Jericho’s Fall (Knopf, $25.95), the new mystery by Stephen L. Carter, starts back when Rebecca “Beck” Deford was a sophomore at Princeton and fell in love with Jericho Ainsley, former Defense Secretary, former CIA director, former everything. It was a scandalous affair that led to their exile in Colorado. Although the romance was short lived, the relationship brings Beck back when she learns that Jericho is dying. She’s come to say goodbye but he’s hell bent on withdrawing into what his daughters believe are paranoid delusions. From the time Beck arrives, strange things take place—a helicopter follows her, a dead dog is killed on the property—and she’s on edge. As the threats grow and suspicions take shape, Beck struggles to distinguish reality from the fantasies of a sick old man. There are more potential conspirators than you can shake a stick at, lots of plot twists—an ending you won’t expect.
George Pelecanos, the award-winning writer and producer of the HBO series, The Wire, gets better and better with each of his D.C. urban-noir crime novels. Ironically, in the seventeen years that he has been publishing, Pelecanos has become a big commercial success while at the same time he has become more literary in his writing, and is often compared to Zola and Dreiser on the basis of characters trapped by poverty, prejudice, and the iron grip of race. Despite the fatalism that pervades The Turnaround (Back Bay, $14.99), a narrative of a deadly encounter between suburban white teenagers and inner-city blacks, Pelecanos’s plot moves gingerly toward a reconciliation between individuals from each group. Publishers Weekly describes this novel as “a beautifully written and thought-provoking novel of crime, friendship, aging, and redemption.”
In The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Vintage, $14.95) Stieg Larsson delivers a complex, brutal, and gripping thriller. Investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist is recruited to write the biography of a wealthy and prominent businessman—but there is an ulterior motive. Beginning with nuanced financial intrigue, the novel unfolds to reveal a long-cold murder case and chilling family secrets. To solve the mystery, Blomkvist teams up with Lisbeth Salander, a talented young computer hacker and one of the more original and appealing characters in contemporary fiction. This book’s sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is due in July and features unsavory characters from Lisbeth’s past.
