Steve Hamilton: Exit Strategy
Steve Hamilton’s Exit Strategy, the second book in his Nick Mason series, begins with the kind of slam-bang bravura action sequence that we’ve come to expect before the credits in a James Bond or Bourne movie. Nick must infiltrate a heavily guarded eighty-two-story building, elude or incapacitate at least a dozen Federal Marshals, eliminate a prospective witness and then escape before the big explosion. Adding to the degree of difficulty is Nick’s reluctance to kill innocent people.
Exit Strategy is built around several expertly dramatized set pieces like this, where Nick must rub out targets who are heavily guarded by professionals on high alert. Action sequences may seem basic, but their actual execution takes a very adroit hand to delineate who is doing what to whom. You have only to read a bad thriller or watch a bad action movie (no names please) to see that pacing, sure description and accuracy are crucial, and the lack of them excruciating.
The second novel in Candace Robb’s Kate Clifford series finds the feisty Kate dealing with her mother moving in next door, bringing along with her some “beguines” or women who live a religious life but not in a convent. They devoted themselves to charitable work. Kate is wary of her Mother’s newfound earnest faith and of her mother in general, and with good reason, as Robb teases out more of Kate’s family backstory throughout the book.
Every now and then I have a teeny tiny “free reading” window—when I’m not reading books for Mystery Scene or for the store newsletter or by authors who are nice enough to come and visit us—so when I unpacked a recent shipment and found a new Michael Palmer paperback during this last such free reading moment, I practically squealed with delight. I love these books and have found that since Palmer’s death, and the pick-up of the series by his son, Daniel, there has been no let-up in quality or change in style or storytelling. Unlike his Dad, Daniel himself is not a doctor, but the medical details seem absolutely real.
This is one of those thrillers that gets inside your head and leaves you thinking after you finish it. Lori Rader-Day’s book isn’t as much terrifying as psychologically detailed and often heartbreaking—which is the kind of thriller I like. The main character is Anna Winger, and the book opens with the chilling scene of her “death.” And while what she’s doing can be called “living” you might beg to differ.
While I am not very interested in the mechanics of violence—i.e., action scenes—Petrie is pretty good at them. This lean, mean, stripped down novel about an Iraqi war vet with serious PTSD grabs you from the start as he climbs under a porch to remove and subdue a large, smelly and hostile dog. It’s unclear why he’s under the porch, who the little boy on the porch is, or why exactly he has to remove the dog, but as the book progresses the whys and whos come into focus.
I can’t say how delighted I am that G.M. Malliet is continuing to write her Max Tudor mysteries. With actual British writers turning to the really dark and really scary, it’s American Malliet who has assumed the Golden Age mantel with this series. It’s pure joy to read one of these novels, start to finish. The structure and format won’t be a surprise to any devotee of Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers, but the way the characters are turned into fully human beings makes them utterly contemporary.
When you read 
I look forward to few novels more than I do those of Deborah Crombie, whose Gemma James/Duncan Kincaid books have become one of my favorite series. As the series has progressed and the working partners became marital ones, I also have become a fan of these characters who are good, decent human beings dealing with life as it comes at them. They are a family of five with all the chaos that entails and juggling family and work is not always easy. In this novel, Gemma and Duncan seem a bit estranged.
As I started this book I have to admit I was a tad suspicious – the author is a poet and a playwright, not always the recipe for creating a down and dirty private eye novel. But as I read this novel set in Detroit’s Mexicantown and featuring half African American, half Mexican ex-cop August Snow, I found instead that the book fitted neatly in with work by Loren Estleman and Steve Hamilton, being a refreshingly straightforward, if gritty, private eye novel and making no bones about it.
When Robin asked me to write a review of Chevy Stevens’s new book in advance of Chevy’s appearance at the store, she wondered if I’d have to reread the book in order to refresh my memory. But, despite the fact that I’d devoured Never Let You Go back in early September, and have read many mysteries since, the answer was an emphatic no. Believe me, consuming one of Chevy’s books is such a powerful and enthralling experience that you’re not going to forget it anytime soon.