{"id":8138,"date":"2019-03-12T11:13:10","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T11:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=8138"},"modified":"2019-04-03T11:41:23","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T11:41:23","slug":"februarymarch-crime-round-up-by-n-j-cooper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=8138","title":{"rendered":"February\/March Crime Round-Up by N. J. Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Border by Don Winslow <\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by HarperCollins UK\/Morrow US<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

The Wych Elm by Tana French <\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Viking UK and US\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lost Man by Jane Harper <\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Little Brown UK\/ Flatiron US<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Quercus UK\/ Houghton Mifflin US
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides <\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Orion UK\/ Celadon US<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

The Devil\u2019s Fjord by David Hewson <\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Creme de la Crime<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book <\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This has been an absolutely vintage month for crime fiction, which makes a lovely way to say good bye as I take a break from my regular column for this site.<\/p>\n

Don Winslow has now completed his magnificent Mexican drugs trilogy, which began with The Power of the Dog<\/em>, continued with the The Cartel<\/em> and now concludes with The Border<\/em>.\u00a0 His hero, Art Keller, has fought the cartels throughout, sometimes breaking the law and often breaking his own heart as he witnesses the vicious cruelty of the cartels and the effect it has had, not only on the victims but also on the perpetrators of the violence.\u00a0 One character from The \"\"<\/a>Cartel<\/em>, Chuy, reappears here.\u00a0 This is a young boy forced to kill and maim for the drug dealers, who, when he eventually escapes, kills one of them and sews his face on to a football for kicking endlessly against a wall.\u00a0 In this third novel, Keller is appointed to lead the DEA and the action moves from Mexico to the heart of the American establishment, where the cartels\u2019 profits are laundered.<\/p>\n

Winslow\u2019s knowledge of every aspect of the drugs trade is immense, as is his anger at the incompetence – and worse – of the \u2018war on drugs\u2019.\u00a0 The trilogy \"\"<\/a>represents the very best of crime fiction.<\/p>\n

Tana French\u2019s scale is smaller than Winslow\u2019s in The Wych Elm<\/u><\/em> , but it packs a punch of its own.\u00a0 Cousins Toby, Susanna, and Leo, grew up holidaying at a house now owned by their dying uncle Hugo.\u00a0 When Toby is savagely beaten during a break-in at his flat and suffers some brain damage, it seems sensible for him to convalesce at the house and keep Hugo company during his last months.\u00a0 Toby\u2019s girlfriend, \"\"<\/a>Melissa, joins them and they live in gentle kindness with each other.\u00a0 Their sad idyll is destroyed when a skeleton is found in a hollow tree in the garden.\u00a0 The subsequent police investigation makes the cousins look at their childhood in a quite different light.\u00a0 Uncomfortable secrets are revealed and chains of guilt and responsibility become clear as disasters pile up.\u00a0\u00a0 This is a psychologically astute and involving novel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jane Harper won prizes and plaudits for her first novel, The Dry<\/em>, but her third, The Lost Man<\/em>, is even better.\u00a0 Set in the terrible heat of the Australian Outback, it also deals with the revelation of difficult family secrets.\u00a0 Three brothers grew up together on the family farm.\u00a0 When Nathan married, he left for land of his own, while Cameron and Bub remained at home.\u00a0 Now Cameron has died, leaving a wife and two daughters, Bub and their mother.\u00a0 Nathan, who has lived in terrible loneliness since his own wife left him, returns to help sort out the mess left by Cameron\u2019s death.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Harper\u2019s depiction of the brutality of the landscape and the killing sun is impeccable, as is her revelation of the full tragedy of the family\u2019s life.\u00a0 Powerful and convincing, this is a novel from a writer with an original voice and great skill.<\/p>\n

Elly Griffiths\u2019s Norfolk is as far from Harper\u2019s Outback as it could be, both geographically and in emotional tone.\u00a0 Archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway and DCI \"\"<\/a>Harry Nelson, the father of her daughter Kate, become involved in another case, when the body of a child is discovered.\u00a0 Their relationship is still full of thwarted longing.\u00a0 Harry is married to someone else and continually jealous of every man to whom Ruth becomes close, and she has to remind herself of how irritating he can be to stop herself pining too badly.\u00a0 Friends and colleagues from earlier novels in the series all have their part to play, including Cathbad, the Druid, who is putting a lid on his eccentricities in order to save his son embarrassment.\u00a0 This is a series of great warmth and charm.<\/p>\n

Alex Michaelides shows a quite different kind of investigation in The Silent \"\"<\/a>Patient<\/em>. The sleuth here is Theo, a psychotherapist at a rundown mental hospital with a special interest in one patient, Alicia Berenson, who has been mute since she was convicted of killing her husband.\u00a0 When she attacked a fellow patient before Theo\u2019s arrival, she was sedated and is still controlled by heavy medication.\u00a0 Theo\u2019s account of his work with Alicia is interspersed with sections from the diary she wrote before her husband\u2019s death.\u00a0 Nothing is straightforward in this clever and manipulative novel, and it pulls you on to the devastating conclusion.<\/p>\n

David Hewson, whose Nic Costa novels brought us all the warmth and delicious food of Rome, now moves to the far north with a novel set in the Faroe Islands.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>It begins with a powerful description of the Grind, the almost ritual slaughter of whales that was also a feature of John Buchan\u2019s late Hannay novel, The Island of Sheep<\/em>.\u00a0 The whale meat and blubber will provide not only food for the whole village throughout the winter but also much needed cash.\u00a0 Folklore and tradition combine to provide the rules for the hunt, which is as strange and shocking to the newly arrived Tristan Haraldsen as it will be to most readers.\u00a0 Following the hunt, two difficult young boys go missing and the search for them throws up even more shocking discoveries and make Tristan question his determination to retire to this extraordinary place.\u00a0 Life in Devil\u2019s Fjord<\/em> is grim indeed.<\/p>\n

So farewell for the moment.\u00a0 Thank you for reading my columns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by N.J. Cooper<\/p>\n

In The Silent Patient<\/em>, the sleuth is Theo, a psychotherapist at a rundown mental hospital with a special interest in one patient, Alicia Berenson, who has been mute since she was convicted of killing her husband. When she attacked a fellow patient before Theo\u2019s arrival, she was sedated and is still controlled by heavy medication. Theo\u2019s account of his work with Alicia is interspersed with sections from the diary she wrote before her husband\u2019s death. Nothing is straightforward in this clever and manipulative novel, and it pulls you on to the devastating conclusion […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8138"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8157,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8138\/revisions\/8157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}