Books Reviewed by Val McDermid
Winner of the Golden 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.
The Magician's Tale, by David Hunt
(Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99)
They call San Francisco America's favourite city. But under the romantic glow, the exotic neighbourhoods and the glamourous Victorian palaces of the mega-rich, the city by the Bay has a dark side. In the Gulch of Polk Street, the young flesh lurks -- male, female and indeterminate -- waiting for the next hustle. It's a world that fascinates talented but colour-blind photographer Kay Farrow.
Then Tim Lovsey is murdered and dismembered. He was her favourite model; she captured his image and he captured her heart. Now he's dead meat in a city dumpster. But what's even more spooky is that his mutilations are an eerie echo of a series of brutal unsolved killings from seventeen years before, a murderous spree that Kay's retired cop father knows more about than he's willing to tell.
For once, Kay can't keep the distance of a camera lens between herself and the world. But her determination to expose the secrets of Tim's life and death lead her into dangerous paths trodden by rapacious and arrogant criminals who will stop at nothing to make sure they continue to take exactly what they want from the sad denizens of the city's underworld. And they take her irresistibly and terrifyingly to the heart of the dark sorcery of Tim's own past.
The Magician's Tale is itself a darkly magical read, drawing the reader in with sleight of hand to an erotic, stylish and ultimately squalid series of encounters that end in a dazzlingly clever twist that gives a whole new meaning to 'I left my heart in San Francisco.'

Final Victim by Stephen J. Cannell
(Michael Joseph, £9.99)
In cyber-space, there are no limits, no controls. The real problems start when psychopaths think they can transfer the cyber-rules to the outside world. And no-one creates problems like the Wind Minstrel, who stalks the virtual world of the internet with absolute assurance. Already, he has stalked and executed six women in his pursuit of his perverted passion to rebuild his personal Beast of Revelations.
But he has better weapons than scalpels and saws -- his hands hover virtually over the keys of every computer attached to a modem. In a world of 'smart' buildings, where computer chips control everything from the lifts to the temperature, the liar who can hack into systems is king. So in spite of his six victims, nobody has any idea that this serial killer exists until profiler Karen Dawson trips over his traces by accident.  With no help but a maverick Customs investigator and a convicted hacker illegally busted from jail, Awesome Dawson faces an opponent who is not only one step ahead of her but also creeping up behind her. Suspenseful, tightly plotted and cleverly exploiting the leading edge of computer technology, Final Victim is an ideal holiday read.

Blood Is Dirt, by Robert Wilson
(HarperCollins, £15.99)
Benin in West Africa is a far away place of which, thanks to Robert Wilson's excellent thriller series, we know a very great deal, much of it the sort of information that makes a reader determined never to visit the country. Hot in the way that hell is hot, more polluted than Manchester, and more corrupt than a cash-for-questions MP, it's a country that draws to it the sort of unscrupulous foreigner who wants to make a lot of money very quickly and doesn't care how many risks that involves.
It's also home to Bruce Medway, former fixer and middleman and now private investigator and debt collector who only manages a roof over his head because his aid worker girlfriend gets a housing allowance. When a nervous potential client walks in with a story of being scammed out of two million dollars, Medway senses he's not getting the whole story, a suspicion that's confirmed when the client is horribly butchered.
Then the client's daughter turns up, a rapacious commodities broker who wants more than the missing money; she wants revenge, and good sex. Since caution isn't in her vocabulary, Medway finds himself up to his neck in the aggravation that inevitably results when you take toxic waste, Mafia money laundering, sexual perversion, drink, drugs and a nuclear bomb and throw them into the blender together. Gripping and grim, Blood Is Dirt is also sharp and smart, with a cast of fascinating misfits who enrage and amuse in almost equal measure. A vivid and steamy stumble on the wild side.

The Lover of the Grave, by Andrew Taylor
(Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99)
The 1950s was possibly the last decade when respectability was important enough to be regarded as a reasonable motive for murder. In his Lydmouth novels, Andrew Taylor has anatomised a society where the opinion of others was at the forefront of every middle-class mind and reveals how this obsession corroded relationships and devastated lives and this latest maintains the high standard he set himself from the first.
On a bitterly cold morning, the body of a man is found swinging from the Hanging Tree, a site of ancient justice and traditions all but lost in the mists of time. It doesn't take long for Detective Inspector Richard Thornhill to discover that the dead man met his end elsewhere. But that takes him no nearer discovering who killed this master from a minor public school, or why. It's a strange and complex case that soon brings uncomfortable truths to the surface, not only for the people whose lives the victim touched.
To add to Thornhill's problems, there is a Peeping Tom on the loose who seems to be escalating his activities to stalking. The subject of his attentions, Jill Francis, is the local journalist whose presence in Lydmouth has unsettled Thornhill since first they met. With the death of his wife's mother, Thornhill is forced to make choices that are bound to lead to disaster. The tensions, both emotional and sexual, that run through this deftly plotted novel stretch the reader's nerves almost to breaking point. A rich stew of human failings, The Lover of the Grave is atmospheric and absorbing.

 Guilt, by John Lescroart
(Headline Feature, £16.99)
Mark Dooher looks like the personification of respectability. Head of a major San Francisco law firm, counsel to the Catholic archdiocese, happily married to an attractive wife, three grown children, he appears to have all he could want. Then he meets Christina Carrera. And suddenly the man who has always taken what he wanted is confronted by a major problem. If he divorces his wife, he'll lose his major client.
When his wife is murdered -- though not quite as Dooher had intended -- he discovers for the first time in his life that sheer willpower and careful planning are not necessarily enough to get him home free. Pitting his wits against homicide cop Abe Glitsky brings him face to face with the full power of the law in a tense courtroom drama that ends in the most unexpected turnaround.
With interesting echoes of the O.J.Simpson case, Lescroart cleverly builds his story, sowing seeds of doubt with profligate enthusiasm, letting them grow into a confusing thicket of fear and danger. Guilt  is a sharply observed page-turned where justice itself is put on trial.

Head Count, by Ingrid Noll
(HarperCollins, £8.99)
Contemporary crime fiction is often split into cosy versus hard-boiled. But there is another crucial distinction, often lost to UK and US readers because of the reluctance of publishers to invest in translation, and that is the contrast with European crime fiction. If Eurocrime has a single distinguishing strand, it is whydunnit rather than whodunnit.
For British readers, it is ironically most often encountered in the works of an American writer-in-exile, the late, great and much lamented Patricia Highsmith. But occasionally British publishers take the risk of translation and in the case of Ingrid Noll, it pays off handsomely for the reader. Noll's preoccupation is with the lives of the unfulfilled, the emotionally crippled who spiral downwards into homicide because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Her trick is to make the reader slip almost without noticing under the skin of the supposed villain until we understand only too well why the terrible events of the book have happened.
Head Count  tells the chilling story of Maya, who grew up the ugly duckling despised by her brother and mother and abandoned by her father. Outcast from affection until she meets the glamorous Cora, it's not hard for Maya to convince herself that rules are for other people. But when rebellious teenagers turn into capricious and demanding adults, the scene is set for desire turning into a juggernaut that fatally crushes others beneath its wheels. Distinctive and distinctly off the wall, Ingrid Noll is an unsettling writer who undermines expectations at every turn.

Bird Dog, by Philip Reed
(Hodder & Stoughton, £17.99)
The American caper novel has become a firmly-established sub-genre in recent years, thriving in the hands of such diverse writers as Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiassen and Lawrence Shames. Latest arrival on the shores of black farce is journalist and playwright Philip Reed who tosses the reader into the duplicitous world of car sales.
Harold Dodge is a curious mixture of worldly wisdom and innocence, an engineer who also writes 'How To' consumer guides, a man whose best friend is an exotic dancer but whose favourite restaurant is the US equivalent of a Little Chef. When Marianna, a colleague, asks for his help in unwinding a rip-off car deal, the fact that she's beautiful doesn't hurt, and Harold figures the way to her heart may be by showing the little lady how to scam a scammer.
But in the familiar territory of the caper novel, nothing can ever be that simple. Before long, Harold and Marianna are up to their neck in sleazy criminals, dead bodies, broken laws and trouble with the cops. Darker than Hiassen but funnier than Leonard, Bird Dog is strong on observation and surprisingly rich in credible and sympathetic characters. The pace slows a little in the middle as the plot develops slightly too many complications, but it's still a debut that crackles with wit.

Two very different first novels illustrate the current range of contemporary crime fiction and reveal remarkably polished prose from their debut authors. No Laughing Matter, by Peter Guttridge (Headline, £16.99) managed the rare double of making me laugh out loud and wince in sympathy at both the violence and the humiliation meted out to the narrator, freelance journalist Nick Madrid.
Madrid is, for once, minding his own business practising yoga in his hotel room during a break in a comedy festival when a beautiful blonde plunges past his fourteenth floor window. Like all journalists, he's determined to find a story whether there is one or not, and he and his intrepid cronies Bridget and Frank decide in the teeth of the evidence that the blonde starlet must have been murdered. Unfortunately the tactless trio's approach to interrogation has all the subtlety of a half brick to the head.
Even more unfortunately, proof that Madrid is right about the murder comes all too swiftly in the shape of more bodies, several of them too close to home for comfort. As the trail twists through comedy festivals in Montreal, Edinburgh and Los Angeles, Guttridge seizes every opportunity to set off squibs of humour that detonate throughout the text, including the second occurrence in recent crime fiction of a naked journalist locking himself out of an Edinburgh flat. It's a pity that sometimes the efforts to raise a laugh slow the story down to the point where the reader starts to notice the slightness of the plot, but No Laughing Matter is enormous fun and shows considerable promise. One small quibble, though -- Deal is in Kent; the wooded glade in Edinburgh is the Dean Village.
London Blues by Anthony Frewin
(No Exit Press, £6.99)
With more than a nod to post-modernism, Anthony Frewin has produced a quirky thriller that luxuriates in the ambience of the Soho of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Frewin, an assistant film director, discovered there had been a 'cottage industry' in home-made blue movies in London made by amateurs and distributed through the network of porn shops in the gangster-run Soho.
His discovery forms the basis for London Blues. An unnamed narrator becomes obsessed with the finding out who was behind an old blue film. The search plunges him into the life of Tim Purdom, cafe manager and accidental pornographer at the cusp where the repressed 1950s met the swinging sixties. As Tim's star rises and wanes, so too does that of Stephen Ward, the society osteopath and whoremonger at the heart of the Profumo scandal, their lives becoming fatefully and possibly fatally interlinked.
Tim moves from spectator at the feast to an unwitting player in a game he only dimly apprehends until, in an oblique and mysterious ending, Frewin leaves the reader wondering just what has happened to him. A strange and fascinating read, compelling and convincing in its recreation of an atmospheric chapter in recent history.

May seems to be the month for first novels, with another two landing on the doormat this week. The Poison Tree, by Tony Strong (Doubleday, £12.99) occupies the more traditional territory of bloody murder in Oxford with a cast of students and academics. A bisexual heroine provides a superficially more contemporary twist than Inspector Morse, while the compulsory post-modern spin comes from the self-conscious quoting of the heroine's own lectures on the crime fiction genre.
Terry Williams moves into her new home in the close-knit community of Osney Island and discovers the reason it was such a bargain is the brutal murder and symbolic male rape committed there, an act so terrible it even turned the cat cannibal. Within days she's the target of a Peeping Tom, a poison pen and her sexually predatory neighbours. Before the insidiously nasty denouement, Terry has to endure the break-up of her lesbian affair, diminishing audiences at her lectures, indifferent sex with a copper and the kind of squirm-inducing parties that would make any reasonable person run for the hills.
At the heart of the plot lies a morally bankrupt bunch whose pathetic antics result not from 'too many drugs in the Sixties' but rather from too much intellectual arrogance. This book is consequently crammed with gratuitous and exploitative sex, all the more noticeable because the author has tried and failed to write inside the skin of the opposite gender. There seems no valid reason for Terry's bisexuality except titillation, and I found her emotional responses deeply unconvincing. But there's nothing wrong with the way Tony Strong writes; his prose is assured and clever, his command of narrative technique surprising in a first-time novelist.

Deadmeat, by Q (Sceptre, £6) is an entirely different kind of novel. Relentlessly contemporary, it sizzles with the energy of drug-fuelled all-night raves, the prose jittering and jangling round the brain like Radio Five Live though a very bad hangover. The crime is interesting; a self-styled Cybervigilante is tracking down hard-core paedophiles via the Internet and killing them. But unlike the conventional crime novel, the search for his/her identity remains on the periphery of this fascinating trawl through London's new computer/drug/clubland interface.
The narrator Clarkie, just out of prison, struggles to come to terms with the fact that his baby brother has become king of cyberspace both with art works acclaimed by the establishment and the hottest club in the city where kids queue half the night just to cross the threshold. The dramatic cast of characters include Froggy the loudmouthed homeboy who wants his share, Melanie the double-dealing lawyer, Uncle Oscar the king of the anecdote and Mrs Birchfield, the voodoo priestess.
Deadmeat is as much a timeless tale of love and betrayal as it is a crime novel, but it's written in the vital language of the streets, peppered with apposite quotes from music lyrics, stuffed with disturbing imagery and unsettling information. It's heady stuff that probably won't stand the test of time, but who cares? We'll all be dead then anyway.

Cimarron Rose, by James Lee Burke
(Orion, £16.99 & £9.99)
This marks the start of a new series for Burke, whose darkly atmospheric Dave Robicheaux novels virtually created the sub-genre of American country noir. Leaving behind the swamps and bayous of Louisiana for the terrifyingly insular Texan town of Deaf Smith, Burke has created another maverick misfit in defence lawyer Billy Bob Holland. Called on to defend a local teenager accused of rape and murder, Holland finds his own past inextricably linked to the present. Not only is he the real father of the accused boy, but his experiences seem to echo strangely the frontier diaries of his pioneer great-grandfather.
Complications abound in the shape of a psychotic ex-con with a grudge, an undercover federal investigation whose toes Holland can't help treading on, corrupt law officers and a bunch of screwed-up citizens determined to put the 'fun' in 'dysfunctional'. Cimarron Rose is a chilling reminder that behind the superficial gloss and stylish presentation of the big cities that fill our TV and cinema screens, America is a country that harbours appalling prejudice, violence, poverty, ignorance and arrogance.
Written in Burke's usual spare, oblique and incisive prose, Cimarron Rose is a disturbing and compelling read. His is a commanding presence on the battlefield of American fiction. Deliverance might have been filmed twenty years ago; this novel forces the realisation that it could have been made last week.

 A Rage Of Innocents, by Kay Mitchell
(Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99)
Kay Mitchell is one of Britain's most underrated crime writers, and I suspect it's because her novels are more The Bill than Frost. She does have a nominal hero in Chief Inspector Morrissey, but what interests Mitchell as much as murder and its motives is the complex interplay of personalities and relationships within the police investigation team, and that is what gives her books much of their richness.
A Rage of Innocents deals with the topical and troubled area of finding solutions to the problems of infertility. A clinic in Malminster has an expensive but effective solution, and women wait in its comfortable rooms for the miracle of life to happen to them. When Lucy, pregnant and homeless, is offered a job there as an alternative to life on the streets, it seems too good a chance to turn down. Then a festering corpse is found near the clinic, and Lucy appears to be too clever for her own good. There's violence in the streets too as tempers flare in tandem with the temperature rising, giving Morrissey an all too personal stake in civil disorder and forcing his team to take difficult decisions on their own. Mitchell brings a humane eye to human frailty in a textbook example of what the English police procedural can be in sensitive hands.

Hornet's Nest by Patricia Cornwell
(Little, Brown £16.99)
Any writer of crime fiction who, in their role as reviewer, writes critically of a writer as popular as Patricia Cornwell risks the accusation of sour grapes. It's a risk I'm prepared to take rather than search for words of faint praise for a novel which, if submitted by anyone else, would not have been published, far less bought for a reputed $3million. There is nothing in Cornwell's grim and terrifying anatomies of serial killers in her Kay Scarpetta novels that would lead the reader to believe she possesses a sense of humour. Yet in Hornet's Nest, she has attempted to write comedy set against the harsh realities of inner city life. It works in the deft hands of Carl Hiassen; here it stumbles with leaden feet. The "comic" incidents have the air of the stories cops and journalists tell each other when they reminisce over a few beers. To find them funny, I suspect you had to be there.
As far as the plot goes, it's negligible. A serial killer is murdering visitors to the city of Charlotte and leaving them with a da-glo orange hourglass spraypainted on their genitals. But for most of the 372 pages, this is relegated to the distant sidelines while Cornwell explores the interaction of rookie volunteer cop and crime reporter Andy Brazil with Deputy Police Chief Virginia West. This could have worked if either West or Brazil or any of the other characters at the centre of the novel bore any relationship to normal human beings. Obsessed with their dysfunctional sexualities, entirely divorced from recognizable motivations, they bounce unpredictably and incredibly from one unlikely incident to the next. Even when Cornwell has not been at the top of her form previously, her sure grasp of narrative technique and her understanding of the mechanics of suspense have maintained the momentum, keeping readers feverishly turning pages. Somehow, these skills seem to have abandoned her on this outing. In spite of the hype, this will come as a sorry disappointment to her army of fans. I only hope word of mouth spreads fast enough to prevent most of them wasting their hard-earned cash.

Double Vision by Annie Ross
(Headline, £16.99)
TV director Bel Carson is sent to Kansas to make a documentary about a British man accused of murdering his estranged American wife. It seems a straightforward case in spite of his protestations of innocence and Bel feels she's going through the motions when it comes to digging up background on the case. But having to cope with an inexperienced researcher who seems to have a strange thing going with the unit cameraman turns routine filming into a nightmare, especially after her researcher is arrested for murder.
Bel finds herself raking through the ashes of small town history as strange connections begin to emerge among the people connected to the seemingly separate killings. What she finds turns all her preconceptions on their heads, whirling her through the storm from Kansas to what feels suspiciously like Oz. Annie Ross is herself a TV documentary producer, so there is the distinct whiff of authenticity about the trials and tribulations of film making. Third in a reliably entertaining series, Double Vision is the perfect diversion for a long train journey -- or a night when the TV is less intersting than Bel Carson's programmes!

Jello Salad by Nicholas Blincoe
(Serpent's Tail, £7.99)
If casual murder, chaotic mayhem, flamboyant farce and a monstrous medley of drink and drugs are not your idea of a good time, chances are you're not going to enjoy Nicholas Blincoe's latest extravaganza one little bit. This black comedy of modern bad manners aims at outrage and hits the bull's eye every time. Somewhere lurking beneath the surface is a plot that relies a little too heavily on coincidence, but it's hard to care too much about that while you're swept along on the tide of gleeful gusto Blincoe brings to his story-telling. Roughly speaking, it goes: Hogie, a Manchester chef with wierd sexual habits goes to London to hit the big time in his own restaurant secretly funded by laundered gangland cash; a baby coke dealer is incinerated on Hogie's stove; old-style London gangsters confront new wave drug-fuelled Manchester gangstas in a bizarre showdown at a rave; strangely mutilated bodies keep turning up in stomach-churning detail... oh, what's the point, you had to be there. What stops Jello Salad collapsing under the weight of its anecdotes and bizarre practises is the quality of Blincoe's writing. The fresh voice that revealed in Acid Casuals a side of Manchester the city council must have hated has matured and learned control. As his skills have developed, so has his confidence, making this a must-read. Besides, your mother wouldn't like it... or would she?

A Likeness In Stone by J Wallis Martin
(Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99)
Detective Chief Inspector Bill Driver was always convinced Helena Warner had been murdered by her lover. But without a body or a confession, he'd had to give up. Then, twenty years later, a diver in a reservoir finds her decayed corpse shoved into a wardrobe in the submerged house where they spent their weekends. Even though he's now retired, Driver relishes the chance of finally hearing Ian Gilmore admit murder. Then a second woman's body is found entombed in water, and suddenly what had seemed clear becomes complicated. The three friends who colluded to lie about Helena's disappearance find the past clawing its way out of a watery grave to ensnare them afresh and death begins to enfold them again. Just when it seems that they will never be free of the guilt and ghosts, the case splits open with shocking revelations that undermine everything they have believed about themselves.
This is a compelling psychological thriller with echoes of Barbara Vine and Minette Walters.Well written, intelligent and chilling, it demonstrates an assurance unusual in a first novel. Convincing on every level, this is a fascinating debut which delivers plenty and promises more.

With Child by Laurie R.King
(HarperCollins, £14.99)
San Francisco homicide cop Kate Martinelli hates her life. Her work is frustrating, her lover, Lee, is absent for reasons Kate can't understand, and she's stopped liking herself. The last thing she expects is to be rescued from her depression by a gifted twelve-year old who's lost her best friend, a homeless kid. But Jules, the stepdaughter of her police partner, and her puzzle, are exactly what Kate needs to kick-start her self-esteem and her love of the job. But her offer to take Jules to visit Lee while her parents are out of town turns her life into a nightmare. Jules goes missing from her motel room in the heart of a serial killer's territory, plunging her into an investigation that cuts to the heart of her being. Isolated, pilloried and overwhelmed with guilt, Kate does the one thing she does best and tries to unlock the secrets of Jules's own past. Tense, tortuous and tremendously powerful, this is an emotional roller-coaster ride that explores and explodes the family and our society's attitudes towards its children. In a good year, maybe a handful of crime novels bring a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. With Child  is one. I could not put it down. With the award-winning Grave Talent, Laurie King started her career on a high. She just keeps getting better.

Spike It by Chris Niles
(Macmillan, £16.99)
Sam Ridley is the stuff that hard-boiled heroes are made of. He drinks too much, he smokes too much, his job is hanging by a thread, he's always getting beaten up, he can't resist a pretty woman and his wife has left him for another man and Australia, taking his son with her. What saves him from stereotype is the smart-mouthed freshness of Chris Niles's writing. Herself a TV and radio journalist, she perfectly captures the anarchic politics of a small independent radio station with its assorted dysfunctional hacks and obsessive managers. When Ridley stumbles into the middle of a murder investigation, in spite of being hampered by his punishment assignment to the women's magazine programme, he applies all his journalistic skills to uncovering the truth. On the way he trips over dodgy small-time villains, radical protest groups with secrets of their own to hide, chic media stars with Holland Park mansions and more trouble than any man should have to face from the women around him. A slick and cheeky debut.