Skip to main content

Books: Murder lurks as Motown melts down

MAT COWARD recommends a thriller set against Detroit's tragic decline

One of Alex McKnight's last cases, when he was a Detroit cop half his lifetime ago, ended with the imprisonment of a teenage black boy for the murder of a young white woman in a city so inured to violence that this was the only combination likely to make the evening news.

Shortly after the arrest, McKnight was invalided out of the force and never knew in detail how the conviction was achieved.

When he gets a courtesy call from the police, at the start of Let It Burn by Steve Hamilton, (Orion, £18.99), warning him that the killer has served his time and will shortly be released, Alex's doubts begin to mount.

His conscience drags him back to Motown to put right his errors.

Hamilton's good, solid plot is coupled with an elegiac picture of a dead city, a stark and contemporary example of what happens to a once mighty industrial town when capitalism no longer has any use for it.

A fascist terrorist from the 1980s, recently released from prison, is left in a state of amnesiac innocence when wounded in an assassination attempt. But then, in The Memory Key by Conor Fitzgerald (Bloomsbury, £11.99), another woman is shot dead by a sniper.

She was the only witness to the former attack but why kill her when it's already clear that she saw nothing of significance?

Commissioner Alec Blume, investigating this gripping mystery, is to an extent the archetypal, self-destructive maverick cop. But the cliche is disarmed both by Fitzgerald's stylish writing and Blume's unusual background as an immigrant from the US.

With A Tap On The Window (Orion, £16.99) Linwood Barclay, the current king of the multi-twisted plot, returns for another fast-but-thoughtful thriller.

No doubt to the delight of his publisher's publicists, he specialises in story ideas that can be summed up in a line. In this case it's a man who picks up a hitchhiker, stops so that she can use the loo at a fast-food place and when she gets back into the car he realises it's a different girl.

Unfortunately the driver is a private eye mourning the recent death of his own teenage son, so he's determined to find out what's going on.

In a small town in New York state, notorious for having a police force that does "whatever it takes" to keep order, that's a dangerous plan. Believable characters and unbelievable twists - it's a winning combination.

The island of Ireland has a frighteningly high missing persons rate which a new cross-border team hopes to reduce in exciting newcomer Claire McGowan's second novel, The Lost (Headline, £6.99). Forensic psychologist Paula Maguire is seconded to the investigation, based in her old home town.

Scars from the Troubles are still fresh there but it's the deep involvement of US evangelists in the lives of local teenagers that raises Maguire's suspicions.

As this well-paced and disturbing thriller unfolds, Maguire learns the truth about one of Ireland's most shameful exports.

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today