New York Review of Books Review

Maybe you've heard of him. Named after the foster father (Eddie the Butcher) who taught him his trade, and introduced almost 30 years ago by Thomas Perry in "The Butcher's Boy," this cold-blooded professional killer is one of the immortals of the genre. Michael Schaeffer, to give this antihero his current alias, seemed a bit mechanical when he briefly came out of retirement two decades ago in "Sleeping Dogs," but he makes a great comeback in THE INFORMANT (Otto Penzler/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27) - older, wiser and deadlier. Perry has to exert himself to engineer a reunion between Schaeffer, who has surfaced from anonymity to defend himself from the mafia goon squads that have taken a sudden interest in him, and Elizabeth Waring, a hypervigilant honcho with the Department of Justice whose fondest desire is to turn Schaeffer into a government informant. But once these uneasy civilities are attended to, the Butcher's Boy is free to kill again, in his own distinctly cruel and inventive way. The fun thing about his professional methods is how low-tech they are. That's poetic justice for a target like Frank Tosca, an oldschool underboss who has called an extraordinary meeting in Arizona to convince the fractious leaders of the big crime families that he can revitalize the mafia and lead it into a new golden age. While everyone is on high alert for marauders brandishing advanced weapons of war, the Butcher's Boy quietly sneaks into Tosca's cabin and slits his throat with a hunting knife he picked up at a sporting-goods store. Perry's immaculate style - clean, polished, uncluttered by messy emotions - suits the Butcher's Boy, who executes his kills with the same cool, dispassionate skill. But this time there's something almost human about his awareness of the limitations imposed by his aging body. Luckily, one of the lessons he learned from Eddie is that "killing was mostly a mental business. It required thinking clearly, not quickly." And his mind is still sharp enough to devise the kind of ingenious logistical traps a young computer gamer could only dream of. Given the shallow pool of prospective victims and suspects, it takes real skill to write a plausible whodunit about an undetected serial killer running amok in an English village. In DARK SIDE (Simon & Schuster, paper, $15), Belinda Bauer first shows us how someone might go crazy living in a place like Shipcott, a hamlet that looks "as if it had tumbled down the sides of the moor and landed haphazardly at the bottom." Arriving in the bleak midwinter to investigate the murder of an elderly woman as she lay paralyzed in her bed, the city-bred Detective Chief Inspector John Marvel is so appalled to find himself in the boondocks, obliged to waste his talents "on the low and the stupid," that out of sheer spite, he repeatedly subjects the local constable, Jonas Holly, to public humiliation. Jonas, a sweet, conscientious policeman who sacrificed his career ambitions to care for his dying wife, knows he doesn't deserve this ridicule. But the taunting notes the killer leaves behind as he continues his rampage touches some core of guilt Jonas can't bring himself to face. Set against a landscape that would tax anyone's sanity, Bauer's grim tale deploys a morbid wit that's positively wicked. Sam Acquillo, the likable beach bum hero in an erratic series by Chris Knopf, is nice to know when he's talking smart to his dog on the porch of his bayside cottage on the East End of Long Island or hanging with his fellow townies at a local bar in the off-season - and not taking himself too seriously as a hard-boiled noir hero. But when heroism is thrust upon him, as it is in BLACK SWAN (Permanent Press, $28), Sam is entitled to a bit of showing off. This he does when he and his girlfriend are delivering a sailboat to a friend and a fierce storm blows them to Fishers Island, where people are unfriendly and murder transpires. Knopf has mastered the verbal drill for tough guys in tight situations, and like Sam's nautical know-how, his banter with imperfect strangers is a cut above the norm. (Called out on a tactless remark and asked what's wrong with him, he replies: "Chronic inappropriateness.") This unexpected sail into danger makes for a stimulating story, providing Sam with a lot to tell the gang at the bar when he finally gets home. It's spring in Boston at the beginning of the late Robert B. Parker's final Spenser novel, SIXKILL (Putnam, $26.95). "The vernal equinox had done whatever it was it did," and opening day for the Red Sox is two weeks off when the bulky private eye is hired to determine exactly what happened in the hotel room where a young female movie fan died of asphyxiation after having sex with an actor called Jumbo Nelson. At close to 400 pounds and with his piggish habits, the "loud, arrogant, stupid, foul-mouthed" bad boy comedian, in town to make a movie, is probably as guilty as everyone suspects - but maybe not. Jumbo is a splendidly repulsive character, and Spenser applies his usual skills (one part muscle flexing to three parts snappy repartee) to a case in which mobsters and movie people figure prominently. But Parker's real coup in this novel is introducing us to Zebulon Sixkill, the athletically gifted Cree Indian Spenser rescues from a demeaning job as Jumbo's "driver, booze buddy and pimp." It's too sad to think about the further adventures these two might have had, so let's just leave Spenser where we found him - tasting spring and waiting for the season to open. 'Killing was mostly a mental business,' the Butcher's Boy learns. 'It required thinking clearly, not quickly.'