(3 of 4)
Historical novelty is a widespread preoccupation of mystery writers, whether to vary their stories or display newly found erudition or simply to write off a vacation trip on their tax returns. Ellis Peters offers her 14th chronicle of Brother Cadfael, a resolutely logical monk who is a 12th century forerunner of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown, in The Hermit of Eyton Forest (Mysterious Press; 224 pages; $15.95). Peters' narratives suffer from cuteness and rarely make medieval people come alive as convincingly as, say, the ancient Greeks and Persians in the novels of Mary Renault. But she weaves a plot ably and is extremely effective at dividing the world into good guys and bad guys and working up the reader's rooting interest.
Los Angeles has attracted as many first-rate mystery novelists as any other metropolis, and none have been better at evoking the landscape, the light, the architecture and the ethnic diversity than Joseph Hansen. The ninth and most affecting of his series featuring Dave Brandstetter, a homosexual insurance- claims investigator, returns the private eye to the byways of the gay subculture, particularly among more secretive and closeted denizens. Early Graves (Mysterious Press; 184 pages; $15.95) is not the first novel to deal with the impact of AIDS and will surely not be the last, but it will probably rank with the best. It begins with Brandstetter's discovery of a corpse on his doorstep, the latest in a string of victims who were all dying of the virus already. His effort to unravel what turns out to be two related mysteries takes him to the homes of abandoned victims, grieving families and lovers, co- workers deep into denial. Their quicksand feelings of fear mingled with shame and rage are powerfully drawn and linger in the mind. Apart from its virtues as fiction, Hansen's book is a field correspondent's breathtaking dispatch from a community in the midst of disaster.
Loren D. Estleman's misfortune in life can be summed up in one name: Elmore Leonard. Were it not for his fellow Detroiter's surge to fame and best sellerdom, Estleman would doubtless be known as the poet of Motor City. An award winner both for private-eye fiction and for westerns, Estleman is, fittingly, never better than when describing a road and vehicles in combat on it. He is almost as good at evoking places, whether a sterile office complex, a blind-pig saloon in a ghetto, a shack in a Michigan version of Dogpatch or a patio in a smug suburb. His ear for diverse patois seems impeccable, and so does the inner mechanism that tells him when an unlikely escape can be plausible or when violence must instead turn into calamity. Downriver (Houghton Mifflin; 210 pages; $15.95) offsets those virtues with a plot that, like other recent work of his, relies unsatisfyingly on impersonation and concealed identity, and places conveniently offstage his investigator's neater tricks of digging up information or penetrating a security barrier.