Close to the Bone by Stuart MacBride

Published in the UK in January 2013; published by HarperCollins on May 14, 2013 

The connection between a body that has been wedged into a tire and set ablaze and a movie called Witchfire being filmed in Aberdeen isn't immediately apparent to Acting Detective Inpector Logan McRae, although the reader knows that the connection must exist or Stuart MacBride wouldn't have included both events in the novel's opening pages. In another apparently unrelated incident, two eighteen-year-olds have gone missing, and while Logan assumes they are lovers who ran away together, his boss makes him investigate to placate the girl's bothersome parents. The reader soon learns that the girl is a big fan of "Harry Bloody Potter, Twilight, and that stupid Witchfire book." Then there are the neighborhood pranksters leaving chicken bones at Logan's front door ... or so he assumes.

About a third of the story has passed before the connections become reasonably clear. The seasoned reader will expect more deaths to follow and will not be disappointed. This is only a wee bit of a whodunit, but the plot does take a surprising twist at the end that will satisfy whodunit fans. Not everything is as it seems, but the various storylines come together in the end. No loose ends are left to dangle.

In a pleasant departure from most police procedurals (and from earlier novels in the McRae series), MacBride doesn't take his characters or his story too seriously. Humor permeates the novel and the tone is nearly always light-hearted despite the serial killings. Logan is often carrying on multiple conversations at once, talking on the phone at the same time he's speaking to investigators at a crime scene, with amusing results. A thug who "looks like someone took a burning cheese grater to his face" comes to Logan's door and punches him in the nose, but the Grampian police not only take their time finding the thug, they don't have much interest in looking for him. Logan's oversexed boss is unreasonably demanding and keen on taking credit for Logan's work. A new detective sergeant named Gertrude Chalmers drives him crazy with her cheery gung-ho attitude and bad driving. A crime boss wants to make Logan the administrator of his will, leaving Logan the task of parceling out his criminal empire. Too many women are telling Logan what to do, one of whom can't even speak. It's no wonder Logan always feels stressed.

Sometimes the characters are slightly over-the-top, but not so far over that I stopped laughing at them. MacBride takes his time developing the plot and the characters, but the pace is never slow. Minor characters have the distinct personalities you'd expect from series regulars, and the beleaguered Logan is easy to like. The novel stands well on its own; it isn't necessary to read the earlier books in the series to get the full flavor of this one.

RECOMMENDED

When the Devil Drives by Christopher Brookmyre

First published in Great Britain in 2012; published by Atlantic Monthly Press on May 7, 2013 

Where the Bodies Are Buried introduced readers to actress-turned-detective Jasmine Sharp. In When the Devil Drives, Jasmine has inherited her uncle's detective agency. Alice Petrie hires Jasmine to find Alice's sister, Tessa Garrion, from whom Alice has long been estranged. Tessa was last known to be working as an actress before she dropped out of sight. As Jasmine tries to track down Tessa's past, it becomes clear that some or all members of a short-lived production company, now thirty years defunct, are concealing a dark secret about their past. A second storyline follows DS Catherine McLeod as she investigates the shooting of an arts patron that occurred during a production of Shakespeare at a castle in the Highlands.

When the Devil Drives has an interesting structure. The novel opens with a confession of murder, but we don't know the identities of either the confessor or the victim. The story eventually journeys back in time before, returning to the present, the two storylines converge. Toward the end, Christopher Brookmyre ratchets up the tension, adding the elements of a thriller to a murder mystery.

The plot is a multiple whodunit. In the tradition of mystery writers, Brookmyre sets up several suspects who may have committed murder. When one of those suspects is killed, the reader wonders whether that suspect murdered Tessa and was killed by someone else, or whether a different suspect murdered them both. The story is realistic, avoiding the over-the-top motivations that mar so many murder mysteries, while at the same time employing the sort of misdirection that has the reader wondering just how over-the-top the intricate plot might turn out to be. As Brookmyre peels apart his cast of flawed human beings, they all seem capable of murder -- and at the same time, they seem like people we might know.

Theater provides the novel's thematic setting. Jasmine trained as an actress and sometimes yearns for that life rather than the one that has been thrust upon her. The Scottish branch of the world financial crisis -- where, as everywhere else, bank executives eat caviar as the economy goes down the toilet -- furnishes the secondary setting. Although the worlds of theater and finance are miles apart, Brookmyre showcases the arrogance and passion that are prevalent in both.

Catherine plays a lesser role than Jasmine, but she's an equally intriguing character. Like Jasmine, she's capable of rethinking her positions, of listening to others and benefitting from their wisdom. Catherine dominates her passive husband, who (in a minor subplot) disagrees with her insistence that their son be forbidden from playing violent videogames. Whether imaginary violence begets real violence is a theme that animates the novel.

When the Devil Drives includes some flashbacks to the previous Jasmine Sharp novel that aren't particularly relevant to the story. It isn't necessary to read the last one to enjoy its successor. Both novels are infused with local color and written in effervescent prose. This one is slightly more enjoyable than the first (the conclusion left the trace of a smile on my lips), and I'm looking forward to the next.

RECOMMENDED

Deep Space by Ian Douglas

Published by Harper Voyager on April 30, 2013

Deep Space, the fourth entry in the Star Carrier series, is a solid example of military science fiction. While characterization is a bit weak, Ian Douglas excels at writing vivid battle scenes. By adding political intrigue and credible aliens to the mix, he's produced a novel of greater interest than the "humans versus space bugs" shootout that too often characterizes military sf.

Some of the Sh'daar client species -- perhaps joined by some hitherto unknown aliens -- are attacking Earth outposts and ships, but nobody knows why. The Sh'daar are alien Luddites, fearful of alien races who might be approaching a technological singularity, but the Earth Confederation has lately been at relative peace with the Sh'daar. For Lt. Donald Gregory, a Marine from Osiris, the fight is personal: he wants to liberate his homeworld. The fight is equally personal for Lt. Megan Connor, but for a different reason: she's been captured. When the Earth Confederation confronts the enemy, it discovers that the aliens are using technology that's more advanced than anything humans have encountered before. To make matters even more vexing, something called the Black Rosette might endanger both the Sh'daar and the Earth.

Deep Space is a high energy novel that builds excitement as battles rage on multiple fronts, but it isn't just an action novel. In a significant section of the story, a deep space battle gives way to diplomacy -- an unusual development in military science fiction, but a welcome relief from predictable scenes of interstellar war. Whether diplomacy is possible with an alien race that humankind doesn't fully understand is the novel's most interesting question.

Deep Space is also notable for its carefully considered political intrigue. Conflicts abound as the Earth Confederation seeks to put North American ships under Confederation command -- an act that doesn't sit well with North American President Koenig or with Captain Sandy Gray, who has no desire to surrender control of the Navy's flagship. At the same time, the Confederation is making a power grab on the moon, a prelude to civil war on Earth. The twin plot threads, in space and on the Earth, assure that the story always proceeds at a lively pace. The most immediate threads are resolved by the novel's end but Deep Space leaves enough collateral threads dangling to provide fertile ground for the series' continuance.

Although always written in the third person, the story frequently shifts its focus from one to another of several characters who are integral to the plot. None of the characters are developed to the same degree as the military technology but this isn't a character-driven novel. Stock characters with unsurprising personalities who behave in expected ways serve the story capably, even if their lack of depth is disappointing.

As you would expect in a series novel, there are some sections of expository writing that revisit events from earlier novels in the series. Although they slow the story for awhile, they are bearable. More disturbing is the expository writing that interrupts action scenes, explaining the physics of the action and the astronautics of spaceflight, discussing the history of the Marine Corps, reviewing the ways in which alien races communicate, and describing the operation of weapons in loving detail. I welcome the injection of credible science into science fiction and I'm always happy to learn new things, but it's possible to impart information without pausing the narrative flow. Douglas needs to learn how to do that. He also has a frustrating tendency toward redundancy. This isn't such a long novel that readers need to be reminded of things we've already learned.

Some aspects of the novel are quite creative, even if they sometimes place a clever spin on familiar ideas: an alien's attempt to make sense of human anatomy; the aliens themselves; the planet-killing technology; the improvised tactics that Gregory and Gray devise to fight the aliens; the different philosophies of war that drive humans and aliens; the prejudices that exclude from military advancement those who cling to widely rejected traditions and beliefs; the possibility that Earth is at war against aliens who shaped (or instigated) human evolution. Other aspects are fairly typical of military science fiction, but this is a particularly well-conceived addition to the genre. In the end, it is the novel's intensity as much as its creativity that captured my imagination.

RECOMMENDED

The Stone Thrower by Adam Marek

First published in Great Britain in 2012; published by ECW Press on April 1, 2013 

The stories in Adam Marek's debut collection, Instruction Manual for Swallowing, were absurdist sketches of life. Many of the stories in The Stone Thrower are, if not conventional, at least more grounded in reality. Some are about boys learning what it is to be a man. A boy learns about death and mercy by helping his father save (and sometimes kill) baby birds. A boy steals a fish in a country where life is cheap. A damaged boy's virtual pet becomes ill and begins infecting other virtual pets.

Most of the stories have a dark side. A father's desperate attempt to deal with his son's allergy to bee stings goes wrong. A boy kills chickens with unerringly thrown stones. In the book's best story, a boy battles sharks as a man seeks revenge.

There's greater variety in these stories than there was in the first collection, in style and content. As was true of Instruction Manual for Swallowing, some of my favorites delve into science fiction. In a future where soldiers are protected by nanosuits and suicide bombers target the most specialized children, a boy and a girl who were once friends become adversaries -- a change of heart that the boy inadvertently caused and that he takes an extraordinary step to rectify. In another story set in the future, a woman who took extraordinary measures to save apes from extinction by cloning them is distressed that they are being used as docile workers, tending a plantation of palm trees. In a story set in an unspecified time and location, a woman strikes a violent blow against repression.

The stories in The Stone Thrower generally aren't as bizarre as those in Instruction Manual for Swallowing, although one about a boy whose seizures cause earthquakes (in the form of a letter seeking funds to research the condition) is an amusing exception. A couple of stories lack development or context, leaving me puzzled as to their meaning. A couple of stories never quite get going, and so fail to deliver the impact that Marek intended. Most of the stories, however, are powerful, and some are gut-wrenching. I continue to be impressed with Marek's imaginative view of the world, and I'm even more impressed with his growth as a writer.

RECOMMENDED

The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard

First published in Great Britain in 2011; published by Picador on April 23, 2013

The Pink Hotel is narrated by Lily Harris' daughter, whose name is never revealed. Lily's daughter never knew Lily, but she impulsively travels to Venice Beach from London to attend Lily's funeral. She arrives in time for the wake being held at the hotel Lily co-owned. In Lily's room, she watches a fistfight between Richard, Lily's most recent husband, and David, a fashion photographer who knew Lily when she was a model. Using clues she gleans from items she steals from Lily's room, Lily's daughter tracks down people from Lily's past. Although her father told her that Lily was "manipulative and dangerous," Lily's daughter gains different perspectives of her mother as she meets the people who were part of Lily's life.

We often learn about characters in surprising ways -- as, for instance, when Lily's daughter and David compare their scars or discuss their fantasies. Lily's daughter is endowed with quirky personality traits (including a desire for physical pain) that make her a convincing character. She's coming of age, sorting through her confusion, making or avoiding decisions about the person she wants to become. David is older than Lily's daughter but he's also (perhaps belatedly) trying to find an identity he can live with. I'm just as impressed with the thought given to the novel's minor characters -- the gossipy residents of "Little Armenia" (David's neighborhood) who give Lily's daughter their unsolicited advice, the bartender who goes into the back room every hour to feed her addiction.

Part of the charm of The Pink Hotel is that I never had a clue what would happen next. After the first chapter, there is little direct interaction between Lily's daughter and Richard, but a sense of foreboding pervades the novel. Richard is in no condition to stop Lily's daughter when she steals Lily's things, but he makes it clear that he wants the property returned. Yet this isn't a thriller. The Pink Hotel has a plot of sorts, one that holds a surprising turn of events as the story nears its conclusion -- a turn of events that, unlike the rest of the story, is too contrived -- but this is fundamentally a character-driven novel. The plot is a vehicle for Lily's daughter to investigate a series of complex relationships, an investigation that shapes, and helps her to understand, her own identity.

Anna Stothard's prose is evocative and graceful. She sets scenes in photographic detail and plays with some wonderful images of maps transformed into objects of art. The story moves quickly but it's never hurried. Lily's daughter loves words (quiddity is a favorite) and it's clear that Stothard shares her joyful approach to language. "A good word captures the quiddity of its meaning, the drippiness of dripping and phosphorescence of phosphorescent light." The Pink Hotel is full of well-chosen words.

Not everything is resolved by the novel's end, but Lily's daughter is still young, and that's life. Although I was disappointed with some aspects of the novel's concluding chapters, that reaction did not overcome my enjoyment of the story that preceded it. In fact, there are other aspects of the novel's conclusion (those that don't involve the "shocking" revelation) that have the appealing flavor of truth. In the end, the novel's one flaw is not fatal.

RECOMMENDED