“Long Lost” by Harlan Coben, $27.95
Sports agents wield their power on BlackBerries from the backseat of a limo, not on the front lines of the war on terror, like the clumsily named Myron Bolitar.
He’s the unlikely hero of Harlan Coben’s action-crime series, and his James Bond exploits put Jerry McGuire to shame. In the latest installment, Bolitar ditches his New York sports business to chase an old girlfriend in Paris.
Coben’s books are a little more sophisticated than “The Hardy Boys,” I’ll give him that. For airport reading, “Long Lost” is a winner, long on action, short on logic and crammed with adolescent double entendres blended with the kind of snappy dialogue you hear at Starbucks.
Bob Hoover
“All the Colors of Darkness” by Peter Robinson, $25.99
Terrorists are on the minds of many crime action writers these days. Terrorism involves the big guys, government agents with their sinister threats, who can reinvigorate a series gone stale, like Robinson’s 17-book trek with the grim, humorless plodder, Yorkshire Inspector Alan Banks, and his uptight compadre, Annie Cabbot. It needed a kick in the pants.
The book opens with Banks in London boring his latest girlfriend with his depressive alcoholism as erratic Annie investigates a hanging, then a beating death back in Yorkshire.
Bad things may or may not happen, but here, they always do, bringing a sense of heavy manipulation to the plot. Still, the terror enhancement adds a jolt of freshness to a series that was approaching its expiration date.
Bob Hoover
“True Detectives” by Jonathan Kellerman, $27
Jonathan Kellerman’s psychologist-sleuth Alex Delaware appears in his new book, but only briefly, and his contribution to the plot is marginal.
This is the story of two estranged half-brothers who are brought together by the mysterious disappearance of a young woman. Aaron Fox is a private detective while Moses Reed is a Los Angeles police officer. Both wind up investigating the same case of the missing person.
Overall, “True Detectives” is well written and absorbing up to the ending, which is only a little bit predictable.
Robert Croan
“A Darker Domain” by Val McDermid, $24.99
Scotland produces almost as many detective writers as it does sheep. Val McDermid, who has written more than 20 crime novels, ranks high on the list.
Her latest “tartan noir” moves back and forth between the present and the devastating British coal miners’ strike of 1984-85.
The book expands on a minor character from McDermid’s “The Distant Echo,” Karen Pirie. The cold-case detective is approached by a woman searching for her father, who has been missing since the strike. He may be the last hope for her son, who needs a bone-marrow transplant.
Much of this novel conveys a visceral sense of place, time and custom — especially life in villages in Fife. McDermid grew up near these mining towns, and she describes them in vivid, melancholy strokes.
Peter B. King
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