`HeartSick’ By Chelsea Cain; `Dead Heat’ By Dick Francis; `Flawless’ By Joshua Spanogle
The book: “HeartSick” by Chelsea Cain; St. Martin’s Minotaur ($23.95)
The hook: A “Silence of the Lambs”-like link between a genius serial killer and a police sleuth, but with the sexes of the demented mass murderer and the driven detective reversed.
The crook: Archie Sheridan spent 10 years hunting down serial killer Gretchen Lowell _ till she found him and carved her way into his life. Sheridan has been a shell of man, living on pills and pain, since surviving her torture, but now someone is killing high school girls and the Portland police are asking him to come back to work and head the task force to find the serial killer.
The food pairing: Consume this story with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
The verdict: Hannibal, excuse me, Gretchen isn’t quite realized as a character, but readers will feel Archie’s exquisite pain, both physical and emotional, and they’ll relate, as well, to the troubled young reporter who gets caught up in the search for the murderer. An excellent choice for mystery readers who like to be creeped out.
___
The book: “Dead Heat” by Dick Francis; G.P. Putnam’s Sons ($25.95)
The hook: Francis’ second outing since the death of his collaborator wife was co-written by his son and focuses not on a steeplechase jockey but on a chichi chef. Still, it doesn’t stray far from the race track.
The crook: Chef Max served a meal of cherry-stuffed chicken breast wrapped in pancetta with a wild chanterelle and truffle sauce that sent dozens of people in the racing world to the emergency room. The food inspector says it was undercooked kidney beans that sickened people, but Max knows there weren’t any kidney beans on the menu _ which means the poisoning was intentional.
The food pairing: Stuffed chicken breast with a ‘shroom sauce _ skip the kidney beans.
The verdict: A nice, light lope around the horsy mystery track. Francis’ novels are always an easy read, and this one has a likable lead character and a steady pace, though it’s a middle-of-the-pack horse, er, book.
___
The book: “Flawless” by Joshua Spanogle; Delacorte Press ($29.95)
The hook: With “CSI” and Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta proving there’s a big audience for scientific crime-solving, we finally get a mystery that melds the noir detective genre with epidemiology. Nate McCormick, former medical detective for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, isn’t quite hard-boiled enough to use a gun, but he’s got the Philip Marlowe attitude down.
The crook: An old friend of Nate’s has uncovered a cluster of patients who’ve developed bizarre facial tumors. Before Nate can debrief Murph on who the victims are and what the cause might be, Paul and his family are murdered. The key to both the murders and the cancers could be a missing TV newswoman and her young son, Tim Kim.
The food pairing: Buttered toast, to go with this “soft-boiled” egg of a detective.
The verdict: To call this suspense story “flawless” would be overdoing it, but there’s a bundle of fun to be had in Spanogle’s wordplay and in his characters, particularly the precocious charmer Tim Kim and the raunchy Dr. Ravi Singh.
___
(c) 2007, Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Visit the Star-Telegram on the World Wide Web: www.star-telegram.com.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.