It is no surprise that Martin Cruz Smith, author of the Soviet-era Russian cop novel Gorky Park, has written the most interesting and richly textured crime story of the season. What is unexpected about Rose (Random House; 364 pages; $25) is its setting: not the disorder of present-day Russia but the rigidly stratified society of a Welsh coal-mining town toward the end of the 19th century. As must be true in a period thriller, the setting drives the plot and makes the crime--in this case, the disappearance and presumed murder of a young and idealistic clergyman--seem inevitable. As Smith tells it,...
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