tHriLLers GEOFFREY WANSELL BURIED SECRETS BY JOSEPH FINDER (Headline, [pounds sterling]19.99 ? [pounds sterling]16.99) MAVERICK private spy Nick Heller made his debut as the man who finds out the secrets that powerful people want to hide in Finder's excellent thriller Vanished last year and this second appearance is even better than the first.
Heller has moved back to his home town of Boston and set up his own office when he's begged for help by an old family friend, hedge-fund billionaire Marshall Marcus.
Marcus, who once employed Heller's mother as a personal assistant, wants the investigator to search for his missing daughter Alexa. A headstrong, rebellious 17-year-old, she's gone missing after a night out.
Heller's search rapidly turns into a kidnapping investigation, for Alexa has been abducted by professionals who have buried her alive in an underground coffin -- not unlike the Quentin Tarantino episodes of CSI when Nick Stokes was buried -- with a video link to the internet streaming her desperate cries for help.
This is edge-of-the-seat, pulseracing storytelling with a whiplash finish that leaves you gasping for more: quite excellent.
RIZZO'S FIRE BY LOU MANFREDO (Corvus, [pounds sterling]17.99 ? [pounds sterling]14.99) ANOTHER second in a series, this time about veteran New York cop Joe Rizzo. Richly confirming the extraordinary promise of the first book, the follow-up has style and authenticity, giving a no-nonsense depiction of what life is like on the streets for a New York detective.
But here Manfredo adds yet more subtlety to his portrait of the city's finest. It shows a cop with 26 years on the job losing respect for his profession.
A man is found dead in his apartment after ten days and he's had no visitors. So who strangled him and then made tea in his kitchen wearing his pyjamas? It's a mystery about a forgotten man, but it's more than that, for it explores whether the NYPD's top brass are truly interested in such small crimes -- not least, after the murder of a big Broadway producer comes along.
This is Ed McBain for the 21st century -- and that's high praise -- with the Byzantine workings of the police department at the heart of the story.
It confirms Manfredo as one of New York's finest thriller writers.
THE SECRET SOLDIER BY ALEX BERENSON (Headline, [pounds sterling]12.99 ? [pounds sterling]9.99) NEW YORK TIMES writer Berenson has made a name for himself as an investigative reporter with exceptional skill, but he's turned to thrillers and created former CIA agent John Wells, who provides governments around the world with an 'unofficial' option when it comes to solving their problems.
This time, Saudi Arabia's King Abdulla fears he is losing control of his family and his people and calls on Wells to help.
The novel displays Berenson's particular knack for the up-to-theminute, as it opens with a jihad attack in Bahrain designed to destabilise the regime -- followed by a series of terrorist attacks throughout the Gulf with a similar objective.
Sounds familiar? Certainly, and this is an espionage thriller that reeks of inside knowledge and insight, as Wells discovers that the plotters actually want to initiate a Holy War between Islam and the United States. Written in a spare, taut style and with a real grasp of contemporary geopolitics, it's one of those thrillers that might be true.
retro reads VAL HENNESSY THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE (Oxford, [pounds sterling]9.99 ? [pounds sterling]8.99) WHEN former PM John Major named Trollope as his favourite author, it was the writer's kiss-ofdeath, as far as I was concerned. Life's too brief, I thought, to tackle those 600-page dusty Victorian tomes.
How short-sighted of me. The Eustace Diamonds (1872) takes wicked, satirical swipes at the narrow, privileged world of toffs, corrupt politicians and the conniving marriage negotiations so crucial to the cash-strapped aristocracy.
Our anti-heroine (a very bad lot) is Lady Eustace, widowed, beautiful, young, scheming and teller of whopping lies.
Her scandalous determination to hang on to the family diamonds leads her lawyers, besotted lovers and aspiring parliamentarians on a merry dance which involves perjury, criminal proceedings, the trashing of reputations and social disgrace.
To her long-suffering lawyer the lady is a 'greedy, blood-sucking harpy', to her potential mother-inlaw she's a 'nasty, low, dishonest little wretch'.
For readers, she's a masterpiece of comic invention. The brilliant so-polite-but-deadly dialogue, posh bitchy female spats and hilariously unimpressed servants make this a joy to read.
Good grief, what an admission. I'll be voting Conservative next.
THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS BY REBECCA WEST (Virago, [pounds sterling]10.99 ? [pounds sterling]8.99) TROUBLED Edwardian family life involving a dysfunctional marriage is the theme of West's novel.
Narrator Rose is one of four children growing up in genteel poverty -- low on cash but rich in intellectual stimulation, musicmaking, conversation and love. 'I had long known Papa was wonderful but no good as a Papa,' confesses Rose, a rose-tinted understatement if ever there was one as Papa is a self-absorbed gambler, financial cheat and adulterer.
As he flits in and out of family life, he is adored by wife and children, though you feel pretty sorry for his fragile, slightly scatty wife who sacrificed her concert pianist career for her marriage.
'My husband once passed me in the High Street and looked at me like a stranger,' she recalls sadly.
It's a lovely, gentle book -- a bit like The Railway Children without the trains or the tear-jerking ending.
debut noVeLs IMOGEN LYCETT GREEN FOLD BY TOM CAMPBELL (Bloomsbury [pounds sterling]11.99 ? [pounds sterling]9.99) FOLD IS built around five middleaged men who meet once a month in each other's houses (in Reading, of all the unromantic towns) to play poker.
All the men are wondering -- with the funny yet bleak dial o g u e of other boys' novels (Hornbyesque with a touch of Nick Cave's Grinder Man album thrown in) -- how on earth they ended up teaching or in IT or poor or married to a bitch, in Reading.
The cards they have been dealt by fate seem to influence the way they play poker.
When Nick's losing streak leads him to be seized by a Shrek-sized green monster of jealousy, he plots to unman Doug and mayhem results.
Bloomsbury describes Fold as a tale of friendship and rivalry, jokers and kings, but more alarmingly it reads as a hilarious expose of the insane levels of competition between blokes.
THE MAP OF TIME BY FELIX PALMA (HarperCollins, [pounds sterling]12.99 ? [pounds sterling]9.99) THIS PLAYFUL debut by Spanish author and critic Felix Palma has already been translated into 20 languages and is a bestseller across Europe.
As the English translation by Nick Caistor hits our bookshelves this week, the publisher will wait to see whether Brits embrace the time-travelling Victorian melodrama with the same enthusiasm. The Map Of Time is a clever and engrossing 500-page yarn encompassing mystery, romance and murder. Just the sort of novel to see you through a holiday.
Not everyone will swallow the appearance of novelist H.G. Wells along with a real timemachine nor the 19th-century swagger of the language (things are deduced or presumed, women lift their skirts without further ado).
But Palma, employing Jack the Ripper and the Elephant Man in cameo roles, handles the time travel as well as the historical tour of Victorian London with cocky assurance.
PAO BY KERRY YOUNG (Bloomsbury [pounds sterling]11.99 ? [pounds sterling]9.99) KERRY YOUNG'S impressive debut follows the fortunes of Yang Pao, a young Chinese boy who emigrates with his mother and brother to Jamaica in 1938, after his father has died fighting for revolutionary causes back home.
Jamaica's political development mirrors the life of Pao, who grows up under the protection of Zhang, the godfather of Kingston's Chinatown. Told in a kind of Chinese--Jamaican patois, the firstperson narrative is captivating. Pao makes stupid decisions, marries for prestige, loves a prostitute, brings up two families, covers up murders and becomes boss of Chinatown himself, while continually trying to make sense of Jamaica's ambitions throughout the post-independence turbulence of the Sixties.
With grace, authenticity and humour, Young lets Jamaica's political history shine through the life story of her charming yet fallible hero. Brilliant.
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