By Jon L. Breen
Ghost stories are like detective stories in their exploration of mysteries, but un-like most detective stories in their recourse to supernatural explanations. Many readers balk at mixing the two genres, but in skilled hands, it can be done. The first two new novels reviewed below (and at least one other I won't identify) consider whether those who have passed on to the next life can communicate with those in this one.**** Megan Chance: The Spiritualist, Three Rivers, $14.95. In 1850s New York, Evelyn Atherton reluctantly attends a séance with lawyer husband Peter, who hopes to contact his recently deceased mother through charismatic medium Michel Jourdain. When Peter is murdered and his prominent family turns against her, Evelyn must clear herself of suspicion among the oppressive, ingrown Manhattan society that inspired Edith Wharton. What seems a grand-tradition gothic takes many unexpected turns, of which the murderer's identity is the most forseeable. Conveying a strong sense of time and place, this expertly written, erotically charged novel is one of the best of the year to date.*** Loren D. Estleman: Frames, Forge, $23.95. In his first book-length case, EQMM's own film detective Valentino acquires a possibly haunted old movie palace and must solve the mystery of the long-ago-murdered skeleton he finds there before the LAPD evidence room claims the fragile lost reels of Erich von Stroheim's Greed. The mystery is thin, but the historical tidbits and insights into film and theatre restoration are first-rate.**** Bill Pronzini: Fever, Forge, $24.95. San Francisco's allegedly semi-retired Nameless private eye and his colleagues investigate the disappearance of a gambling-addicted wife and the inexplicable beating of a young straight-arrow computer consultant. Complexity of characterization, puzzle, and theme support the case for Pronzini as the finest American detective novelist in current practice.*** Martin Edwards: Waterloo Sunset, Poisoned Pen, $22.95. In a Liverpool as vividly realized as Pronzini's San Francisco, solicitor and trouble magnet Harry Devlin confronts anonymous messages foretelling his death on Midsummer's Eve and a series of murders of young women working for an escort service. Marked by dry humor (criminal clients are not guilty but "differently innocent") and expert mystery construction, this should prod readers to seek earlier Devlin cases, only a few of which have been published in the U.S.*** Ed Gorman: Sleeping Dogs, St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $23.95. Political consultant Dev Conrad, managing a liberal but libido-challenged Illinois senator's reelection campaign, practices bribery, responds to blackmail, and searches for the perpetrators of sabotage and murder, all in a day's work in his morally ambiguous profession. Lively writing, narrative impetus, noir sensibility, and an insider's jaundiced view of politics equal an election-year winner.*** James Sallis: Salt River, Walker, $21.95. While this third very short novel about small-town Tennessee sheriff John Turner touches on various seemingly unrelated cases in its tangent-prone plot, the main attractions are hypnotically beautiful prose and dialogue directed toward nothing more significant than the meaning of life.*** Bill Crider: Of All Sad Words, St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95. A much more laid-back sheriff, Dan Rhodes of Blacklin County, Texas, looks into the explosion of a trailer belonging to two brothers and the shooting murder of one of them. Humorous style, quirky characters, and small-town atmosphere are as delightful as ever, and the whodunit fairly resolved, in the fifteenth Rhodes novel.*** Steven Saylor: Caesar's Triumph, St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95. As celebrations of Julius Caesar's latest triumphs loom, wife Calpurnia enlists aging sleuth Gordianus the Finder to investigate rumors of an assassination conspiracy against the emperor. Cleopatra, Cicero, Marc Antony, and other historical figures make repeat appearances in the latest of an always entertaining and enlightening series.*** H.R.F. Keating: Rules, Regs and Rotten Eggs, St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95. Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens witnesses the attempted murder of a fox-hunting advocate making a speech at an anti-hunting demonstration. Why, she wonders, did old school friends whisk Robert Roughouse away to an exclusive clinic in the dead of night? A strong example of Keating's colorful, sure-handed storytelling ends with an unusual action climax.*** Anne Perry: Buckingham Palace Gardens, Ballantine, $26. Thomas Pitt, 1890s Special Branch sleuth, investigates the murder of one of several prostitutes hired for the pleasure of the Prince of Wales and his male guests. This series' strongest recent entry delivers what Perry does best: tantalizing plot, small group of characters, claustrophobic atmosphere. Both the future king and his long-suffering princess are brought convincingly to life.*** Joe L. Hensley: Snowbird's Blood, St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95. Terminal-cancer patient Charlie Cannert travels to Florida to look for vanished wife Martha, who had left Chicago seeking a new home for them, and to efficiently eliminate predators of senior citizens. Hensley, who died in 2007 at age 81, makes important points about how American society deals with age and illness in the darkest and most unusual novel of his long career.*** Richard A. Lupoff: Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix, Crippen & Landru, $43 limited hardcover, $17 trade paper. The five cases of Bay Area amateur sleuths Akhenaton Beelzebub Chase (a Renaissance man whose Philo Vancean erudition extends to offering baseball advice to a young Joe DiMaggio) and beautiful cellist-physician Claire Delacroix recapture the spirit of 1930s America, with topical news references and backgrounds ranging from the theatrical to the nautical and aeronautical. Subtle satire and period atmosphere outshine the plots. A sixth story, set in 1923 and featuring San Francisco reporter Burt Van Hopkins, may prove the most memorable of the lot. The excellent bonus story included with the limited edition, "The Laddie in the Lake," set at a New York youth summer camp in 1946, and half those in the main volume are new to print.Rescues from out-of-print oblivion are especially welcome with scholarly accoutrements. The 25th volume in Crippen & Landru's Lost Classics series, Mignon G. Eberhart's Dead Yesterday and Other Stories ($30 hardbound; $20 trade paper), includes along with fourteen short stories and a novella, all previously uncollected, an extensive bibliography of her magazine fiction compiled by editors Rick Cypert and Kirby McCauley. Rue Morgue Press has reprinted one of the greatest spy novels ever written, Manning Coles's 1940 debut Drink to Yesterday ($14.95), with an introduction by publishers Tom and Enid Schantz about the career of Cyril Coles, the British intelligence agent who collaborated with Adelaide Manning on the long series about Tommy Hambledon. Also new from Rue Morgue ($14.95 each) and recommended: the Coles team's sequel A Toast to Tomorrow (British title Pray Silence), first published in Britain in 1940 and in the U.S. the following year; Stuart Palmer's 1931 novel introducing Hildegarde Withers, The Penguin Pool Murder; a 1940 impossible- crime problem by Clyde B. Clason, Dragon's Cave; and Catherine Aird's 1966 novel introducing Inspector C.D. Sloan, The Religious Body. The 75th anniversary edition of Vincent Starrett's classic 1933 study The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Raymond Betzner (Gasogene, $29.95), includes an annotated bibliography of the book's various editions and extensive introductory material.
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