Mysteries and thrillers

Illuming the real monsters:
those who abuse children

''Say Goodbye''
By Lisa Gardner
(Bantam, 360 pps., $25)
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Reviews by John Orr
July 2008

There are real monsters in this life, and Lisa Gardner writes about some of the worst of them -- child-abusers and sexual predators -- in "Say Goodbye."

Spiders are a small theme -- some chapters begin with a bit of arachnology, such as "... venom was used ... to inactivate the prey, which may actually remain alive for four to five days.''

But spiders are used more as a metaphor than as a plot point. The real horrors of this book are crimes committed by human predators who torture, enslave and murder prostitutes -- and young boys.

And as the book proceeds, both the arachnology and the crimes we read about become more horrifying.

Gardner isn't going for cheap thrills, though. She is writing about an all-too-real problem -- children who disappear from their homes and all to often become the victims of abuse.

More than 2,000 children a day are reported missing in the United States, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. And, says the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, "Child sexual abuse has been reported up to 80,000 times a year, but the number of unreported instances is far greater."

In "Say Goodbye," one of Gardner's regular characters, FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy, is four months pregnant and wrestling with the issue of parenthood vs. career, with herself, and with her husband, Michael "Mac" McCormack of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

''She should stay at home. Nurse the baby. Watch Oprah. Read self-help books.

''Except that didn't sound like her. She was selfish, emotionally stunted, and obsessed with work. And, in her own way, she was happy.''

Quincy has plenty of reason to doubt the process of bringing a child into a world as horrible as what she is investigating in this case, which begins with a young prostitute who tells Quincy that a perv named "Mr. Dinchara" (an anagram for arachnid) may be killing prostitutes.

And as Quincy investigates what she thinks may be a serial-murders case, Gardner shows readers that other terrible things are going on with an abuser and boys.

Quincy may be emotionally stunted and selfish, but she is likeable and a good, brave law officer. She is a rarity these days in post-Patriot Act crime fiction -- an FBI agent we can like. She may not be the perfect wife to Mac, she may not be June Cleaver in terms of motherhood potential, but she is smart, driven and a heck of a fine hero.

Gardner does not gloss over the horrors of child abuse with a pat, happy ending. That would hardly be fitting in a world as dangerous as ours. But occasionally this book does allow some happiness for some of its characters.

When one lost boy is returned to his family, he finds an uneven welcome from people who may now consider him damaged. But ...

"My sister loves me. She's the only person in the world who hugs me without pausing first, wondering if she should. She throws her arms right around me. 'Joshi,' she'll cry, ' Joshi's home,' and some days, I think I survived everything just to hear her say that.'''

Nero Wolfe's first two appearances
re-published in new series

''Fer-de-Lance'' and ''The League of Frightened Men''
By Rex Stout
(Bantam Books, 590 pps., $15)
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Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries have been my favorites since I was a child. He wrote more than 80, most of them are in my personal library, and I've read all of them many times each. They are my literary comfort food.

Stout's Wolfe stories are smart, witty and engaging. They never insult their readers' intelligence, often lead to out-loud laughter and on certain occasions take on important social issues, including FBI abuses ("The Doorbell Rang") and racism in America ("Too Many Cooks" and "A Right to Die").

The series began with "Fer-de-Lance" in 1934; "Death Times Three" was published 10 years posthumously in 1985. In those 51 years, the brilliant, corpulent and mostly homebound Wolfe remained 56 years old, and his smart-mouthed man of action, Archie Goodwin, remained 32.

Marlene Dietrich was a fan; she wanted to play Archie in a movie. Ian Fleming mentions Nero Wolfe in one of his James Bond stories. Several movies and TV shows have been made.

It's always a delight to see a publisher put the books back in print, as Bantam is doing, beginning with the first two Wolfe mysteries in one volume: "Fer-de-Lance" and "The League of Frightened Men."

The books are good, but Stout had yet to hit full stride with his style and his characterizations. In these two books Wolfe is a little more long-winded than he will be later, but still a genius. Archie is always good for the occasion bon mot in his reporting; describing a rich man's office, he notes "It was one of those layouts, a whole floor, that give you the feelign that a girl would have to be at least a duchess to get a job there as a stenographer."

And yes, in 1935, men were still calling women old enough to work "girls."

In "Fer-de-Lance," Wolfe undertakes a low-paying job as a favor, to find a missing man from Italy. Looking through some newspapers with his fully developed sense for phenomena, Wolfe manages to guess what the missing man had been doing and how that connected to the apparent natural death on a golf course of another man, and finds a way to get someone rich to pay him a lot of money for figuring it all out.

It's a bravura bit of thinking and fully characteristic of the Wolfe series.

In "The League of Frightened Men," Wolfe undertakes to help some men who think a certain novelist has killed two of their number and plans to kill the rest. Wolfe reads the novelist's books and decides the novelist has not killed anyone; but it gets more complicated when another of the league disappears, and another is murdered.

Another two-in-one pairing is due from Bantam in October.

Something to gain by reading
Lee Child's 'Nothing to Lose'

''Nothing To Lose''
By Lee Child
(Delacorte Press, 407 pps., $27)
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Lee Child's "Nothing To Lose" is completely fun to read without having much of importance to say about anything new.

We already knew that some Christian preachers are amoral and self-righteous; that the war in Iraq was a mistake and features various sorts of scams by powerful people; that pollution by carcinogenic chemicals and depleted uranium are bad; and that lots of injured American military veterans are receiving abysmal care.

But it's still fun to check in on Child's great hero, Jack Reacher -- former military cop with a lot of medals and current drifter. In this one Reacher has decided to travel from Maine to San Diego, by hitching and walking.

When we catch up with him he is just crossing the line between Hope and Despair, two small towns in Colorado.

Despair doesn't want him, busting him for vagrancy and chasing him back to Hope. But Reacher really doesn't like to change his path for other people's reasons, and heads back to Despair, because it is between Hope and San Diego.

This leads to him getting curious about odd goings on, including a dead body he finds in the dark of night, and to a bunch of people trying to stop him, which is always a mistake.

Before long, the entire Despair police force is at least in the hospital, and Creacher has discovered something really bad is going to happen if he doesn't stop it.

Child is a completely appealing writer who gets a story moving early then pushes it along like a hurricane. Once you get into it, you will begrudge having to put it down.

Douglas Preston co-writes true story
about Italian serial killer

''The Monster of Florence''
By Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi
(Grand Central, 322 pps., $25.99)
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Douglas Preston is a co-author (with Lincoln Child) of the FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast series, which includes "Still Life With Crows" and "Brimstone" -- very readable, very scary thrillers.

With "The Monster of Florence," Preston leaves fiction temporarily for journalism, co-writing with Italian journalist Mario Spezi the true tale of a series of murders that took place in and around the city that had been a cradle of the renaissance.

Spezi is one of the La Nazione reporters who first uncovered, in 1974, that serial killings were taking place, some involving gruesome mutilations of the female victims.

"The Monster of Florence" is only partly about the crimes themselves -- it is largely about the incompetence of the Italian police and judicial systems.

Certain official investigators improved their careers by arresting people and even convicting them of the killings, based on ridiculous evidence involving testimony from someone known as a "village idiot," drunks, and a weak-minded prostitute. Most were later released on automatic appeals.

Meanwhile, Spezi and -- starting in about 2000 -- Preston continued to find indications that the real Monster of Florence was still at large, identity strongly suspected but whereabouts unknown.

The journalistic investigations earned Preston an indictment in Italy and put Spezi temporarily in prison. Yet another doubtful suspect has been arrested and was on trial at the time this book was being printed.

The person Preston and Spezi think may be the real Monster of Florence is still at large.

Gypsy geniuses at heart of history-bridging tale

''The Last Oracle''
By James Rollins
(William Morrow, 434 pps., $26.95)
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"The Last Oracle" by James Rollins is a fun read that combines ancient myth, modern horrors and lots of speculation in a tale that stretches from the last Oracle of Delphi to Dr. Josef Mengele to the Chernobyl disaster.

In World War II, Mengele, known in some circles as the "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz/Birkenau, was sometimes nice enough to Gypsy children that they called him "Uncle Pepe" when he gave them sweets. Before leading them to be tortured to death in his cruel medical experiments.

That much is known to history; in Rollins' book, Mengele and his cohorts were searching for Gypsy Chovihanos, the people revered among Gypsies for their power as fortune tellers and perhaps shamans.

After the war, in this novel, the Russians grab Chovihanos. The idea is that the Chovihanos are prodigous savants; Mengele, and after him the Russians, want to study and breed the Chovihanos to see if their powers are real, and then exploit them.

But the plot runs afoul of Rollin's Sigma Force, in the person of Gray Pierce, who becomes involved when an old man is killed at his feet -- an old man, it turns out, who has left some clues to a nasty plot that would lead to a huge radiation disaster and worldwide chaos.

A slow chase for involvement

''Chasing Darkness''
By Robert Crais
(Simon & Schuster, 273 pps., $25.95)
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"Chasing Darkness" marks the return of Robert Crais' Elvis Cole character, in a not especially compelling tale.

Cole learns that someone he had cleared of a murder years ago has just apparently killed himself, leaving behind a picture book full of women he had supposedly tortured and murdered.

Cole can't believe he was wrong about the guy before, and investigates, although he doesn't really seem all that interested. Which is a problem for readers. If Cole doesn't seem all that engaged, why should we care about what he's doing?

But he runs around looking for clues anyway, gets in trouble here and there, and eventually uncovers something bigger than just the death of the guy Cole thought was innocent.

It's the usual Crais tour of Los Angeles and not a terrible read, but don't go out of your way for it.