On Crime

Murder she wrote - then illustrated in brooding tones

By Hallie Ephron, published in the Boston Globe April 26, 2009

BRITTEN AND BRÜLIGHTLY
By Hannah Berry
Metropolitan Books, 112 pp., illustrated, paperback, $20

EXECUTION DOCK
By Anne Perry
Ballantine, 320 pp., $26

WRONGFUL DEATH
By Robert Dugoni
Touchstone, 384 pp., $25

Graphic novels are starting to make their mark in crime fiction. Illustrated with rich, dark, broody ink and watercolor drawings in an oversize format, "Britten and Brülightly" by British author Hannah Berry is a slender tour de force.

The mournful detective, Fernández Britten, with his white fedora and trench coat, sloping shoulders and Charles De Gaulle nose, has become known as "Heartbreaker." His clients are invariably unhappy at hearing the news they pay him to deliver. So ambivalent about his work that he calls himself a researcher instead of a detective, he says, "Nowadays I don't get out of bed for less than a murder. I don't get out of bed much."

A message ("a scribbled note . . . a barrage of imperatives peppered with formal niceties, it was a command wrapped in silk and thrown through my window") gets him out of bed. It's from Charlotte Maughton, a femme fatale who can't bear the thought that her fiancé, Berni Kudos, killed himself. Britten's investigation into Kudos's death intersects with a case from his past, and Britten tries to redeem himself by, for once, delivering the kind of news his clients yearn to hear.

Yin to Britten's yang, sidekick Stewart Brülightly is a surreal wiseacre. I won't spoil the fun of discovering Brülightly's identity. Suffice it to say he gets pretty steeped in the investigation.

Although the occasional wordless action sequence left me scratching my head and the solution feels unnecessarily complicated, the ending is satisfying, like the mournful final gong of a bell. The prose is witty and often poetic, as in this description of an all-night greasy spoon: "an oily no-man's-land of drowsy static, caught between sleep and wakefulness." Or witty, as in this description of a religious nut who works in the office next door: "a mouth that speaks unimpeded by thought."

More than a comic book, this graphic novel gives noir a new dimension.

There's no one better at using words to paint a scene and then fill it with sounds and smells than Anne Perry. "Execution Dock," her 16th novel in her series featuring William Monk, a police superintendent, opens in the year 1864 with a breathtaking chase. Monk, now leading the Thames River Police Force, pursues Jericho Phillips, a nimble villain who leaps from boat to boat, eluding the police in a dense crush of river traffic.

Phillips runs a floating brothel that offers up little boys and sells child pornography. Monk wants to capture him alive "so he could see him tried and hanged for the brutal murder of a Walter "Fig" Figgis, a lad who outgrew his appeal to Phillips's wealthy clientele.

Fig's murder is the only unclosed case left behind by Durban, Monk's mentor and friend, whose death sits uneasily on Monk's conscience. Monk is a prickly figure with a "reputation for brilliance in detection, but also for a nature ruthless and hard to know, or to like." He has taken over Durban's job and pursues Phillips with a vengeance so strong that a brilliant defense attorney uses that very zeal to convince a jury the case against Phillips is flawed by emotion. Public outcry in the wake of the failed trial threatens to capsize Monk and the police force itself. Worst of all, Phillips is free to continue victimizing children.

With the help of his wife, the lovely Hester whose clinic cares for London's most needy, Monk tries to bring Phillips to justice. This engrossing page turner will delight Perry's fans and provide new readers with a perfect introduction to the series.

Robert Dugoni brings back Seattle attorney David Sloane for a second thrill ride in "Wrongful Death." Sloane is on a roll. He's won his last 18 jury trials, many thought unwinnable. A war hero who was injured after he gave his flak jacket to a fellow Marine, Sloane can't resist widow Beverly Ford's request that he file a wrongful death suit on behalf of her husband, a National Guardsman killed in Iraq. She believes his death came as a direct result of substandard body armor.

Sloane knows from the get-go it's a no win predicament. He's up against the Feres doctrine, a legal precedent that prevents families from collecting damages for personal injury or death suffered by while on active duty. But he takes the case anyway, charmed by the widow and challenged by her confrontational young son who reminds him, of course, of himself.

The more Sloane and his partner, former CIA agent Charles Jenkins, investigate, the more anomalies arise. How did Ford and his fellow guardsmen get separated from their convoy, and was their mission that day legitimate? As Sloane gets closer to the truth and refuses to back off, the lives of his wife and son are threatened.

Dugoni gets multiple plot lines rolling and then intercuts at cliffhanger moments to hype the tension. The heroes here are super brave and the villains super nasty. The story is loaded with explosions, gun battles, courtroom dramatics, and high-tech gimmickry, but Dugoni is at his best writing about fishing and the gentle dynamics of a father and son.