Blue Labyrinth by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Published by Grand Central Publishing on November 11, 2014

I have never been a fan of Pendergast although I enjoy the Pendergast novels. Pendergast is such a pretentious snob that I often find his literary company to be disagreeable. When, in Blue Labyrinth, Pendergast accuses others of being officious, I wonder if he owns a mirror. The novels, on the other hand, are carefully plotted, never dull, and often feature absorbing mysteries.

When Pendergast's dead son is deposited at his door, Pendergast feels no loss -- his son was "a sociopathic killer of the most dangerous type" -- but since the killers found his son when the FBI and CIA could not, Pendergast knows that his murderers are formidable. Why his son was killed, why there was a turquoise jewel in his son's stomach, and what message the killers meant to send by delivering the corpse to Pendergast are the mysteries that both Pendergast and the reader must solve.

A second storyline involves a murder at the Museum of Natural History. The murder seems to be linked to a murder that occurred in the late nineteenth century but the connection baffles Detective Vincent D'Agosta. He's not happy when Pendergast provides five minutes of assistance and then disappears.

About a third of the novel passes before the inevitable linkage of the two mysteries occurs. The mysteries force Pendergast to confront a dark secret in his ancestry. The motivation for the crimes turns out to be laughably implausible. Pendergast's ability to see the past televised in his mind while meditating is just silly. Some other aspects of the story also plummet off the edge of credibility but that's common in modern thrillers. Believable or not, they provide a foundation for the action that follows. The action scenes are pure fun.

The behind-the-scenes look at the Museum of Natural History is rich with detail, as are descriptions of the crime-controlled slums of Rio. The plot moves forward briskly. While I can't say I warmed up to Pendergast -- quite the opposite -- I enjoyed the story and got a kick out of the secondary characters.

RECOMMENDED

Five Minutes Alone by Paul Cleave

Published by Atria Books on October 21, 2014

Except for Ahab and people who share his obsessive nature, the desire for vengeance is a passing emotion. Those who do seek revenge cause dire and unintended consequences without finding the closure they crave. On the other hand, those who want their better selves to prevail sometimes entertain a revenge fantasy, even if they never carry it out. The conflicting desires that are part of human nature are at the heart of Five Minutes Alone.

Paul Cleave writes novels that his publisher calls Christchurch Noir. Five Minutes Alone is the fourth in the Theodore Tate series. It makes frequent references to events from earlier novels that had a traumatic impact on DI Tate and two of his colleagues, but the backstory is filled in so completely that this can easily be read as a standalone novel.

Five Minutes Alone opens with Kelly Summers on the verge of being raped by Dwight Smith for the second time. In the chapters that follow, the police are investigating Smith's death, Smith having been splattered by a train. The police soon discover that the death was not be a suicide, which leaves Tate wondering who deserves New Zealand's gratitude for ridding it of Smith.

We learn early on that the vigilante dubbed The Five Minute Man by Christchurch journalists is Carl Schroder, who was a detective and Tate's partner until he was shot in the head. Crime victims used to say to Schroder, "Just give me five minutes alone with him." Freed from the constraints of law enforcement, Schroder has a new sense of what constitutes justice. He not only wants to give people their five minutes, he virtually forces them to rekindle the fires that have cooled with the passage of time.

The story pits old friends Tate and Schroder against each other, although Tate lacks the reader's early knowledge that Schroder is contributing to the latest crime spree in Christchurch. Tate has his own experience with revenge killing and is not well positioned to place moral judgment on Schroder. The question that the reader ponders for much of the novel is how Tate will handle the conflict. Five Minutes Alone is a story of divided loyalties -- each man has the ability to bring down the other, but will he do it?

When I started reading Five Minutes Alone, I thought it would be another mundane vigilante novel. I was wrong. The story is surprisingly subtle and its message reflects the complexity of human emotion. The struggles that the characters experience seem authentic and heartfelt. The novel features snappy action scenes that are more original than is common in action-based thrillers, but its true value lies in the evolution that its central characters experience and in the different perspectives that secondary characters provide to illuminate the meaning of justice. The novel's fault is its predictable ending, although the last few paragraphs I did not anticipate. Still, Five Minutes Alone is about characters and philosophy more than plot.

RECOMMENDED

The Wolf in Winter by John Connolly

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on October 28, 2014

A girl named Annie is being held captive in an unfriendly town called Prosperous. Suspecting that his daughter is in trouble but finding himself unwelcome in Prosperous, Annie's homeless father hopes to get help from Charlie Parker. The father is found swinging from a rope before they have a chance to talk.

Prosperous, notable for its old English church that once hosted a now defunct religion, is one of the creepy, incestuous towns that writers of horror and crime novels like to create. The residents of Prosperous share a secret and are hostile to outsiders who might learn its dirty business. John Connolly provides enough background to the town and its people to make it believable but not so much as to slow the story with needless detail.

Connolly weaves the history of the mystic religious sect into a plot that takes Parker to Prosperous as he follows the trail of the homeless man's missing daughter. About halfway into the novel, the story takes a supernatural turn, as Parker novels usually do. The supernatural elements are the least interesting aspect of the story but The Wolf in Winter does have the creepy feeling of a good X-Files episode.

An extended section of the book takes place while Parker is out of action, giving series regulars Ronald Straydeer and the killer couple Louis and Angel a chance to be in the limelight. They are strong characters who easily carry the story. The Collector, a recurring villain in the series, makes an appearance, advancing an ongoing subplot while altering the mission that has recently motivated Louis and Angel.

Connolly writes with unusual sensitivity and compassion about the homeless. They are, in fact, some of the best characters in the book. The bad guys are also described in convincing detail. Some residents of Prosperous are just playing the hands they were dealt while the town's rulers are the embodiment of evil when they aren't behaving like ordinary folk.

Connolly's commentary adds personality to the characters and amusement to the story. A character's reference to readers who take "reading books very seriously without ever understanding how the act could be enjoyable as well" and his flaming condemnation of Look Homeward, Angel were among my favorites. I take reading seriously but if I'm not enjoying a book, I don't finish it. The Wolf in Winter was easy to finish.

RECOMMENDED

Belfast Noir by Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville (eds.)

Published by Akashic Books on November 4, 2014

I don't know if Belfast is the noirest city on Earth, as the introduction to Belfast Noir claims -- surely Berlin provides strong competition -- but many of the Belfast-based stories collected here are fine examples of noir. Not all of the stories are dark, but the collection establishes Belfast as a fertile setting for crime fiction.

The Troubles and their continuing impact on life and culture in Belfast provide a background for many of the stories. Phrases like "wearing more jewellery than a Turf Lodge wide boy after a ram-raid at Lunn's" can make a Belfast story difficult to follow for readers who are unfamiliar with the city and its linguistic twists, but the local color (mostly gray as neutral ground between the hues of competing flags) shines through.

Some of the stories are true noir that showcase true writing talent:

The missing-presumed-dead father in Ian McDonald's "The Reservoir" returns to Belfast for his daughter's wedding and to confront the man who shot him. In Brian McGilloway's "The Undertaking," a wry story of crime gone awry, the undertaker of choice for Belfast's organized criminals is recruited to drive a hearse carrying a coffin bearing unknown cargo. A PI rescues a hooker and takes on a London crime boss who has designs on Belfast in Sam Millar's "Out of Time."

Murder, blackmail, and a wealthy man's dalliance with a teenage prostitute provide the ingredients for a juicy but dangerous story for a crime reporter in Garbhan Downey's "Die Like a Rat." The only noir story about dog fighting I've ever seen (a difficult but ultimately satisfying read for dog lovers) is "Pure Game" by Arlene Hunt. Alex Barclay wins the award for best prose in "The Reveller," a story of a son seeking revenge for his father's murder.

These stories are a little less noir but they are nevertheless excellent:

Lee Child's "Wet With Raid" is an audacious story of a dirty American agent who travels to Belfast to conduct dirty business. A barrister in Steve Cavanagh's "The Grey" defends a salty old con artist who claims to be innocent of a murder committed 30 years earlier. Perhaps the most unusual story in the collection, Eion McNamee's "Corpse Flowers" is told from the perspectives captured by surveillance cameras.

Two exceptional works are psychological profiles set against a background of crime:

Ruth Dudley Edwards' chilling "Taking It Serious" is about a mentally disturbed teen, his loving mum, the hidden secrets of his family, and the legacy of the IRA. In "Ligature," Gerard Brennan gets inside the tormented head of a troubled girl who does everything she can to get outside of her own head while she's locked up in a juvenile jail.

One story is just plain funny, proving that humor can be found everywhere, even in Belfast:

Claire McGowan's "Rosie Gant's Finger" features a boy detective of mixed religious heritage whose office is his mother's living room. He pedals his ten-speed to solve the mystery of a missing girl who got involved with a Belfast hoodlum.

Not so noir but still reasonably interesting stories:

Fascinated by the young woman who took up with her high school Spanish teacher, a student in Lucy Caldwell's "Poison" tries to give life to a fantasy. In the story I liked the least, Glenn Patterson's "Belfast Punk Rep," a writer explores the death of punk in Belfast by interviewing a prisoner. Even that story, however, isn't bad.

In fact, there isn't a bad story in the book.

RECOMMENDED

Bathing the Lion by Jonathan Carroll

Published by St. Martin's Press on October 21, 2014

I didn't know what kind of book Bathing the Lion was before I started reading it. A quarter of the way in, I still didn't know, but that's a good thing. By the midway point I understood that Bathing the Lion is sort of a comedic science fiction novel with some elements of fantasy that makes some serious points about reality.

Much of Bathing the Lion is about the vagaries of memory, its unreliability, its tendency to reshape reality into something more pleasant. Bathing the Lion is also about transformative experiences and the impossibility of predicting what -- a book, a song, a person, an idea, a place -- will transform us. But by the end Bathing the Lion proves to be about humanity, about the qualities that make us human.

Dean and Vanessa Corbin are married, although they do not like each other much. Kaspar Benn, Dean's friend and business partner, who may or may not be having an affair with Vanessa, agrees that Vanessa is an unlikable drama queen. But she may also be a gifted lounge singer (and diva wannabe) who may or may not have saved Jane Claudius' bar from going under.

What begins as an ordinary domestic drama takes an odd twist when a little girl named Josephine tells Kaspar "everything happens today." She encourages Kaspar to find William Edmonds, a recent widower. Edmonds has been lamenting his inability to recall more details of his happy life with his wife, but (according to Josephine) the true nature of Edmonds' life has been hidden from him. Yet Edmonds isn't the only character whose true nature is concealed from the reader in the novel's first half.

Separating what is real from what isn't is part of the reader's challenge as the story moves forward. It is even more of a challenge for the characters as they encounter chaos, a force in the universe that seems unstoppable -- unless they can find a way to stop it.

Many people believe that they benefit from divine guidance. Bathing the Lion imagines that we receive interventions rather than guidance and that the interveners (who view Earth as something of a backwater) are less than divine. They're more like cosmic technicians -- they are, in fact, called mechanics -- although some behave less professionally than they should.

I won't reveal anything else about the surprising plot. It gains steady momentum as it moves along and eventually proves to be absorbing, even if I had the sense that Jonathan Carroll was making it up as he went along with no overarching plan to guide the narrative. I have often thought that every work of fiction is made better by the inclusion of a dog; the two dogs in Bathing the Lion contribute additional humor.

Molecules of wisdom float through the story, waiting to be absorbed, as do its humor molecules. The capacity for wisdom and humor are part of the human experience (the novel reminds us), as are generosity, hope, fear, sadness, and all the mortal emotions that blend within us. The cacophony of human experience seems chaotic but Jonathan Carroll argues that it produces a harmonious whole that keeps chaos at bay. Bathing the Lion is itself a surprising blend of literary qualities.

RECOMMENDED