99) 
Kristina Kim was the golden girl of her Ivy League college. Beautiful, intelligent, and talented on the basketball court, she lived her life at the heart of a close-knit group of friends. But when she went missing, no-one reported it. Her ex-husband had an excuse; but why did neither her boyfriend, her lover nor her best friend alert the police? When Detective Spencer Patrick O'Malley is called to the privileged enclave of Darmouth College after Kristina's dead body is found naked in a snowdrift, he's shocked to recognise the woman he had met on the street and had coffee with only days before. From that point, it becomes a personal crusade for Spencer to peel away the blanket of lies that smothers Kristina's life and her terrible death. With each layer, lives start to crumble and decay before his eyes until Spencer himself, driven outside society's rules by his hunt for a cold-hearted monster, has to choose between the law and justice.
With this elegantly written and cleverly plotted novel, Paullina Simons has moved into the territory opened by Donna Tartt's Secret History. The collision between the legal system and those who live in the gilded cage of wealth and immunity from the harsher elements of life on the edge is fascinating, raising demanding issues of personal and public morality. Shocking and disturbing, this is a book that intrigues and invades the mind.

Upon A Dark Night by Peter Lovesey
(Little, Brown, £16.99)
Peter Lovesey has an extraordinary talent for picking up the conventions of the classic English detective novel and delivering them with an entirely contemporary twist. Here we have amnesia, murder dressed up to look like suicide, buried treasure and running through it all, cooking up red herrings for himself at the drop of a frying pan is the maverick head of the Bath Murder Squad, Peter Diamond. A young woman is dumped unconscious in a hospital car park. Her memory has been traumatised into silence and there isn't a clue to her identity. Then a woman turns up to claim her as her sister. But when she starts to behave more like a jailer than a sister, the mystery woman finds she has even more questions to answer. Then there is the spate of local suicides which turn out to be more sinister than they at first appear, and the yuppies who live on the Royal Crescent and appear to have something to hide.
But is it more than extra-marital affairs that lurk beneath the surface? And can Diamond make it to the solution before his sergeant murders him for his obnoxiously patronising behaviour? With consummate skill, Lovesey elaborates a plot with architecture as perfect as the city he writes about. A thoroughly enjoyable example of the English police "cosy" at its best.

The Music of What Happens by John Straley
(Gollancz, £16.99) 
Private eye Cecil Younger is fairly amazed when he's released from the psychiatric ward with the news that he's not insane, just suffering from a history of substance abuse and a blow on the head from his client's irate ex-husband. For Cecil, living on the outside edge of the world in Sitka, Alaska, insanity has always seemed the best possible explanation for the self-destructive mess of his life. Now he has no excuse to avoid the client from hell, the one whose demonic custody battle with her ex landed him in the hospital in the first place.
What was already bad news gets worse when his client is arrested for murdering the man she believed was at the heart of a conspiracy against her. Cecil is plunged into a confusing maelstrom of events that move too fast even for anti-depressants to improve the picture.  As if it wasn't hard enough to deal with a bunch of characters who make "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" look normal, he has to contend with love.
The third in a remarkable series, The Music of What Happens creates a world entirely its own. Set against the awesome vastness of Alaska, it evokes a vivid sense of place as well as generating an atmosphere of unsentimental emotion. Cecil Younger is, almost in spite of himself, a man of honour, a true hero whose company is always dislocating, thrilling and fulfilling. And the description of swimming with the feeding whales is breathtaking! A heady, rich brew that satisfies all the senses.

The Matt Scudder Mysteries by Lawrence Block
(Orion, £16.99)
There is no American consistently writing better crafted private eye novels than Lawrence Block. With the character of Matt Scudder, he has provided his thousands of readers with a reliable treat that never fails to deliver. Now Orion have reissued the first three novels in the series in one omnibus and it's a rare joy to revisit the early days of Scudder's single-handed crusade against the injustices of New York's mean streets. The Sins of the Fathers delivers a solid uppercut to the chin of respectability with its probing into the sordid underbelly of the Big Apple. Under cover of a perverted religion, lives are corrupted and the innocent pay the ultimate price. It's a dark and thrilling introduction to the complex character of Scudder who starts this long series as a man with a growing drink problem, a failed marriage and the habit of giving a tithe to any church he walks into. Time To Murder And Create shows Scudder at his dogged and honourable best. The Spinner might be a petty crook and blackmailer, but he'd turned the perceptive private eye into his insurance policy. When he's murdered, Scudder takes on the hunt for his killer, discovering along the way that there is more than one way to be a victim. In The Midst of Death hurls Scudder into the messy heart of police corruption when a whistle-blowing cop is framed on a murder charge. But nothing is quite what it seems and Scudder has to negotiate a difficult and dangerous pathway before he learns the answer. As is often the case with Block's work, it's not always a palatable truth. Block's talent lies in the creation of well-developed characters snarled up in often bewildering circumstance against a backdrop of New York that the city's tourist department must be desperate to suppress. This series just goes on getting better and better. Start here -- there's another ten to go!

Silent Words by Joan M.Drury
(The Women's Press, £6.99) 
The earliest feminist mysteries drew heavily on the hard-boiled private eye tradition, but now they have staked out their own area of the genre, a new generation of "cosy" crime has emerged with feminist values and protagonists. With this novel, Joan Drury demonstrates that it's more than possible to celebrate the lives of women without losing the fascination that comes with a whodunit. San Francisco journalist Tyler Jones has been left a strange legacy by her dying mother -- her grandparents' house in Minnesota that she thought had been sold years before, and the revelation that there are skeletons in the family closet that Tyler should expose to the harsh light of truth. In a bid to recover from her grief, Tyler heads back to the family home to soak in the luxury of childhood memories. But as she works on repairing and restoring a house that has lain empty for a generation, the past that increasingly intrudes is not all as rosy as she had realised. Hidden relationships are first surprising, then shocking and finally sinister as one of Tyler's rediscovered friends is brutally murdered and dumped on her property in a move calculated to stop her asking questions no-one wants to answer. But the secrets buried in the past cannot stay covered forever, especially when a journalist's curiosity is aroused. Gentle and generous, this is one to curl up with by the fire.