On Crime

Turning up the heat on a trail grown cold and a frozen death

By Hallie Ephron, published in the Boston Globe September 27, 2009

HARDBALL

By Sarah Paretsky
Putnam, 4664 pp., $26.95

EVIDENCE OF MURDER

By Lisa Black
William Morrow, 352 pp., $24.99

EVIL FOR EVIL
By James R. Benn
Soho, 320 pp., $25.00

When Sara Paretsky first brought private detective V.I. Warshawski to the printed page in 1982, she kicked open the door for women who wanted to write mystery series featuring tough, independent female protagonists and dealing with real social issues. The former attorney turned private detective is back in her 14th novel, “Hardball,’’ and I am happy to report that none of her rough edges have been sanded.

This time Warshawski investigates the disappearance of Lamont Gadsden, a young black man who vanished before he could present evidence that would have exonerated a suspect in the murder of a civil rights worker during a Chicago march. She’s working on behalf of the man’s adoring aunt, Miss Ella, now near death, and her sister, Lamont’s grim bitter mother, Miss Claudia, who is convinced that this white woman detective is worthless. The quest seems hopeless - after 40 years any trail would have grown stone cold. But Warshawski stirs up a firestorm as she fearlessly pokes at what turns out to be live embers in a nest of political and police corruption.

“No one is safe if they are around me,’’ Warshawski muses bleakly after people she talks to are killed or disappear, and she herself barely survives a fire bombing. Police, powerful politicians, her uncle, and even her own client want her to stop. She seriously considers giving up when it looks as if her father, a beloved police officer with an untarnished reputation, may have been involved in the coverup. But driven by integrity and a primal need to find the truth, she perseveres.

As usual, Paretsky wears her heart and her politics on her sleeve, though not one of her characters is sacrificed to political correctness. It’s a pleasure to relax for 400-plus pages in the hands of a pro.

One of Warshawski’s many progenies is Lisa Black’s fictional Cleveland-based forensic investigator Theresa MacLean. In her second series novel, “Evidence of Murder,’’ Theresa is asked to help investigate the disappearance of Jillian Perry, a beautiful former escort who once made her living as eye candy on the arms of businessmen. Jillian had quit her job to marry Hank Kovacic, a charismatic video game tycoon.

Still reeling from the death of her fiancé in a bank robbery nearly a year earlier, Theresa feels investigating the disappearance of a living person isn’t in her job description. Besides, she’s far more partial to inanimate objects which, she observes, can’t lie. “I have a building full of dead people. I don’t have time for one who isn’t even dead,’’ she remarks in the novel’s opening.

She dismisses the missing woman as “a drug-addled slut’’ who “doesn’t give a crap about her own kid.’’ She comes to regret this snap judgment and the slap-dash job she does inspecting the apartment.

Suspects include Jillian’s cold, driven husband, who dismisses his wife with: “It was all she had, really, her looks.’’ There’s also her former boss, “Georgie’’ Panapolous, a former pimp who claims he’s gone legit. And the odd Drew Fleming who idolizes Jillian and is convinced that her husband killed her.

When Jillian’s body turns up frozen three miles from home in a wooded area, Theresa’s boss wants her to write the death off as a suicide and get to work on other pressing cases: two other people found frozen to death, and staunch media speculation about a serial killer. But Theresa has grown sympathetic to this victim, and until she’s satisfied that she knows the cause of death she refuses to let go.

This is an easy read, a page turner with riveting, utterly convincing forensic details that testify to the author’s experience as a forensic scientist. MacLean creates an appealing flawed main character. Too bad that some readers will realize whodunit long before the final shoe drops, making the ending feel overlong and labored. But still, this is a very enjoyable read, especially recommended for fans of CSI.

Fans of historical mysteries and World War II buffs will savor “Evil for Evil,’’ James Benn’s latest series novel with Billy Boyle, a wiseacre soldier and former Southie cop who takes on espionage missions at the behest of his “Uncle Ike,’’ known to the rest of us as General Dwight D. Eisenhower. An Irishman and a Catholic, when he’s sent to Northern Ireland to investigate for the British, he considers it an ironic joke. Northern Ireland is its own war zone with the Red Hand and the IRA waging an ancient blood feud that has left few unscathed and that shows no sign of abating.

Billy bridles at taking orders from a woman, an intoxicating but tough Irish lass who works for England’s MI-5. She briefs him on his mission: Track down 50 stolen Browning Automatic Rifles before they fall into the hands of the IRA or the Germans.

Rich in its exploration of Irish history and politics, this is also a character study of brash young man trying to balance personal, family, and political loyalties while staying true to himself.