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Sue Green

True Evil

by Greg Iles

Schribner, HK$202

Sliver of Truth

by Lisa Unger

Shaye Areheart Books, HK$179

Bad Blood

by Linda Fairstein

Little, Brown, HK$203

The tourism board in Greg  Iles' home town is unlikely to be seeking his services. Although he skilfully evokes the steaminess and faded glory  of Natchez, Mississippi, the oldest city on the mighty river, in  his  novels  many bad things happen there.  Iles does the town where he grew up and lives with his family the  dubious favour  of setting many of his best-selling crime thrillers there, with key characters in one novel making subsequent cameo appearances in others.

So it is with True Evil, which  moves between Natchez and Jackson, Mississippi. Divorce  lawyer Andrew Rusk is orchestrating the murder of clients' spouses in an  undetectable way -  knocking them off with terminal ailments such as cancer. The serial killing comes to light when FBI agent Alexandra Morse's dying sister Grace tells her that she  is being killed by her husband - yet Grace has had a stroke. Her final wish is that Alex save her son Jamie from her murderous husband, which she  resolves to do - even at the expense of her job.

Alex is damaged, both physically and emotionally. Her father was recently killed in a hold-up, her mother has ovarian cancer and  now Grace is dead.  Her  face  bears scars from  a shotgun blast she suffered during a hostage negotiation gone wrong.

Using her contacts and FBI resources - without the agency's knowledge - Alex investigates Grace's husband and Rusk, with whom he has business dealings. She uncovers  his links with nine people who have had a young spouse die unexpectedly within five years.

Having built  a circumstantial case  that her FBI superiors reject, Alex travels to Natchez to see  a doctor, Chris Shepard, who she believes is the next victim. He thinks  he's happily married, but his glamorous wife, Thora, has  consulted Rusk.

At first unconvinced, Shepard discovers such killings are possible and, with  evidence against Thora mounting, agrees to help. But the pair  are pitted against not only Rusk and Alex's  FBI superiors, but the brilliant, evil mind of  the killer, a dysfunctional pathologist whose private research activities far exceed anything  his hospital employers could imagine or  the law would allow.

True Evil is an imaginative - in fact, far-fetched - vision of extreme abuse of medical knowledge,  which at times verges on  silliness. It lacks the complexity and sophisticated layering  of  Iles'  recent best-seller Turning Angel, a potent blend of southern politics and racial tension.  He creates strong characters and spins a good tale, but is at his best when scratching away the veneer of southern society. True Evil is, for all its outlandishness, a more conventional story of the hunter versus the hunted, still a page-turner but less successful than its predecessor.

Lisa Unger's name may lack the clout of  Iles' - his 10-book backlist dwarfs hers - but that's set  to change. Unger quit  her job in publishing to take a chance on life as a writer. Her debut crime thriller, Beautiful Lies, was a New York Times best-seller sold at auction to 20 countries, and its sequel, Sliver of Truth, looks set for the same sort of success.

It's taut, well written and gritty in its depiction of New York, working well as a stand-alone novel, despite Unger's best efforts to persuade would-be readers to pick up Beautiful Lies first. Her protagonist, magazine feature writer Ridley Jones, speaks directly to the reader, suggesting, 'If you don't know what happened to me and how it all turned out, you could go back now and find out before you move ahead.'

The repeated references to what went before - 'you might remember...', 'if you've been with me from the beginning...' - grate and it's not until well into  the new narrative that Unger drops this irritating ploy. She does, however, explain as she goes, so it's entirely possible to follow and enjoy this next episode  of Ridley's battles with ghosts from her past.

Ridley previously discovered that Max Smiley, whom she thought was her uncle, was in fact her father and a far cry from the loveable, affable man she knew.  In Sliver of Truth, Ridley is told  by the FBI that Smiley may have staged his own death and is watching her, likely to contact her because he loves her.

As she learns about the real  Smiley she's increasingly repelled, yet it seems that only by finding him can she  understand herself and  lay her ghosts to rest. Also in the hunt are her boyfriend, Jake, a victim of a baby-stealing scam Max masterminded, rogue FBI agent Dylan Grace and assorted international crime syndicates. Everyone wants Ridley to lead them to Max - but who can she trust?

Linda Fairstein's crime thrillers were best-sellers from day one. Fairstein, then head of the New York District Attorney's Office sex crimes unit, had only to open the files to find great stories. But the prose in that debut novel,  Final Jeopardy, was clunky. Nine thrillers later, Fairstein's writing is  polished. This latest,  featuring  New York Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper, races along, the writing slick, the tension gripping.

Cooper is putting a shaky case to a jury. Brendan Quillian is on trial for hiring someone - an unknown someone - to kill his wife, but the evidence is  patchy, the witnesses unreliable. Then comes a huge explosion in one of the water tunnels serving dry-as-a-desert Manhattan.

The detail about the subterranean world beneath New York and its dependence on the water in these tunnels is fascinating, woven through Fairstein's narrative with stories of  the so-called sandhogs who risk their lives working underground.

The blast may be a terrorist attack. But one of the three workers who  died in it was Quillian's brother. Coincidence? They don't happen in Fairstein's world.

Bad Blood has a depth lacking in  much  crime fiction. But all the  usual  elements are  present - murders, domestic violence, forensic detail, a touch of romance, even an exhumation -  but it's thoroughly researched, entertaining and even educational, with strong characters and enough pace to keep the pages turning without the need to gloss over any cracks.



Crime fiction