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Babson, Marian

The Multiple Cat

London, Collins Crime (HarperCollins). 183 pp. £15.99.

Everyone hated Sally. No, no, no, Sally was an alley cat (older readers are bound to remember the song) and Sally was the only one Arthur cared for. Why, he even wanted his flat redecorated to show off his Sally, and not the woman who claimed he loved her. Like most millionaires he was surrounded by greedy relatives and sleazy hangers-on, so when he was found dead the race was on to grab Sally. 'Cause you see, he'd left his money to Sally, and anyone who got Sally also got to look after the estate! Arthur Arbuthnot is hurriedly cremated in a crematorium run in tandem by the owners of medical establishments. The doctors at these establishments have an excessively casual attitude to gunshot and knife wounds. (Babson has very little faith in the medical profession as well as the police.) As for the grieving relatives, the tears seem onion induced.

Sally is rescued by Annabel. The greedy relatives know nothing about cats and decide to substitute another cat for Sally. Annabel got into the act because she was mistaken for the interior designer hired to redecorate the flat (see above). In fact, she has been planted to feed tidbits to the press concerning the recluse. As the number of cats grows, so does the number of bodies. There is a scene both hilarious and touching when Annabel reunites Sassy with her owner, whose husband seems to own half of Canada.

The greedy relatives know nothing about microchipping and Arthur Arbuthnot (I gather you don't become a millionaire without having some nous) has had his Sally microchipped and registered.

In a hilarious final scene the real Sally and the real murderer are revealed, and in the last few lines, even the real will!

Charming, funny and a delight for aelurophiles.

Marian Babson is an aelurophile.

Babson, Marian

Not Quite a Geisha
An Evangeline Sinclair and Trixie Dolan Mystery

London, Constable & Robinson, 2003. 206 pp. £ 16.99.

Money talks, especially pillow talk.

Evangeline Sinclair and Trixie Dolan, long-time stars of stage and screen (B-Grade movies from which they picked up their detecting abilities, are dashing down to the coast to stand by their friend, Dame Cecile Savoy, in her hour of need. Dame Cecile's much-loved Pekinese, Fleur-de-Lys, has died and is to be stuffed for posterity.

Driven by Eddie, their pet taxi driver, they arrive at Stuff Yours to find the place in flames and the taxidermist dead.

More intriguing, Trixie saves a beautiful pedigree cat, Cho-Cho-San, who had been brought there to be put down and stuffed.

Sub-plots burgeon. Mouth-watering culinary recipes abound. The hangover cure-cum-pick-me-up on page 93 is worth the price of the book alone. The backstage intrigues and marital problems of stage and screen stars are enough to stop anyone allowing their offspring to become an actor or actress. It isn't only the marital and love problems (does he/she love me, does he/she not). There are also the problems caused by offspring (not on the stage). Trixie's daughter has been commissioned to write a cookbook, giving the excuse for more of the recipes this author is famous for.

There is an adjournment to ... well, whose house is it?

There is a dead body in the basement ... well, whose body is it?

Through all this Trixie Dolan and Cho-Cho-San cling to each other. It is a heartwarming friendship, but will Trixie be able to keep her? Why do so many people want to grab this gorgeous cat? Who had condemned her to die?

The author takes us through all the range of emotions, entertains, amuses, informs. All the extras of a good whodunnit are here.

Marian Babson lives in London. She is the first winner of the Red Dagger Award and the Poisoned Chalice Award. Her friends maintain she cooks as well as she writes.

Baker, John

The Chinese Girl

London, Gollancz 230pp (£9.99).

My friend, who wrote the letters. She's disappeared. I couldn't find what happened to her in the States, so I came over to look for her. No one seems to know where she is.

The setting is Hull, where Stone Lewis comes looking for something solid in his life. People give him a wide birth because of the tattoos on his face. They held him down in the nick and did that to him. On whose orders? And why was he in jail in the first place?

He finds an Asian girl in the doorway of his basement flop. She'd come to Hull to find her friend after the her letters suddenly stopped. (The letters alone are a work of art.) Stone agrees to help.

Helping her transpires to be not just looking for a missing person. He gets dragged down into the low life of Hull. Psychos. Dobermanns. Violence. Can this ex-con, kind at heart, meet violence with violence without becoming affected by it and still rebuild his life?

This is an amazing crime novel. It tells a terrific story. It keeps you guessing about what happened before the book opened and what will happen after it closes. It deals with a range of social issues, mental illness, racism, drug dealing, gang warfare and always has something insightful to say about each. He tells it like it is and you sense that he was there and lived through it all himself.

The author once stated that there are dark shadows imprinted on his soul that'll never go away. He has imprinted them on this book

Barnard, Robert

The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoor

London, Collins Crime, HarperCollins. 220 pp. £16.99.

At the heart of the book lies yet another of Barnard's grotesque creations, Ranulph Byatt, once the most famous British artist. Ranulph Byatt is incapable of affection, yet inspires affection. He treats all those around him as dirt, puts everyone down, treats everyone with great cruelty, and they respond with loyalty and subservience. He is surrounded by family and groupies who are only there to do his bidding, cater to every wish and every whim. Ranulph is physically on his last legs, cannot mix his paints or hold his palette but perseveres.

The body of a young man, almost naked, is found in the car park behind the Haworth Tandoori. Discovering the identity of the murdered youth takes some time and some effort. It transpires that a young man called Declan O'Hearn (Irish, Catholic, with a strong moral sense absorbed from priests and mother) had acted as odd-job boy to Ranulph Byatt, holding his palette, mixing his paints. As a result of his ministrations, Ranulph begins to paint superbly again. Declan disappears.

Is the dead body that of Declan, the young Irish itinerant immigrant, who for the first time in his life has his own room when he joins the artistic community?

Barnard slips the proverbial Mickey Finn (the nature of the creative megalomaniac we are supposed to admire) into the otherwise pleasant drink which are his crime novels.

Robert Barnard is a great opera buff and has even more Donizetti and Bellini recordings than I have.

Barnard, Robert

Touched by the Dead

London, HarperCollins. 2238 pp. £16.99.

This mystery novel is set against the background of changes following the British General Election, when the Labour Party swept out the Conservatives. A new and young generation of idealists came into office. Colin Pinnock is a new junior minister, determined to help those less fortunate. In addition to this background, Barnard intrigues the reader by giving a new spin to an old scandal familiar to anyone who has lived in London.

Amongst the congratulatory messages that Colin Pinnock receives is one saying, "Who do you think you are?" Attuned to language, Pinnock realises that it has two meanings. Who, indeed, is he? Who were his real parents?

As the threads of his past unravel, Pinnock does learn who his real parents were. The major clue again is someone using the English tense system in a certain way. (English teachers and grammarians please note.)

A series of incidents at first give the appearance of trying to bring him down through holding him up to public ridicule. But then such incidents threaten his life. Although he is a junior minister, the police don't seem to be very bothered, ascribing his complaints to the paranoia that afflicts all politicians.

An intriguing novel that has much to say about the state of modern politics and family loyalties. It puts forward its own outlook on existence: "The truth is it's only peace that lets you live to the full, lets you appreciate existence and its potential. Excitement is destruction."

Many of Robert Barnard's books are novels with a central mystery set in them. He is perceptive when it comes to politics as well as the human condition.

Blincoe, Nicholas

Acid Casuals

London, Serpent's Tail. 232pp. £5.99. US $10.99

Estela, with the looks of a cinema queen according to her taxi driver, whose life she changes, returns to Manchester. To get over the jet lag she needs a little sex and picks up a small-time thief called Yen. Yen steals her Beretta and hormone pills. Estela had once been Paul, had a sex-change operation and was now back to eliminate a local gangster. Is she a hired killer? Has she a personal reason? The loss of the hormone pills upsets her system and she cannot function properly. The loss of the Beretta upsets her plans to carry out her task. She goes looking for Yen, but he has been killed with her Beretta.

Against the bland bureaucracy of the British police, the tale is of absolute mayhem laced with black humor. The only one who recognizes Estela as having once been Paul is a one-eyed man called Junk. After a shoot-out at the end Estela saves the life of the man she came to eliminate.

This is the book of the Manchester club scene, with the threads of the global economy reaching to South America.

Nicholas Blincoe describes himself as the aspiring High Priest of the New Pulp Literature.

Bolitho, Janie

Framed in Cornwall

London, Constable Crime. 192 pp. £16.99.

Dorothy Pengelly lives in a remote and dilapidated house. She is elderly, a recluse and to all appearances she is harmless. She is found dead. Murder or suicide?

Her friend Rose Trevelyan, an artist and photographer, is convinced that it is murder. The house contained some very valuable paintings. And the late Dorothy Pengelly had a very avaricious daughter-in-law, who thought she had her husband under her thumb. So she begins sleuthing. There had been a visit from a stranger. Can Rose trace this visitor? Then come the threatening phone calls. Threatening phone calls imply that someone in this small community has something to hide. And she is a beneficiary herself.

This novel is a wonderful picture of a small Cornish community, its joys and sorrows, its ambitions, sordid secrets, its landscape, its weather. Nobody seems entirely good. Nobody seems entirely bad, or are they. The final scene in which Dorothy Pengelly's will is read is a tour de force of frustrated hopes (that's when the daughter-in-law gets her come-uppance). If you have never travelled to Cornwall, this is the book to start with. It brings out Cornwall better than any guide book. And it is (if one may use a cliche) a thumping good read.

Janie Bolitho was born and sometimes lives in Cornwall.

Bonansinga, Jay R.

Bloodhound

London, Macmillan. 338 pp. £16.99.

The dark side of the use of psychic powers even in a good cause are explored in a mystery story featuring Charlotte Vickers. For years she has helped the police, who have come to rely on her to help them find missing persons. She has always been loath to do so. The missing persons were always found dead. She feels burnt out. Now she doesn't ever want to utilize her powers any longer.

Along comes the pitiful Natalie Fortunato, claiming she wants to trace her missing boyfriend, producing a good-luck charm he used to wear. Charlotte concentrates on it with all her psychic powers. The missing boyfriend is alive and well, and living in Colorado. He is happily married with little children. No cause to intervene and betray his whereabouts decides the retired police psychic.

That's when Natalie turns nasty.

The "boyfriend" is being sheltered under a Witness Protection Scheme, having given evidence against Natalie's father, a mobster.

Charlotte escapes from the heavies, who wish to get into her head to find the missing witness. She has to save him and his family, and she has to save herself.

If you have ever had any reservations about psychic powers, you will be sure to lose them halfway through this fast-paced chase thriller.

Jay R. Bonansinga grew up on a diet of Ray Bradbury, but fortunately for us turned to crime after a creative writing course at Michigan State University.

Brett, Simon

Mrs. Pargeter's Point of Honor

London, Macmillan. 265 pp. £16.99

Simon Brett is one of the drollest writers in England today and Mrs. Pargeter is one of his drollest creations.

The late Mr. Pargeter was planning a really big raid on a Hatton Garden jewelers. Inspector Craig Wilkinson was all geared up to arrest him and his entire gang, but the raid never happened. Mr. Pargeter died before they were due to start. Mrs. Pargeter had always thought that her husband was one of the finest men who ever walked God's earth. After all, this was a generation when wives did not have to worry their pretty heads about what happened at the husband's place of work, and Mrs. Pargeter was very, very pretty. In fact, he was a successful criminal. His gang worshipped him. Now read on ...

In this latest comic mystery Mrs. Pargeter is asked by an elderly widow to return stolen paintings to their rightful owners. With Mrs. Pargeter it is a point of honor to complete any of her late husband's unfinished business. She calls on her late husband's "ex-associates", Truffler Mason, Hedgeclipper Clinton, Hamish Ramon Henriques, Palings Price, Keyhole Crabbe, each one of whom has his own area of expertise and who now worship Mr. Pargeter's widow.

One of her aims is to clear her late husband's name, not so much clear it, perhaps, but lessen the impact. An alternative dossier is concocted and fed into the police computer (whose password alternates between "peeler" and "copper"). Now a whole lot of new associates are fed into the computer. Safely dead villains are implicated. But six of the living (who deserve it) are fed into the new dossier. Mrs. Pargeter thinks there is a difference between "justice" and "what's right", and she is there to see to it that "what's right" is done.

Inspector Craig Wilkinson gets all the credit, of course, falls in love with her, proposes, and gets the nicest turn-down any man could get from any widow still completing her late husband's business

The whole of England was glued to its radio sets when Simon Brett's After Henry was being broadcast.

Brighton, Peter

The Death of a Smile

London, Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster. 326 pp. £5.99.

Sir David and his merry men are in charge of a department that looks after the British monarchy's long-term perspective. Everything had been going well, until Princess Diana began to "misbehave". It was bad enough that being a modern young woman, she had taken lovers, opened her heart on TV, allowed books to be written about her and her relations with the rest of the Royal family but she was now engaged to Al Fayed. Would the mother of the next but one monarch be a Moslem by adoption? It didn't bear thinking about.

And so Sir David decides that Princess Diana must go.

The CIA is consulted and recommend one of their top hired killers, a man nicknamed Red, a consummate assassin, whose main interests are making enough money to enjoy good food and his favorite mistress. Red is brought to London, given a false identity as Avraham Rosenzweig, and all the backup that he needs.

Sir David has no compunction about what he is doing, nor Red, but Sir David's merry men are caught between duty and genuine affection for Princess Di, a warm and loving young woman who enchants everyone who comes into contact with her.

The role of the real participants in the tragedy are skillfully woven into this book. The participants, all except Sir David, are easily recognizable.

Was this how it really happened?

Translated from German by Ingrid and Jonathan Price.

Buchanan, Edna

Garden of Evil
A Britt Montero Mystery

New York, Avon Books. 319 pp. US $24.00).

She targets men, not women. She relates to me. Wants me to write her story.

Britt Montero, a crime reporter, establishes a dialogue with a serial killer whose nickname is the Kiss Me Killer For a crime reporter whose greatest ambition is to have her own by-line, this is the story of a lifetime. Montero had always believed the human race to be basically good. How had this serial killer become so different? For most of us, fantasies are enough, but the Kiss Me Killer acts them out. Britt Montero is determined to find out what makes her tick.

Britt Montero arranges to meet her. The meeting goes awry. Kepple, the Kiss Me Killer, kidnaps Britt Montero and a little boy whose father she has murdered in front of the little boy. If Montero tries to escape, the Kiss Me Killer will kill the little boy ... and her.

Serial killers seem the staple diet of news today and we are fascinated and repelled by them. On the one hand, the book is not for the squeamish. But on the other, it is an insightful and perceptive book.

Subtlely and by implication the issues are discussed. Capital punishment, yes or no? Why do the police fail to catch serial killers for so long? Can they be rehabilitated? How do they select their victims? But the most interesting insight is whether society creates serial killers, through their treatment in childhood, or is it in their blood, their genes, their heredity.

As in any good story, when it is told and it appears that everything is settled, the author still delivers the last blow to the reader's solar plexus on the last line of the last page, and what a blow!

Edna Buchanan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter.

Burke, James Lee

Cimarron Rose

New York, Hyperion Books. 394 pp. US $7.99

When other boys in high school played baseball or ran track, Lucas Smothers played the guitar. Then the mandolin, banjo, and Dobro. He hung in black nightclubs, went to camp meetings just for the music. He could tell you almost any detail about the careers of country musicians whose names belonged to an era that disappeared with five-cent Wurlitzer jukeboxes. His hands were a miracle to watch on a stringed instrument. But in his stepfather's eyes, they, like Lucas himself, were not good for anything of value. He used to beat him unmercifully for playing music.

Then Lucas was accused of the murder of his girlfriend. His stepfather appealed to Billy Bob Holland, a Texas attorney, to represent Lucas. It was his moral duty to do so, he said. There was no doubt in everyone's mind that Lucas was guilty. The evidence was overwhelming. Most everybody was quite sympathetic to Billy Bob, but they all knew why he had taken on such a hopeless case, smirk, smirk.

The accused does not wish his girlfriend's name dragged through the mud. The rich do not wish their offspring exposed, no matter how guilty. Chequebook parenthood trails its own guilt. Billy Bob Holland has enough secrets in his own dark past. The history of his own family is the history of part of Bible belt America and its mores. There is a mystical and poetic component in the book (which he thinks nobody knows about), illuminating why and how he acts.

This is a small Texas town in which the helpless and the poor are scapegoats for the depredations of the children of the rich as they sow their wild oats. The poor and the powerless are to be exploited for fun and to be their sexual playthings. There is a sub-plot concerning America's policies towards its southern neighbors, more than hinting that a government prepared to do such things to others may very well do the same to its own citizens.

Whatever the cost to himself and to Lucas, Billy Bob wants to clear him. After all, as everyone in town seemed to know, Lucas included, he had the affair with the accused youth's mother, fathered him, and now had to save his own son's life.

The Mystery Writers of America gave this book the Edgar.

Burns, John

Nark
A Max Chard Comic Mystery

London, Pan Books. 329 pp. £5.99.

Tabloids like ours are interested in just three things: sex, sex and sex. In that order. Sometimes there isn't enough of it around, which is why we have to fill up the paper with stacks of rubbish.

A safe deposit robbery. The perps (i.e. the perpetrators) apparently got away with five million quid (that's sterling. Count US $ 1.5 per quid). The money is being laundered by Maureen Frew and her husband. She discovers that he plans to cheat her of her share and to run off with someone younger. So she turns Queen's Evidence. Seven of the gang are found guilty, three more are murdered, and two are still at large. One of them is her estranged husband. After giving evidence, she and her new boyfriend are sheltered in protective custody. Against the advice of the police, she decides to sell her story to a tabloid. Max Chard is assigned the story.

Max Chard has a number of problems. How to cheat on his expenses. How to keep his editor(s) happy. How to keep his beautiful girlfriend Rosie happy. And what about Cindy Reilly, a character he invented for a bet and who now turns up in various newspapers because he has offered to buy drinks for any of his friends and colleagues who manage to place her in a story. They won't stop placing her, and now Scotland Yard wants to interview her.

But the main problem Max Chard has is that he must interview Maureen Frew and her boyfriend, and extract every last bit of sex out of their situation, because that's what his editors think the public wants. Never mind the laundering operation or where she is hidden. In their love nest Max detects more frisson between Maureen and her boyfriend and their minders than between the two being protected. Hmmm!

Never mind the plot, which is, of course superb. Nor the characters, who are first class. It's the way John Burns writes. Hilariously.

An entertaining comic thriller of the first water.

"Nark" follows "Hack" and "Snap", with "Spike" to follow.

Burns, John

Spike
A Max Chard Comic Mystery

London, Macmillan. 324 pp. £16.99.

"The story had all the makings of nothing. But you don't expect editors or news executives to come up with bright ideas."

Max Chard's superiors running a tabloid newspaper have been tipped off that a Labour MP with a good reputation has been spending the night in a London mews with a lady definitely not his wife. They send Max Chard, true hack that he is, to loiter outside. By the time the MP emerges Max has a headline all ready in his head.

But all is not as it appears.

Others are following the MP. The mistress is reported missing. The body of a young woman is found in the MP's constituency. But strangest of all, the superiors who sent Max on the trail of the adulterous MP will not run the scoop.

This is an incredibly funny book. The picture of newspaper life and newspaper mores will put you off newspapers forever as bearers of factual news. They are just another form of entertainment, their motto being that bad news is good news. And this is a very entertaining book. Which on the face of it ends with good news.

Except for the last five pages. Max Chard reveals that newspaper people and politicians work hand in hand and how they do it. His superiors aren't as stupid as Max Chard thought. So if you are one of the few people around who still believe in our elected representatives and the newspapers reporting on them, stop reading on page 321.

This is the third of the hilarious Max Chard "investigations".