Short takes: Thrillers

Reviewed by MICHELE HEWITSON

Carol O'Connell: The Jury Must Die

Despite that dreadfully tabloid title - don't the publishers realise we'd like to be able to read this stuff on planes without looking like we read this junk? - O'Connell does good crime. Anti-heroine Kathy Mallory, a cop with no social graces and a gift for irritating the hell out of her superiors, is a great character. And O'Connell's writing is spare and sharp, her novels filled with truly horrible characters and that's just the good guys. The jury of the title are being knocked off one by one: only three are left alive. A game is being played by "The Reaper" and one shock-jock is using his radio show to encourage listeners to play "Hunt the Juror", a game played with all-too-believable relish, and encouraged with all-too-believable relish by the radio station's owners. Nicely, satisfyingly nasty.

Hutchinson, $34.95

* * *

Ruth Rendell: The Rottweiler

Inez Ferry runs an antique shop, lets rooms to a collection of peculiar people and spends her evenings watching video tapes of old television shows in which her dead actor husband played a policeman. Her glamorous assistant, the exotic, beautiful Zeinab, is playing two rich old men off against each other while fleecing them for expensive jewellery, which she then flogs. She is leading a double life, as are all of the characters to greater or lesser degrees. Inez' double life is her secret viewing. Becky Cobbett, whose childlike adult nephew, Will, is her responsibility, shops secretly. Will, oblivious to most things except time with Becky and meals involving chips, is the only cast member unaware that there's a killer on the loose in Marylebone. He is living his own little fantasy about finding buried treasure: a movie plot he has taken literally. So we know who is going to be the prime suspect. And we guess early on who is the real suspect. Despite this, Rendell's little world is a success: her characters are funny and real and the dialogue's terrific.

Hutchinson, $34.95

* * *

Patricia Cornwell: Blowfly

Scarpetta is back. And so is the terrible Wolfman who, from his death row cell, wants to see Scarpetta to pass on information. Cornwell's popular character is no longer Virginia's chief medical examiner: she has fled to Florida in disgrace to set herself up as a private forensic consultant. Scarpetta works as a character because she knows that she's hard to like. All the layers are here: the guilt held for decisions badly made; the recurring characters, including Scarpetta's great love, Benton, presumed dead in tragic circumstances; the irritating danger-junkie niece, Lucy. And a plot which has enough ghastly forensic details to please fans of such things.

Little Brown, $36.95

* * *

Fred Vargas: Have Mercy On Us All

Fred Vargas is a French woman who is, by another name, an archaeologist. Have Mercy on Us All, written with wit and flair, is set in Paris, but the dig is set in the history of the plague. Joss le Guern, a former sea captain, has carved out a strange sort of second career as town crier. Each day, three times a day, he reads the news: small classified ads for cut-price vegetables, expressions of undying devotion and pleas for lovers to be forgiven, lost and found notices. Then dire warnings begin to be posted, of pestilence and plague. At the same time, strange markings, reversed Number 4s begin appearing on doors around the 14th arrondissement. Corpses, blackened and bitten by rat fleas, are found on the streets. Enter the brilliant but absent-minded Commissaire Adamsberg: he can't remember the names of his staff. Charming, well-researched and a nice study of how easily hysteria can overtake a community.

Harvill, $34.95

* * *

Henning Mankell: Firewall

This was first published in 1998 - now that Menkell has become one of the hottest crime-writers around, it is likely his shopping lists will soon be translated from Swedish and reissued. Firewall features Inspector Wallander: a competent cop, bad at playing politics, whose famed intuition fails him when it comes to personal relationships. But when Mankell goes outside Sweden, his carefully crafted little world falters: there is a ludicrous link to Angola. The plot thins. Still, you have to love the way that in Mankell's books there are always ends which will never be tied off neatly. That's why his crime novels feel so real.

Vintage, $22.95