Perspective: Thrillers

Thrillers

By JEAN HELLER

RUNNING BLIND, by Lee Child (Putnam, $18.95).

Lee Child always starts his books out with a bang, and his newest Jack Reacher story, Running Blind, has one of his better openings. Reacher, a former MP turned drifter, stops two thugs trying to bully the owner of a new Italian restaurant into paying protection. The FBI promptly arrests him and accuses him of association with organized crime and the murder of a woman whose path crossed his in the military.

But the accusations are a ruse to force Reacher to help the FBI find a serial killer, who is doing away with women who left the service after being sexually harassed and bringing charges against their tormentors. Their bodies are always found immersed in a bathtub of green paint without any sign of violence. And the killer leaves no clues, no hairs, no fibers, no prints.

Reacher becomes a virtual prisoner as he and his bureau handlers crisscross the country chasing theories that get them nowhere as more women die.

Meanwhile, Reacher has to make some personal decisions. He is uncomfortable with roots, and that is what an inherited house feels like to him. But will his girlfriend, Jodie, a promising New York lawyer, leave him if he gives up the house and goes off on his own from time to time?

Running Blind is a great read, and even if you figure out the "who" about mid-book, the "how" will elude you to the end.

One quibble. At the start of Chapter 13, some characters have the Sunday newspapers spread out before them. One is USA Today. Mr. Child, USA Today does not publish on weekends.

BODY OF A GIRL, by Leah Stewart, (Penguin Putnam, $23.95).

Leah Stewart's debut thriller, Body of a Girl, starts with a bang that reverberates through three-quarters of the book and then can't sustain its own momentum. And that's a shame because Stewart is a promising writer.

Olivia Dale is a 20-something police reporter for a daily newspaper in Memphis (Southern crime fiction being all the rage these days). Dale is tougher than her experience should allow and can trade cynicisms with the most jaded cops. But the sight of a young woman, beaten, raped and then crushed by the wheels of her own car, begins to wear Olivia down. She becomes obsessed with finding the dead girl's killer and more than a little obsessed in quite another fashion with the dead girl's teenage killer.

Olivia realizes she resembles the dead girl and begins living that girl's life, even wearing her reddish wig. She puts herself in senseless danger, much to the chagrin of her talent-scout boyfriend and her nutty roommate. She is even followed by the man who was so preoccupied with the dead girl that his attentions border on stalking.

The whole drug scene is overdone and unnecessary. And when the killers are finally caught, Olivia has nothing to do with it. It is the kind of surprise that shouldn't happen. Part of the fun of mysteries (and thrillers are a subset of that genre) is trying to figure out who the bad guy is. Depriving the reader of the chance isn't playing fair.

A PERFECT EVIL, by Alex Kava, (Mira, $22.95).

Alex Kava's debut novel, A Perfect Evil, isn't perfect at all. It's okay, although if the author has ever set foot inside a real-life newspaper office, she wasn't paying attention.

Maggie O'Dell, an FBI profiler, is sent to a small Nebraska town to help search for a serial killer who victimizes children. O'Dell is fighting the disintegration of her marriage and the emotional hangover left by a serial killer who staged a massacre before her eyes, then eluded her.

Nebraska has just executed a killer who admitted to slaying one child in the small town, but he denied the other two. When Sheriff Nick Morelli stumbles on a fourth body after the execution, he knows the condemned man was a copycat killer, and the original murderer is still out there.

Kava handles the familiar territory of her story well, building a nice relationship between Morelli and O'Dell, maintaining suspense and keeping the killer's identity hidden. Some readers might not feel satisfied by the outcome, but it seems to signal a sequel.

Jean Heller is the author of the mystery-thrillers, Handyman and Maximum Impact.