Crime (Does and) Doesn't Pay

Detective Inspector Simon Fenchurch seems to have weathered one of his life's greatest storms after a reunion with the daughter kidnapped when she was a child. But he and his wife are villains in the girl's mind, as she was raised by another couple she considered her actual parents. And since Fenchurch's investigation into that couple's role in a massive pedophile ring led to their imprisonment, his daughter Chloe has little interest in reforging any familial bonds.

But their paths will be forced to cross when a student at Chloe's college is found murdered and Fenchurch's department catches the case in Ed James' fourth Fenchurch novel, 2018's In for the Kill. Initially, he has a green light to investigate, as long as his daughter is not involved. Naturally she will prove to be, creating personal and professional dilemmas that could cost Fenchurch everything professionally and personally.

As in earlier novels, James does a good job of painting Fenchurch as nearly constantly operating on the ragged edge, exhausting both his own energy and his superiors' patience. But In for the Kill still feels disconnected and incomplete. It features too many characters taken from the headlines in order for James to offer commentary on the 2016 U.S. election, conservative immigration policy and several other issues that would seem to have little bearing on an east London police detective. The ultimate resolution to Fenchurch's family problems is far too pat, with two-thirds of the novel pushing it one way before an abrupt and unearned reversal that is beyond unconvincing.

In for the Kill might be a kind of re-set for the series, closing out one of the major arcs that animated Fenchurch through the first three books and offering some new directions. If so, that would make it more useful; if it's just another book in the series it's by far the low point of the collection.

-----

With each outing, Ace Atkins gets more comfortable and surer in writing about Robert B. Parker's iconic Boston private investigator, Spenser. In Old Black Magic, his seventh Spenser book, Atkins offers a combination of solid Spenserian voice with a confusing mystery that takes one twist too many and doesn't really make as much sense in the end as it should.

Twenty years ago, a museum theft rocked the Boston art world and the paintings stolen have never been seen since. Now paint chips from one of them have been sent to a Boston journalist and the museum's board of directors wants a private detective to help broker the payment the museum will make to those who have the paintings now.

Of course, it's not that simple, and when the initial payoff goes bad Spenser will have to find the stolen artwork his way. Whether his way will sit well with the museum directors and the old mobsters who may have been involved in the original theft has yet to be seen, but that's not the kind of thing that keeps Spenser from doing what he thinks is right.

As mentioned above, the core of Magic is a mystery: Who took the paintings and where are they now? Whether because the whole puzzle won't fit together or the picture in Atkins' mind simply doesn't come across to the reader, the ultimate solution to those questions has too many threads to really feel finished. That misstep is a shame, because Magic features one of the best pictures of Spenser's mobster pal Vinnie Morris since 1995's Walking Shadow. It would take a die-hard Parkerphile to deny that these are recognizably Parker's characters, but they're working in service to an idea that probably needed some more development time in order to rise to the next level.

-----

When most of the major parties in the fighting in Northern Ireland hammered out the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, sectarian violence on the Emerald Isle began to fade into the background of history. But in the years prior, living in Belfast was not too different from living in a war zone. The combination of religious and political divisions, massive unemployment and economic downturn made a poisonous stew that chewed up ordinary citizens, civic workers and, as Adrian McKinty writes about, police officers.

We meet detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic detective in a Protestant department, in 1981 during the last days of Bobby Sands' hunger strike in The Cold Cold Ground. Sands is near death and tensions in Belfast are near the breaking point or in some cases past it. Bombings and riots are nearly nightly occurrences, and into this mix Duffy's department is alerted to what may be a serial killer targeting gay men. Leads are hard to come by, given that homosexuality is illegal in 1981 Northern Ireland and few of the community want to talk to the police. The revelation that one of the victims is connected to the Irish Republican Army only makes things worse for Duffy's chance to find the killer.

McKinty sets his story in neighborhoods and areas where he himself grew up, giving Ground a solid foundation. He builds on it with a raconteur's flair for description that almost never chases rabbits or sags into flabbiness. His handle on some of his characters and plotting isn't quite as firm, as they sometimes do and say things that advance the plot but with only a shaky narrative basis. Duffy himself is front and center with all his flaws; it makes for a more realistic character but can also make a reader wonder just how long bad personal choices could go on without affecting his performance or even health.

Even so, The Cold Cold Ground is an excellent transformation of classic noir tropes such as tarnished knights and the search for meaning in the midst of meaninglessness. McKinty weaves them into the troubled history of his native land like a modern bard staring into an empty whiskey glass and wondering whether anyone hears what he's trying to say.