Crime.

FICTION

****

L.A. Outlaws

By T. Jefferson Parker

The female Robin Hood.

Suzanne Jones, an eighth-grade teacher and mother of three, transforms into Allison Murrieta at night. At dark, the masked Allison, who claims to be a descendant of California bandit Joaquin Murrieta, clamors for media attention as she steals from the rich to give to the poor. Her outlaw life progresses smoothly until she witnesses the bloody after-math of a half-million-dollar diamond heist from a criminal named Bull, which leaves 10 gangsters dead. When L.A. Deputy Charlie Hood stops Suzanne/Allison as a key witness, sparks fly. Shortly into their affair, however, Hood starts to suspect that Suzanne and Allison may be one and the same. Besides, Bull wants his goods back--and his sidekick Lupercio is soon on her trail.

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Dutton. 372 pages. $25.95. ISBN: 0525950559

Los Angeles Times ****

"Parker writes with an understanding of the West's essential character: In Outlaws, he casts Los Angeles as an eternally sprawling, brawling camp town, populated by bandits and bigots, the quick and the dead, where the poor who once rendered tallow now work the deep fryer at KFc. ... His concise prose, at once low-key and lyrical, plays almost like cowboy poetry." WIll BEAll

Orlando Sentinel ****

"[A] novel filled with energy, adventure, corruption and suspense. ... Parker, who is never sparing when it comes to violence, packs L.A. Outlaws with excitement and flashes of sexual tension as Hood becomes caught up in suzanne's life, fighting the urge to fall in love with her while suspecting that she might be the armed robber all L.A. is talking about." ANN HEllMUTH

Seattle Times ****

"L.A. Outlaws may be my favorite of T. Jefferson Parker's thrillers, and that's saying something about this gifted writer. ... The result--think of Elmore Leonard's Out of Sight with a gender twist--is totally compulsive reading." ADAM WOOG

Wall Street Journal ****

"While Suzanne drives the action, Officer Hood is the novel's moral center. ... There is more to L.A. Outlaws than thrills." TOM NOLAN

Washington Post ****

"[L.A. Outlaws] could be his breakthrough. All his skills are on display here: vivid writing, strong characters, clockwork plotting, agonizing suspense and, finally, an ending that manages to be just right." PATRICK ANDERSON

CRITICAL SUMMARY

With his 15th novel (after California Girl **** Jan/Feb 2005, and The Fallen **** May/June 2006), critics agree that Edgar winner T. Jefferson Parker has written his best book yet. A noir thriller, L.A. Outlaw delighted critics with its fast-placed, suspenseful plot and compelling characters--a powerful heroine mirrored after Robin Hood, Zorro, and Joaquin Murrieta; a policeman haunted by his ethics and his Iraq tour of duty; and a killer scarred by his past in El Salvador. The plot is anything but hackneyed; the romance never dull. Not only a great choice for crime fans, L.A. Outlaws, with its deep, intelligent characterization, "is popular entertainment at its most delicious" (Washington Post).

****

The Appeal

By John Grisham

A timely tale of judicial corruption.

Bowmore, Mississippi, is a small town plagued by an extraordinary number of cancer deaths. When a mom-and-pop law firm led by Wes and Mary Grace Payton wins a $41 million settlement against New York--based Krane Chemical, which has spent decades poisoning Bowmore's water supply with carcinogenic chemicals, Krane's corrupt CEO, Carl Trudeau, pledges to do whatever it takes to ensure that Krane wins the case on appeal. Because Mississippi Supreme Court justices are elected rather than appointed, Trudeau and his equally shady cohorts embark on a mudslinging, character-assassinating campaign to replace moderate judge Sheila McCarthy with their own highly sympathetic candidate.

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Doubleday. 368 pages. $27.95. ISBN: 0385515049

Boston Globe *****

"[The Appeal is] a novel that could become its own era-defining classic. ... [Grisham's] panoramic story is a legal thriller, but its mammoth ambition and unflinching moral outlook enable The Appeal to transcend the genre." CHUCK LEDDY

Pittsburg Post-Gazette ****

"As usual, Grisham never delves deeply into his characters. But by rolling some of his interests--the law, the court system, his home state of Mississippi, even baseball--all together, Grisham has written his best legal thriller since 2003's The King of Torts." BARBARA VANCHERI

New York Times ****

"Building a remarkable degree of suspense into the all too familiar ploys described here, Mr. Grisham delivers his savviest book in years. ... What works for Mr. Grisham is his patient, lawyerly, inexorable way of dramatizing urgent moral issues." JANET MASlIN

Washington Post ****

"Despite cardboard characters and broad sweeps of malevolent action from Big Business, an affecting moral comes through in The Appeal. It reads like a long, engaging and sad fable." BETHANNE PATRICK

Los Angeles Times ***

"It's a fascinating narrative, filled with deadly accurate characterizations by an author who knows both the law and politics from the inside. The problem, as with all Grisham's fiction, is that it's egregiously written." TIM RUTTEN

Oregonian **

"[A] cartoon filled with one-dimensional characters, predictable language and nary a plot twist. ... The Appeal is derivative of Silkwood, Erin Brockovich and any number of stories about plucky idealists and soulless corporations, but it isn't as interesting as any of them, perhaps because it doesn't pretend to be anything but fiction." MIKE FRANCIS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

John Grisham was reportedly the best-selling author of the 1990s, and The Appeal, his 20th novel, will likely be yet another massive commercial success. Unlike some of his previous legal thrillers, however, this work has managed to garner an impressive amount of critical respect as well. Although a few reviewers found Grisham's characters one dimensional, his plot hackneyed, and his writing poor, most saw much to admire in the author's convincing and scathing portrayal of judicial corruption. As the Los Angeles Times opined, "[I]n this presidential election year, [The Appeal is] a far more blunt, accurate and plain-spoken indictment of our contemporary political system's real failings than you're likely to find anywhere on the nonfiction lists." The verdict: it's informative and compelling, but it's still Grisham.

****

The Chameleon's Shadow

By Minette Walters

The personal toll of war.

While serving in Iraq, British Lieutenant Charles Acland's convoy is destroyed by a homemade rebel bomb. Acland, the only survivor of the attack, wakes up in a military hospital severely disfigured and unable to remember his tour of duty or the weeks preceding it. After his release, he heads for London's streets, now a paranoid, aggressive drifter abandoned by society. He finds refuge and understanding in a rooming house run by a female bodybuilder, Dr. Jackson, and her lover Daisy and starts to take his first small steps back toward humanity. Then a drunken brawl makes him the prime suspect in the South London murders of several gay men.

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Knopf. 384 pages. $24.95. ISBN: 0307264637

Daily Mirror (UK) ****

"What marks Minette Walters out from the rest is not just the complex yet utterly convincing psychological profiles she draws of her characters, but the fact that she really gets into the heads of some pretty disturbing people. ... The Chameleon's Shadow is another classic which--as is the way with Walters--begins slowly and ends in a panic." HENRY SUTTON

Independent (UK) ****

"Her unwillingness to use the easy explanations of criminality so common in crime fiction, and her determination to delve deep into Jungian questions, give the book the layers of depth that we expect of the 'literary' novel. ... The thriller element of the book is a strong narrative of investigation divided between forensic and medical viewpoints, but it hangs on the creation of two compelling people: the bewildered and angry army officer, and the determined, quick-minded Dr. Jackson." JANE JAKEMAN

No Times-Picayune ****

"The layers of psychopathology and the effects of war--international and domestic--unfold with Walters' usual insight and empathy." DIANA PINCKlEY

Columbus dispatch ****

"The ending is pat and not quite in keeping with the rest of the novel, although it doesn't take a twist extreme enough to spoil the earlier chapters. Walters seems torn between two impulses: the desire to venture into uncertainty about the psychological makeup of her characters; and the urge, built into the structure of mystery fiction, to pin them down." MARGARET QUAMME

Sunday Telegraph (UK) ****

"The final revelations stretch credibility, but neatly round off another intelligent, smoothly plotted novel from one of our most interesting crime writers." SUSANNA YAGER

NY Times Book Review ***

"Unhappily, the story's sensationalism undermines this character study, while the procedural format, with its routine police work and inept cops, only distracts from the deeper issues this psychological thriller raises." MARIlYN STASIO

CRITICAL SUMMARY