Brief reviews, October 7

Peter Mergendahl, Jane Dickinson, Mark Graham and Natalie Soto, Special to the News

Friday, October 7, 2005

THRILLERS

The Wheelman

By Duane Swierczynski (St Martin's, $23.95).

Grade: A

There's noir fiction and then there's the kind of deeply disturbing, everyone-dies-at-the-end fiction that makes noir sound like a tea-cozy mystery. The Wheelman is one of the latter, and though I won't go so far as to say that everyone dies at the end, the level of violence here certainly makes it feel like it.

The titular anti-hero is a mute Irish thief named Lennon who has been recruited to drive the getaway car in the robbery of a Wachovia bank in Philadelphia. This bank is going to be receiving a cash sum of $650,000 to be used by the mayor's office to pay off holdouts in an inner-city neighborhood who don't want to relocate to make room for a Borders or Bed, Bath & Beyond .

"Easy money" is the way it has been described to Lennon, but it gets hard immediately when Lennon has to rescue his cohorts who are trapped in the bank. Then, in the initial escape, Lennon hits a woman pushing a baby stroller. The team leaves the car, including the cash, stashed in a parking garage and heads toward the airport. On the way, a huge SUV smashes into them. The next thing Lennon knows, he's being shoved down a drainage pipe with the corpses of his comrades.

It's apparent that Lennon and his group have been set up, and it's looking like it was the Russian mob who did it.

Unfortunately, there are many others after the money, and Lennon is the only one who knows its whereabouts. By the conclusion, there will be many more bodies down that drainage pipe, and the children visiting the Children's Museum built on the spot will be noticing some unpleasant smells in the area.

I told you this is dark stuff. It's also hilariously funny at the same time. The only author I can come up with to compare Duane Swierczynski to is Donald Westlake, in particular his Parker novels written under the pen name Richard Stark. But even those aren't quite as full-bore as this tale. Swierczynski has come up with his own twisted and thoroughly enjoyable genre. Bring on some more, sir.

Peter Mergendahl

MYSTERY

The Stranger House

By Reginald Hill. (Harper Collins, $24.95).

Grade: B+

Reginald Hill's latest is even more of a departure from his past novels than last year's Good Morning, Midnight. With The Stranger House, Hill has left beloved detectives Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe completely behind to pen a non-series book that harbors several murders but isn't really a mystery novel at all. Horrors!

But sit down, take a deep breath and try to enjoy what's coming, since - Dalziel or no Dalziel - Hill is one of the masters of the genre.

The Stranger House brings a young Australian, headed for graduate work in mathematics at Cambridge, to northeast England in search of her roots. Her grandmother had been shipped off as an orphan, part of the scandalous real-life deportation of 150,000 children from British children's homes to the furthest reaches of the Empire, often to a life of abuse. But in the remote village of Illthwaite, her search for her grandmother's origins is discouraged and thwarted by the rather frightening inhabitants.

At the same time, a young Spaniard researching the persecution of Catholics in England during the reign of Elizabeth I turns up in the same tiny town. A former seminarian who is still considering his vocation, Miguel Madero find himself haunted by ghosts and visions of events four centuries ago, and compelled by the story of a young priest from a local family.

Hill weaves in Catholic scholarship, Aussie insouciance, a little romance and lots of Viking mythology for a tale that's very much a story of a place, Cumbria, where Hill grew up and now lives. He revels in the complexity of human lives and interactions and telescopes the years between the 16th century and 2005.

Fans of the Lake District, which is part of Cumbria, and of course fans of Hill will find plenty to enjoy. Unlike his strongest mysteries, however, this book isn't the best of the best.

Jane Dickinson

UNREAL WORLDS

Glass Soup

By Jonathan Carroll (Tor, $24.95).

Grade: A

Jonathan Carroll specializes in ambiguity. One look at titles like Kissing the Beehive, The Marriage of Sticks and The Wooden Sea should tell readers that they'll be embarking on journeys to strange and dreamlike worlds where our definitions of reality don't apply.

Carroll's latest novel is a sequel to 2002's White Apples. Unlike most sequels, Glass Soup is wonderful in isolation - though reading White Apples first will make it even more enjoyable.

In White Apples, Chaos became personified and set out to control the world. The only thing that stands in his way is Anjo, the unborn child of Vincent Ettrich and Isabelle Neukor. But for Anjo to be effective, he must be raised by both parents. After Vincent's death, Isabelle learns how to follow his spirit and bring him back.

In Glass Soup, Chaos, through his diabolical agents, tries to lure Isabelle back to the land of the dead. If the agents are successful, Isabelle won't be able to return; her baby will be born there; and Anjo will have no effect on the living world. Chaos will reign supreme.

The tale takes place in the author's expatriate city of Vienna, and his loving descriptions make the setting nearly as much a character as Isabelle and Vincent. Readers who have never been there will picture themselves having morning coffee at outdoor cafes in the mammoth shadows of the flakturme (German anti-aircraft towers so massive they can't be torn down).

There's no living writer quite like Carroll. Think of what Franz Kafka might have been like if he'd been an optimist. But Carroll's ability to make a surreal world seem ordinary and to show that love can transcend death is unmatched. And Glass Soup is as good as he gets.

Mark Graham

CHILDREN

A Apple Pie

By Gennady Spirin (Philomel Books, $16.99, ages 4-8).

Grade: A-

Drawn from a traditional English verse that can be traced back more than 300 years, this book about an apple pie takes readers through the alphabet with few words and incredible artwork.

A, of course, is the apple pie. B "Bit it" and C "Cut it" - and so forth through the letters. The verse includes characters involved in some interesting actions along the way, including those who "knelt for it," "longed for it" and "mourned for it."

Taking a cue from the age of the poem, Spirin dresses these characters in clothing from yesteryear, and the muted colors and other details in the illustrations suggest that the book is somehow a reprint from long, long ago.

Sharp eyes might notice a small animal doing something with an apple in the corner of each page or hiding within the main illustration - the animal corresponds with that page's letter.

Alphabet books have been rendered in so many interesting ways, but sometimes the simplest form is best. This one is a beautiful keeper.

Natalie Soto