Short takes: Thrillers

Reviewed by MICHELE HEWETSON

Niccolo Ammaniti: I'm not Scared

Told in a lyrical, lilting voice which conjures a summer childhood in the impoverished Italian countryside, I'm Not Scared is a very scary little story.

Its tone belies its subject matter: a missing child kept in a dark, dank hole is discovered by another child, one who will soon discover that whole chunks of his perceived reality are false and evil.

Ammaniti uses fairytale devices to tell his tale: there are monsters, imagined and then real, lurking under the bed.

Adults are not what they seem - although from the beginning they loom large like dark, frightening shadows on the periphery of the children's long hot summer holiday in the impoverished Italian countryside. Perfectly realised and guaranteed to make you shiver on the hottest day.

Text $21.95

* * *

George P. Pelecanos: Hell to Pay

In lesser hands this new Pelecanos could well have disintegrated into an angry rant about the carnage wreaked by America's lax handgun laws.

Pelecanos makes human the pain of one boy's death by drug gangs and handguns - the kind of story that ends up as a brief in the Washington papers.

But the dead come alive, are given faces and stories, in his lean, street-wise, drug-fuelled tales of dealers and cops and moms and kids. No one's immune from the influence of longing: for a pair of trainers, for a gun.

Pelecanos describes those status symbols and the love/hate affairs the men who own them have with their beautiful/ugly weapons with a barely contained hatred. His characters he loves. Written on a hair trigger: you hardly dare breathe while reading it.

Orion $21.95

* * *

Pernille Rygg: Golden Section

Igi Heitmann is one of those characters beloved of the thriller writer: a psychologist caught in very strange situations.

Her husband likes to dress up in women's clothing. Graffiti starts appearing around her suburb: Heitmann = Child Killer. For a fun night out, Heitmann goes along to an art exhibition where a video installation shows a man being strangled in a sado-masochistic sex game.

One of Heitmann's clients is fingered for murder. But if you think her clients are wackos, the artists are the real sickos in this so-called "postmodern nightmare". That's a bit silly, but the book is smart, well-plotted and with enough very odd characters to be strangely compelling.

Harvill $34.95

* * *

Robert B. Parker: Widows Walk

Rich old Nathan Smith got what he deserved, some might say. Here he lies, dead in his bed with a bullet in his head, while his young, blonde trophy wife watches the telly downstairs.

Even if the gun didn't have her fingerprints all over it, Mary Smith, dumb as they come, is going to be the main suspect.

Even worse for her, a guy turns up and claims Mary offered him 50 grand to knock her hubby off.

Enter Spenser, Parker's wisecracking PI. Parker's yarns crack along, told almost entirely through ratta-tat-tat dialogue, and they're funnier than a good dumb blonde joke.

No Exit $19.95

* * *

Harlan Coben: Darkest Fear

Myron's having a bad day. His loathed former girlfriend, Emily - she left him for the guy who crippled Myron and ruined his football career - wants to have coffee.

Coffee with exes generally means guilt trips. Here's a good one: Emily tells Myron that her son Jeremy needs a bone-marrow transplant to save his life. There is one donor match, but the donor has vanished.

Can Myron help find him? Oh, and one other little thing: Jeremy just happens to be Myron's son, the product of his last fling with Emily.

Guess old Myron doesn't have a choice. So off he goes, on a trail which will end up involving helicopters and evil kidnappers and lines like this:

"He saw himself hovering in the boy's darkened doorway, the silent sentinel to his adolescence, and he felt what remained of his heart burst into flames." Give me a good blonde joke any day.

Orion $37.99