Here are three books you probably shouldn’t read.
They’re magnificently written but for only the crime-fiction pro and the dog days of summer when you can disengage with sunshine, bird calls and balmy breezes.
The first is New Yorker Mark Allen Smith’s first novel, and it is a doozy. As the publisher at Henry Holt warns in his publicity release accompanying my review copy, “(Go) straight to the novel’s first page and start reading. I dare you to stop!” Start The Inquisitor, and you will not stop – or sleep. This is a story about Geiger (no first name), who is a specialist in information retrieval. He is the dean, an idol of others in the field worldwide. We’re not talking data collection here; we’re talking torture.
Geiger seeks the truth: He has processes, sensory-overload and deprivation techniques and a tool chest. But he has scruples, and that’s why you won’t stop reading – he’s likable. Geiger knows what elicits truth, knows that fear is more persuasive than physical pain, knows that with the right formula of psychic terror, every human will spill his guts. Smith takes the reader to the edge of sufferance, but very skillfully. Seasoned hardcore readers will love and never forget The Inquisitor.
Another debut novel (coming in August) that is stunning and for the pro category only is Alex Marwood’s The Wicked Girls. It’s an unfortunate title for a fine piece of work by a talented writer about two preteen girls who find themselves encumbered and resentful on a sunny summer day with looking after a neighbor’s 5-year-old girl who dies from their neglect and mistreatment. The girls – the wicked girls – are caught and institutionalized after trying to hide their negligent manslaughter in a shallow grave dug with their fingers, becoming sensational news across Great Britain.
Twenty-five years later, now free and with assumed names and new lives, they meet again. One is a freelance journalist assigned to cover a sexual predator and serial murderer, the other is the common-law wife of the same murderer. The story then becomes absolutely claustrophobic. It’s quite brilliant but, again, only for the hardened reader.
The third novel – published only as an e-book at this time – is the first English translation from French of Frédérique Molay’s award winning The 7th Woman. It is a handsomely written and wonderfully translated Parisian police procedural that also will prowl your mind.
It’s about a serial killer who is too clever by half, killing one woman each day for seven days and leaving no clues or forensic evidence, just notes written grotesquely to threaten and drive crazy the “brigade criminelle” lead detective Nico Sirsky. With no leads to follow up and computers hacked to implicate innocent people, a woman dies horribly every day before France’s elite special crimes unit connects obscure and barely discernible clues mostly by happenstance. The ugly parts are appalling, but Molay has the prowess to touch lightly upon them before exploring the horror seeping into the hardened police ranks.
JeffMannix.com. Jeff Mannix is a local journalist and author.
