Guardian Review

Karin Slaughter's books have been accused of being too dark and violent; her formidable new novel, The Good Daughter (HarperCollins, [pound]20), dials those very qualities up a notch or two. Slaughter has long demonstrated a fascination with the troubling dynamics of domesticity. Here, Samantha and Charlotte Quinn have their everyday lives in a small US town torn apart by an act of violence in their family home: their mother dies, followed by the emotional collapse of the sisters' attorney father. Three decades later, Charlotte, now practising law, appears to have exorcised these events. But another disturbing incident opens up a particularly nasty can of worms that will bring the past devastatingly into the present. Characterisation is drawn in broad brush strokes, but with a core of psychological truth that underpins the tense narrative. After creating two of the most distinctive heroes in thriller fiction -- abrasive LA cop Harry Bosch and low-rent lawyer Mickey Haller -- you might think that Michael Connelly would be justified in resting on his laurels. But the author is clearly aiming to establish a trinity of crime fiction protagonists. In The Late Show (Orion, [pound]19.99), we are introduced to under-a-cloud detective Renee Ballard, who shows every sign of the durability of her male confreres. After filing sexual harassment charges against her ex-boss, Ballard has been ignominiously consigned to the midnight shift of the LAPD's Hollywood division (the eponymous "late show"). Part of her soft punishment is that she is obliged to hand over to the day shift any challenging cases that come her way. But after the savage beating of a woman and a nightclub massacre that leaves five dead, Ballard breaks the rules by refusing to pass over these cases; her ex-boss is soon an implacable opponent. Although the usual Connelly fingerprints are in evidence here -- a gritty picture of US detective work and the trenchant office politics of the LAPD -- the real achievement is the creation of his tenacious heroine, Ballard. With admirable economy, what we learn about her comes solely from watching how she does her job; the character insights accrue along the way. The end of the cold war had a deleterious effect on the espionage novel, with even such titans as Le Carre cast adrift for a while. But proof that the genre is flourishing anew in the 21st century comes with My Name Is Nobody by Matthew Richardson (Michael Joseph, [pound]12.99), which is good enough for us to forgive the much-used title and the fact that Richardson is a Westminster political speechwriter. In bad odour with his spymaster bosses, Solomon Vine is struggling to deal with the abduction of the Istanbul head of station following a terrorist interrogation, and (as is customary for the genre) nobody he encounters can be trusted. Richardson is less concerned with the subtler characterisation that distinguishes the more ambitious offerings in the spy genre, but his plotting has an old-school, Swiss-clock precision that keeps the reader pleasurably engaged. Journalist Kate Waters spots a story when the bones of a child are discovered during a construction project. Publisher Emma Simmonds has also noted the discovery, but is anxious to hide its personal significance from her husband. And Angela Irving is a nurse who persuades herself that the skeleton is that of her daughter, stolen from a maternity ward in 1970 -- a crime for which she has been in the frame. A multi--stranded approach is adopted in Fiona Barton's successor to The Widow, The Child (Bantam, [pound]12.99), which shares the large cast and andante tempo of Paula Hawkins's recent Into the Water. Barton marshals these elements with rigour; perhaps, though, she might try something different next time from the missing child scenario of her first two novels. French crime maestro Pierre Lemaitre continues his upward movement in Three Days and a Life (MacLehose, [pound]14.99, trans. Frank Wynne), with a 12-year-old boy set on a grim trajectory following the disappearance of another child. This is typically astringent and accomplished fare -- as is Christopher Bollen's lengthy and atmospheric The Destroyers (Scribner, [pound]14.99). The hapless Ian Bledsoe's trip to a Greek island to inveigle money from childhood friend Charlie takes him into very dangerous waters when Charlie disappears. As with Lemaitre, this is literary crime writing of some distinction: a heady melange of Aldous Huxley and Robert Goddard. - Barry Forshaw.