Reading a Bartholomew Gill mystery is a little like drowning in a riptide of beautiful prose, so prepare to be swept away by the lyrical force of DEATH ON A COLD, WILD RIVER (Morrow, $20).
Although the absence of a parallel theme keeps this subplot dangling, the ending is a real killer. Unbeknown to the main players in this story, another desperate character is on his way to their village to commit a gruesome act that will affect them all. And because he is cautiously exploring the limits of his own commitment to a woman who is showing signs of restlessness, Alberg is also impressed with the decisiveness of Charlie's bold and cunning getaway. The detective is intrigued by "the peculiar feeling of emptiness" he senses in this perfect marriage. Karl Alberg gets involved in the dubious affairs of the O'Breas, his neighbors in a coastal village near Vancouver, British Columbia, when Charlie furtively skips out on Emma without a trace. Wright, who has more shocking scenes of violence in store and more subtle points to make about the dangers of domestic tranquillity in her stunning procedural mystery. But that would be much too conventional a plot choice for L. The reader is more surprised when Charlie doesn't pull the trigger on Emma, whose smothering devotion to their marriage has drained it of all love and life. And with his naturalist's feeling for his Arctic setting, he's in his element on every terrain, from pockets of civilization like Sitka, "a town full of mystery and wildness," to vast and silent wilderness areas "beyond the curve of the earth."Įmma O'Brea, who prides herself on being "the best wife there ever was," is surprised when her husband, Charlie, puts a gun to her head in PRIZED POSSESSIONS (Viking, $19). Straley was smart to dump the boozy-woozy poetics that marred "The Woman Who Married a Bear." With his storyteller's sense of dramatic action, he's in his glory dropping his characters from planes or shoving them off in leaky skiffs into killer-whale-infested waters.
In a terribly ironic way he's right, because the victim was an environmental watchdog, secretly gathering evidence on a toxic chemical leak being hushed up by the mining company. It occurs to Cecil Younger, the private eye in this rugged series, that the upheavals in nature might even have something to do with the rape and murder of a young woman who worked as a cook at a gold mine. Unseasonable heat waves and cold snaps, fish spawning before their time - such anomalies lend credence to the local theory that after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, "something was broken in the north that could never be put back together." Nature is out of joint and acting weird in THE CURIOUS EAT THEMSELVES (Soho, $19.95), another strong and sobering adventure in John Straley's Alaskan mystery series.
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