The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny, Minotaur, 376 pages, $27.99
The unretired detective, one of crime fiction’s most reliable tropes, is getting the extended treatment in Louise Penny’s deservedly popular Chief Inspector Gamache series. Now pushing 60, the Quebec cop removed himself and wife Reine-Marie to the quaint village of Three Pines two novels ago to recover emotionally and physically from traumatic events. But Gamache keeps getting pressed into service, never more unsettlingly than in “The Nature of the Beast,” in which a young boy with a big imagination is killed by forces with unimaginable aims. Though the nature of the threat is revealed early enough, giving it away here would spoil the impact of its discovery. Let’s just say that not all of Gamache’s artsy friends and neighbors are what they seem, and the physics professor and squirrelly government agents who arrive on the scene to sniff around have some explaining to do to him and his longtime assistant Isabelle Lacoste, now acting homicide chief at the Sureté. While there is a whiff of Agatha Christie in Penny’s whodunit approach, her fans know better than to put too much stock in the civilized chatter. A world of dark truth lies under the surface. One of the wonders of “The Nature of the Beast” is how subtly and relentlessly the author mines that darkness, and how surely her detective steps through it, without once losing his cool.
The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Stories by Ian Rankin, Little, Brown, 471pages, $26
In novels such as “Standing in Another Man’s Grave” (2013), Ian Rankin’s incorrigible Detective Inspector John Rebus also has been enjoying an unplanned return to action following his supposed “Exit Music.” But most of the 29 tales in “The Beat Goes On: The Complete Rebus Stories” take us back to the days when the only retirement on his mind was crashing onto his bed after a long night of breaking rules and tipping glasses. More significantly, the Rebus we get in these Edinburgh tales is downsized to fit the classic magazine story format. The soft irony and snappy resolutions offered here don’t fit the sprawling, compulsively driven crime-solver we know from the novels. That said, these stories are sharply crafted, with nemeses ranging from the unbalanced Jackie “Trigger” Crawford to a young knife-wielding assailant over whose killing Rebus agonizes. Anchored by a novella, the book has a pleasing, offbeat rhythm of it own. Describing Rebus’ approach, a fellow detective says, “He seemed always to go into a case at an odd angle, like someone cutting a paper shape which, apparently random, could then be folded to make an origami sculpture, intricate and recognizable.” In “The Very Last Drop,” set right after Rebus’ retirement, he raises the possibility that he’s a changed man. “Aye, right,” says his prize foil, Siobhan Clarke, rolling her eyes. As we learn in “Sunday,” the man doesn’t own a TV and buys books he never reads. It’s not as though he’s going to start watching “Law & Order” now.
In the Dark Places by Peter Robinson, William Morrow, 327 pages, $25.99
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Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, Peter Robinson’s great creation, has gone through enough near-death and other unpleasant experiences to contemplate retirement. But after more than 20 novels, he’s still rooting out killers and schemers in picturesque Yorkshire, backed by the most companionable support team in all of crime fiction. The stakes may seem smaller than usual in “In The Dark Places” (the more evocative British title is “Abattoir Blues”). Expensive farm machinery is being stolen and smuggled out of the country by a gang using an abandoned airfield. One young man involved in the scheme has been murdered and a friend of his has gone missing. But there’s nothing usual about this case: The murder weapon is a penetrating bolt pistol, which causes even more alarming harm to humans than cows. Human body parts are discovered, cut and wrapped butcher-style, in a crashed vehicle of Animal By-Products, which removes and disposes of fallen stock. And unscrupulous developers eyeing the airfield are up to no good. As ever in a Robinson novel, relationships play a sizable role, notably Det. Annie Cabbot’s possibly too-sympathetic connection with the missing man’s older girlfriend, and tall, black and beautiful Jamaican-born Det. Winsome Jackman’s shy attraction to an ex-military man who happened upon evidence of the murder. With his well-off Italian girlfriend playing distancing games, Banks has his eye on a colleague from his past. If she can abide his effete musical tastes better than Annie, she may be in the picture for the next book. Stay tuned.
Lloyd Sachs is a regular contributor to Printer’s Row Journal