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Sue Green

Good News, Bad News

by David Wolstencroft

Hodder $155

Sympathy Between Humans

by Jodi Compton

Hodder $201

Thorn

by Vena Cork

Headline $294

Anyone who saw the British television drama series Spooks will recall that, after months  of nail-biting tension, it thumbed its nose  at both the British secret services and its viewers by collapsing into a heap of ludicrous improbabilities in its final hour.

In Good News, Bad News, the debut novel by Spooks creator David Wolstencroft, the improbabilities are rife from the outset, while the tension is much slower to build. But build it does, into a witty, fast-paced, goodies-versus-baddies spy-chase novel, with plenty of ambiguities about  who's on the side of right.  It's also a wryly entertaining look at a British security service fighting the war against terrorism, while creaking under the weight of its own bureaucracy and inefficiencies.

Jaded security service operatives (spooks) George and Charlie are both undercover, and  posted - separately and by mistake - to an Oxford Circus photo kiosk. By the time each has figured out that the other isn't quite who he says he is, someone in the service top brass has decided they're surplus to requirements.

Each man receives new orders via a dreaded frame 13: a blank frame on a roll of film which denotes an order to kill. Frame 14 is a head shot of the intended victim. Both were planning to quit the service, but now each is facing a new challenge - that's the good news. The bad news: they have to kill each other.

And so, after a couple of cursory attempts to knock each other off, George and Charlie,  a flawed but engaging pair whose back  stories gradually unfold, go on the run.

Good News, Bad News - named for the game Charlie played as an Edinburgh schoolboy - revs up several notches as  the pair keep half a step ahead of those wanting them dead, calling in favours from old friends and contacts.

The good news: this is a slick, well-crafted thriller that reveals an unexpected depth.  It's clever and innovative storyline, well-drawn characters and sly humour more than compensate for the occasional too-silly spot. And the bad news? Disproving Charlie's theory that the two always go hand in hand - there isn't any.

Jodi Compton's Sympathy Between Humans, the follow-up to her acclaimed The 37th Hour, is a  more subtle affair. Here, too, the tension builds gradually and the unfolding narrative is as much a study of human nature as it is crime fiction.

Like Good News, Bad News it deals with  the constraints of bureaucracy, ethics,  what drives people to break rules and what happens when they do.

The events recounted in The 37th Hour reverberate through this sequel, which again features  Minneapolis detective Sarah Pribek. This time, Sarah's husband, Shiloh, is in jail, and her ex-partner Genevieve has fled to Paris after killing a man who raped and murdered her daughter - a murder for which Sarah is under suspicion.

But this is also a stand-alone story. It's easy enough to follow without having read its predecessor, as Sarah, stretching the truth to protect Genevieve, throws herself into her work and becomes immersed in the lives of two people she meets on the job.

One is a paraplegic doctor known to his patients as Cisco, who still practises in a housing project, despite having being struck off. Told by her boss to track down and charge the doctor, Sarah traces him easily enough - but finds herself increasingly drawn to him.

The other, Marinchen Hennessy, is a young woman, the daughter of a widowed famous writer, who asks Sarah to find her missing brother. As Sarah becomes involved with Marlinchen and her family she realises there's more wrong than a missing brother.

This is a downbeat, slow-burn kind of novel. At first, it seems that little is happening. But gradually, perceptively, Compton reveals more about her characters as events unfold.

It becomes increasingly gripping as an eager prosecutor gathers damning evidence against Sarah, who uncovers Marlinchen's disturbing family's secrets and risks her  job as she oversteps the boundaries in her involvement with Cisco.

Compton writes well and her story becomes more and more compelling as the reader is drawn into it. Not one for those who want blood, bodies and action, but highly recommended for those seeking crime fiction in which the writer builds not only suspense, but well crafted, credible characters, and has a serious, intellectually stimulating story to tell.

Far less satisfactory is Thorn, the debut novel from Vena Cork.

This is billed as a psychological thriller, and the tension builds over the first 100 or so pages, as Cork's story unfolds in workmanlike, though rather unpolished, prose. But the plot twists - and there are plenty of them - become increasingly improbable, culminating in a finale that makes you gasp at its ludicrousness.

Thorn opens with the hit-and-run death of London artist Rob Thorn. He leaves a widow and two children who must cope not only with their loss but with a dramatic downturn in their finances. The children are plucked from top schools and sent to the local comprehensive, where the widowed Rosa, previously a bit-part actor, becomes a teacher.

From the creepy headmaster to the caretaker, this school is peopled with sinister characters. Rosa's long-time neighbours  also become increasingly sinister. She's  sure her son's best friend is on drugs and is convinced that the park gardener is stalking her daughter. As small acts of violence and intrusion become increasingly bloodthirsty, then murderous, it seems that Rosa's paranoia may be justified.

If that all sounds promising enough it's because Cork has some interesting ideas.  But she's able to develop them. Thorn deteriorates into a kind of overblown soap opera, with an R rating for violence. Ultimately, it's not so much thriller as bad comedy.



Thrillers