A choice of recent thrillers

In The Echo by Minette Walters (Macmillan, 16.99) Michael Deacon, an alcoholic, heart-on-sleeve journalist investigating the lot of tramps, becomes interested in 'Billy', a derelict who starved to death in a garage containing a deepfreeze stuffed with food. Why, Michael wonders, is Amanda Powell, the mysterious, sexy widow who owned the upmarket Docklands property where Billy died, so haunted by his death? Who was Billy Blake before he became a mystic-saint, madman and derelict? What was the crime that he died expiating? And what did the mysterious disappearances of a Foreign Office mandarin in 1988 and a merchant banker in 1990 have to do with Billy's death?

On the way to finding out the truth, Michael Deacon picks up a runaway teenager who is not above crying rape if there is a bob or two in it, salvages a sad case from the office who is a whizz with photographic evidence, acquires the advice of a philosophical, retired Jewish lawyer and comes to terms with his own family demons.

Minette Walters has settled down. Her first two novels, The Ice House and The Sculptress, had such a high-octane level of interesting beastliness that it was perhaps inevitable that there should be a sharp falling off with her third, The Scold's Bridle. Her fourth, The Dark Room, had an uneven, unlikely romanticism but was excellently plotted, while The Echo is both well plotted and has, with the exception of the engaging waif Michael befriends, believable characters. The most interesting of them is Barry Glover, emotionally retarded, the newspaper office loner who is terrified of rejection and suffers unattractive crushes. He is an enjoyable grotesque, sympathetically explored. Readers may realise rather early on where The Echo is heading, but there is a broad enough canvas for this not to matter too much.

The same could be said of Sue Grafton's M is for Malice (Macmillan, 15.99). Kinsey Millhone, Grafton's sturdy, female private eye is asked to find the black sheep of the Malek family when the estate (a 40-milliondollar company) has to be settled. Guy, the missing member of the family, left home, unmourned, at 16 after countless misdemeanours fuelled by drugs and drink. His three boorish, greedy brothers say he was disinherited by their father, but the will cannot be found. Kinsey tracks down a sweet, born-again hippie looking for love and reconciliation - a trussed lamb for the slaughter. She spends the rest of the novel driven by angry guilt in pursuit of a killer.

Unlike Sarah Paretsky's private eye Warshawski (the forerunner of most of this generation of female detectives), who has become increasingly angry, bitter and discouraged by dealing endlessly with crooked financiers, Kinsey has a tough vulnerability about her. Her relationships may not be entirely satisfactory but they do not exist to prove points, nor does she fall back on sentimental relationships with dogs or, as in the case of Patricia Cornwell's Dr Kay Scarpetta, a niece. She is altogether a more rounded and presentable heroine for the reader to engage with, and M is for Malice delivers a nicely intricate plot, although I guessed both the motive and the murderer rather too early on.

Roderick Anscombe's impressive second novel, Shank (Bloomsbury, 15.99), tells of Dan, ex-schoolmaster and convicted wifekiller. We meet him on his escape from a grim American prison. The novel is told in a series of letters that Dan sends to a woman newscaster about his life in prison, his escape and his time on the run with his muse, Carol, a prison nurse. Dan is a very complex man - part Iago, part obsessive romantic, a chilling murderer, and so manipulative that the reader is left breathless trying to catch up with what he is really up to. The pace and the complexity of the action, which concerns the manoeuvres of diverse, dubious characters in their quest to lay their hands on a fortune in drug money are entirely engrossing and Roderick Anscombe's prose is a match for his multilayered tale.

I am frequently irritated by Frances Fyfield. Her characters are often unnecessarily awkward, and her prosecutorheroine, Helen West, is humourless and dryly cerebral. Still, in Without Consent (Bantam, 15.95), she comes up with a villain whose approach to rape is truly original and most disgusting. His bizarre presence turns a run-of-the-mill story of a serial rapist into something quite distinctive.

Emma Cave has given us a sequel to Bluebeard's Room. In that novel, Lucy Riven, a thoroughly good, pretty Catholic girl, becomes pregnant by a much married, erudite, perverted psychopath called Rupert Deyntree who has the most amazing, blazing blue eyes. She is saved from marrying him by her more worldly American friend Vee, who blackmails him into leaving the country. The Lair (Hodder & Stoughton, 16.99) follows Rupert into exile. On one level this is a modern allegory about heaven and hell and the good and bad angel. There is no doubt that Rupert is damned, but as he is drawn down into Hades he knows with horror what is happening to him.

Rupert fetches up in an Aegean port where he spends a quiet life, living in a cheap hotel and reading from the works of the ancient historian Suetonius, while sighing over a plait of Lucy's long golden hair which he keeps under his pillow. He is picked up by Disa Trapani, a rich, worldweary piece of international flotsam who owns her own Greek island. Maybe her description should have given him pause for thought:

She was sleek. Her matt skin and smooth hair were the same equable beige. Her eyes were darker: the clouded colour of a river in spate. They dominated her face, though her nose was strong, her jaw square, her mouth forced slightly open by an arc of perfect teeth.

Disa makes a very acceptable devil. She offers everything - even the tantalising possibility of Lucy - and delivers nothing.

Lucy is not intrinsically interesting. She is a good, true, holy, limited Sloane. Quite why Rupert, who is interesting, is so in love that he is prepared to murder for her is not obvious to the reader. He means her no harm, but given his intrinsic wickedness he would destroy the aura of unthinking purity surrounding her.

The novel is well plotted, and before good triumphs there are enough twists and turns to have kept this reader satisfied.

Copyright Spectator Apr 5, 1997
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