Fatal Cut by Christine Green

This is a very well written mystery novel and makes for very engrossing reading. Christine Greem does a very good job at depicting the various characters and their lives and miseries.

Denise Parks is a throughly unpleasant woman. She doesn't like men much and she definitely doesn't approve of her sister's latest boyfriend, Mike. In fact she seems bent on putting an end to that relationship and airs her disapproval at any given opportunity much to Janine and Mike's frustration and anger. Denise's one joy seem to be going to the salon for a beauty treatment, not only for the care but also because she loves eavesdropping on the gossip. She is then able to drop little barbed statments based on the gossip she has overheard to the person concerned, letting them know that she knows all their little foibles but passing it off as some mysterious power she has, rather than as gossip she overheard. Therefore it is no surprise to many when she is found murdered in the beauty salon. But which one of the staff or clients committed the crime? Definitely everyone has their own little secrets that they are determined to protect much to Chief Inspector Connor O'Neill and Detective Sergeant Fran Wilson's dismay. Connor and Fran find that delving into Denise's life, means stepping into a past that is horrorific and perhaps better left alone. And before this case is over, both Connor and Fran will discover more than they are comfortable with about a woman like Denise Parks...

What really made this novel was all the characters connected with the beauty salon. Christine Green gives us characters that are memorable for their strengths and weaknesses, and actually provides us with some rather nice resolutions for these characters by the novel's end. Quite often minor character/suspects are marginalised in a mystery novel, so it was refreshing to find these characters getting a little more attention than they are usually given.
This was definitely engrossing reading.

The Torment of Others by Val McDermid

While not as heart-stoppingly suspenseful as The Mermaid's Singing, this Tony Hill/Carol Jordan mystery novel proved to be a very riveting and compelling read, that will (need I say it?) keep you completely glued to your chair until the very last page.

When a prostitute is found brutal murdered in a manner similar to a previous case from a few years ago also involving murdered prostitutes, DCI Carol Jordan and her team think that they've a copycat on their hands. But this, according to criminal psychologist, Dr. Tony Hill, is not the case. His belief is that the same person who was responsible for those murders, is responsible for this one as well. The problem is that there was irrefutable forensic evidence as well as a confession for that first case, and Derek Tyler is currently serving time in a mental institution for those first murders. Tyler's claim, hitherto dismissed as the fantasies of a deranged mind, was that the "voice" had told him what to do and how to do it. Could his fantastic claims be true? Could there be a sinister, twisted personality out there who derives pleasure and satisfaction from manipulating others to commit, vicious, brutal murders against women? As the body count rises and pressure to make a quick arrest mounts, Carol's newly formed Major Incident Team begins to fall apart as the different personalities clash -- some even begin to question if Carol is up to the job given that she's still feeling raw and vulnerable from having been assaulted a few months ago. Carol must now put her personal qualms aside in order to bring her team together so that they can work as an integrated unit as well as get them to trust her instincts and leadership again. Fortunately, she has Tony Hill backing her up in more ways than one...

Taut and fast paced, The Torment of Others was an incredibly engrossing read that really kept me guessing for quite a while. At some point, a few readers may get an inkling as to what's going on and who the guilty party may be; fortunately, the author took great care to make plausible suspects of a few key characters, so that if you enjoy trying to solve the mystery along with the lead detectives, you're in for a treat. And by filtering in Tony's and Carol's complex and unresolved feelings, Carol's still raw feelings about her rape, and Tony's feelings of guilt, Val McDermid also makes The Torment of Others a much more multifaceted and more textured read. Chilling and horrifying, The Torment of Others definitely is a very well written and clever mystery novel. And while Val McDermid has written more suspenseful thrillers, The Torment of Others rates high as a very satisfying and chilling police procedural. Definitely a "not-to-be-missed" thriller.

Gone to Ground by John Harvey

Loath though I am to say it I have to say that I wasn't very impressed with Gone to Ground. True, the prose style is exquisite, but I didn't think that the mystery at hand was very suspenseful at all, and found the two police detectives to be rather bland characters. What really saved the book for me was the subplot involving the murder victim's reporter sister -- that subplot was well developed and rather interesting, and gave Gone to Ground the energy the book truly needed.

At first glance, the brutal murder of Stephen Bryan looks like a robbery gone very wrong, but as Det. Insp. Will Grayson and Det. Sgt. Helen Walker take in the scene of the crime, they begin to wonder if it might have been a case of murder masked to look like something else. Both detectives have a suspect in mind, but trying to pin this suspect down is proving a lot more difficult than expected. And then Stephen's sister, Lesley, discovers that a manuscript that Stephen was working on, about the life of a 1950s film star, has gone missing, and that the film star's family was less than thrilled about Stephen's interest. Have Grayson and Walker been concentrating on the wrong suspect?

Part of the problem with Gone to Ground was that I didn't find either Grayson and Walker to be very engaging characters, and you really need for the chief protagonists to be charismatic enough to carry the story. And then there were the bits of the book having to do with Grayson's family problems and Walker's personal life -- they weren't very interesting either. The other thing I found disconcerting about Gone to Ground was the plodding pacing of the book -- I didn't find the book to be very suspenseful or riveting, a reaction I was not expecting given how absorbing and compelling I've found Harvey's Frank Elder and his Charlie Resnick books to be. The subplot that saved this book for me was the one dealing with Lesley's investigation into what Stephen was researching. Not only was the subplot a very intriguing one, but Lesley as a character was a very compelling and engaging one as well, giving the book the kind of zip and energy is seemed to be lacking. And that, together with John Harvey's exquisite prose is what saved Gone to Ground for me.

Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason

Jar City started off a little slowly. Fortunately, however, things did begin to pick up about half way through, and I found myself being both fascinated (how different from the British police procedurals I'm so used to) and completely absorbed by what was going on between the pages.

When 70-something year old recluse, Holberg, is found murdered in his apartment, the assumption is that the old man was murdered by a drugged out thief. But Detective Inspector Erlendur is not so sure -- esp when a message is found on Holberg, pointing to the fact that Holberg's murder was a personal one. In spite of his two fellow detectives' skepticism (murders in Iceland always have uncomplicated motives), Erlendur decides to follow his instincts. Instincts which prove sound when the detectives discovers that Holberg was once accused of rape more than 25 years ago...

As I have already noted, Jar City has a bit of a slowish start. But about a little less than halfway through the book, things do pick up -- the pacing becomes more swift and taut as the storyline begins to take on a more solid shape and motives and suspects come in thick and fast. Lending a certain air of austerity to everything is the author's (or indeed the translator's) precise and spare prose style and the vividly cold and icy depiction of Reykjavik. Jar City will be quite a different experience for mystery buffs more used to the British and American styles of police procedurals. This particular Inspector Erlendur (who brings to mind Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus) installment, for instance, was rather straightforward with few jaw dropping plot twists. However, it also proved to be quite an absorbing and interesting read, and was, in spite of the uncomplicated plot, it was also a rather suspenseful read. So that on the whole, I'd rate it as a worthwhile read, and I will definitely be looking forward to the next Inspector Erlendur mystery novel.

Mind's Eye by Hakan Nesser

The actual first installment in the Inspector Van Veeteren mystery novels, Mind's Eye is a treat waiting for anyone who hasn't discovered this excellent series yet. Two pieces of advice first: leave off reading the plot synopsis on the dustjacket -- it gives away far too much of the plot; and secondly, be prepared for a very different kind of police procedural. Hakan Nesser has taken the genre that the British so excel in (and which we are so familiar with) and managed to make it something intriguingly and uniquely his.

When Eva Mitter is found drowned in her bathtub, the chief suspect quickly becomes her husband of three months, Janek. With no other viable suspects and Janek's suspicious behaviour, it looks like and open and shut case. Certainly Inspector Van Veeteren thinks so. After all who could believe Janek's convenient loss of memory as to what happened that fateful night because he drank too much at dinner? But something about Janek's protestations sets Van Veetern rethinking the entire case, and before long finds himself involved in one of the darkest cases of his career...

This is the second Inspector Van Veeteren I've read (The Return being the other one); I've enjoyed both of them very much. Nesser's prose style, while economical and a little sparse at time, and his star detective, Van Veetern is a bit of a curmudgeon, impatient and condescending to boot, and seems to make connections in the case at hand that one doesn't always see and which he doesn't always share with his colleagues, but Neser's clever plotting and is brilliant character portrayals made Mind's Eye a very compelling and very engaging read. It was literally unputdownable and I simply had to read on until the very last page. A very good read indeed.