The Perfect Crime (Helen Fields) ***
Stephen Berry is having a rough night. Or a rough life, really; he cannot seem to get his bipolar disorder under control and his long-suffering girlfriend has left him. Desperate for some quiet, he intents to jump off a bridge, but a suicide counsellor who happens to be nearby intervenes. Stephen is quietly grateful, but then his body is found dead a few weeks later at the bottom of a tall tower. The cause of death seems like a foregone conclusion, but DI Luc Callanach and his superior Ava Turner don’t trust that Stephen killed himself. As they decide to investigate, more bodies turn up.
Spoiler alert: the killer exactly who you think it is.
This is the fifth installment in the Luc Callanach series and while I liked the first couple of ones, they quickly petered out. Luc’s an interesting guy, if a bit par for the course (implausibly handsome and brooding with a troubled past). Ava is annoying in the way women in crime fiction often are because their likeability is shoved down your throat. Apparently show-don’t-tell is harder to work around them; though there are plenty of good female characters in crime fiction it’s apparently a difficult trick to master. This one is slightly better than its predecessor, which was ludicrous (they all are, to varying degrees) and offensively trite. I had fun reading it, but mostly I’ve already forgotten what it was about.
The Donor (Claire Mackintosh) **
When Lizzie’s daughter Meg is saved from death by a donor heart at the very last minute, she is intensely grateful – so when she receives a letter from a woman telling her it
is her son’s heart now beating in her daughter’s chest and asking her to meet up, she feels like she can’t say no. Predictable shenanigans ensue.
This very slim volume (it’s about 100 pages and part of Amazon’s quick reads) is nothing but predictable. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because people are predictable, and, like Lizzie, often trick themselves into thinking that surely nothing will happen, nothing will come of it. It does, however, make for a predictable read – and a frustrating one, too. As a reader I wanted to smack Lizzie and tell her yes, of course this is going to come off the rails.
Women in crime fiction tend to fall into two categories: the simpering housewife and the hypercompetent cop. Lizzie is more of the first variety; well-intentioned and naive. I did like that she’s not superhuman. I just wished she’d think things through.
Fractured (Will Trent #2, Karin Slaughter) *****
Atlanta housewife Abigail Campano arrives home to her McMansion after tennis class to find her teenage daughter dead in the hallway, a man h
olding a knife bent down over her dead body. Her inner tiger mom kicks in and she strangles the man to death with her bare hands. When APD botches the ensuing investigation, putting a young girl’s life in danger, special agent Will Trent from the GBI is called in to fix the mess before everything gets out of hand even further.
If you’re looking for crime fiction where characters have depth, you could do worse than Karin Slaughter. Lena Adams is my favourite of hers but Will Trent is a close second. Will is a far cry from the testosterone bombs usually seen in these types of novels: smart but socially awkward and traumatised by a life spent in orphanages and foster families. He has a chihuahua named Betty and a predilection for three piece suits. He’s assisted by Faith Mitchell, an APD detective with whom he shares a history (it’s not a sex thing). She hates his guts. They’re off to a great start.
If the simpering housewife character is bothering you, this is the place to look. The women in this book are, if anything, more of the overcompetent variety, though it bothered me less here. Abigail Campano, torn between guilt over killing a man and mourning her daughter, is painful to behold but never just a sad husk of a woman. Faith is competent but without being annoying, able to push her grudges aside, self-deprecating and diligent. They’re not exactly relatable, but they’re more powerful because of their imperfections and therefore they’re more likeable, more convincing (the exception here is Will’s boss Amanda, but at least she’s fun to read about). They make errors of judgment, they carry grudges. They’re also smart and driven. If anything it’s the men in this book who get short shrift, which isn’t necessarily a good thing but it’s also refreshing.
As for the central mystery: though it’s a little too convenient, the road blocks they run into are also, sadly, entirely realistic. I liked the way things were resolved: it’s messy and hinges on coincidence. I’ve never run a murder investigation but that seems plausible. I hate books where everything is wrapped up a bit too neatly. At least Slaughter steers clear of that particular pitfall.
This is also one of the few Slaughter books that doesn’t have Sara Linton in it, and I consider that a win. What more could I ask for?