It's December 1968, eight months after the Democratic Convention and the riots that accompanied it, the setting of SMOKE-FILLED ROOMS. Smokey Dalton and his adopted son Jimmy are still hiding out after fleeing Memphis (and the FBI). Smokey is now working unofficially as a private detective, the same sort of job he had in Memphis and is only now beginning to feel comfortable in the new city.

Smokey is hired by a woman to investigate the murder of her husband after she was dissatisfied with the job the police did. She felt that because he was a black man the police made poor assumptions and gave the case a low priority without bothering to look too hard. In fact they attributed the death as a gang murder, even though the man was a respected dentist. The case is the catalyst to an investigation that leads him to uncover crimes on an unimagined magnitude. But because the crimes have been perpetrated on blacks, the solution is not as simple as just identifying the murderer.

Smokey has to juggle his time working on the case with getting Jimmy to and from school. A local gang, the Blackstone Rangers are attempting to recruit Jimmy, which would most likely lead to an inevitable life of crime. Smokey is determined to come up with a solution to put them off for good.

A further responsibility is heaped on Smokey's shoulders when Laura Hathaway asks him to act as her security for some hostile business negotiations in which she is involved. It is this sub-plot that highlights a second form of prejudice, that of sexual discrimination.

The story flows smoothly from crisis to crisis as Smokey handles each situation with his usual common sense and decency. Although he is challenged more regularly with the need to quell the impotent rage and frustration that he is filled with as he deals with bigotry and racism on a daily basis.

There is so much more to the Smokey Dalton books than just a mystery to be solved, although the mystery in this case is very interesting, cleverly constructed and relevant. Each of the books are also surrounded by turmoil often with a simmering feeling of unrest, echoed by the increasingly vocal Civil Rights movement and the backlash that it caused.

The mood of the book as seen through Smokey himself ranges from resignation to barely controlled fury. The portrayal of the racism that was prevalent at the time created some poignant moments and some tension-charged moments as the humiliation felt by Smokey emanated from the pages.

Two examples of this kind of racism stayed with me long after I finished the book. The first took place in a supermarket in a white neighbourhood that Smokey was passing through. He had decided to pick up some groceries and was pleasantly surprised to find the prices were much cheaper and the fruit and vegetables were much fresher than those found in his own neighbourhood. When he came to the checkout, the cashier simply refused to serve him, closing her checkout. The manager then confronted Smokey in front of everyone in the shop and advised him to leave the groceries and go.

Later that night while he was still seething, Smokey was to make the following observation about the incident.

"I hadn't encountered that kind of overt racism since I'd come to Chicago. Usually in Chicago, people smiled at you and then denied your rental application...

...I'd once said to Franklin that I'd preferred overt racism. At least then you knew where you stood.

I now regretted those words. Either kind of discrimination felt bad. Even now I felt nauseous, a sense of helplessness filling me."

The second example was much more shocking in it's brutality. A white man and his black girlfriend were bashed and raped by a couple of white men, outraged by the white man kissing "that monkey" in a park. The assault itself was shocking to start with, but then the assumptions made by the police when they arrived were even worse.

I found the issues that were raised very sobering and found myself being outraged by the unfairness of the treatment, knowing that scenes like these happened every day in real life.

This is another superb story that continues a terrific series set right in the middle of a time of great turmoil, occasionally touched by events that followed the Civil Rights Movement. In this book, Smokey crosses paths with the fledgling Black Panthers; serving as a reminder of the difficult times he was living in.

Once again, Kris Nelscott has produced an outstanding thriller and set it in a difficult place and time in history. I found it compelling reading, both for the tense thriller and for the thought it promoted by raising such strong issues.

After enjoying a lot of success with his Atticus Kodiak series, a series that has made me a true fan, Greg Rucka has followed it up with this stand-alone story. While it definitely has its moments in terms of providing a tense thriller, I found that the story didn't quite ring true to me. I'll explain why a little later.

The story is told from the first person point of view of Mim Bracca. From the outside it would appear that Mim has it all. She's a member of a Tailhook, a rock band that is riding a wild wave of success that seems like it will never end. But Mim is haunted by her past and the early tragedies that shaped her life.

After her father was sent to prison for the murder of her mother, Mim and her brother were sent to a series of foster homes with varying levels of success. Mim became what could delicately be termed a "problem child" and her experiences could be directly related to her alcoholism now.

It's her problem with alcohol that eventually leads her to be confronted by the lead singer of the band while on tour with the news that Mim is being temporarily rested from the band because they consider her drinking to have gotten out of control. After spending the previous two days alternately blacked out or vomiting, Mim doesn't have much of an argument and is soon aboard a plane bound for her home in Portland, Oregon.

When she arrives home, nursing a hangover from the flight, she is confronted by a man on her doorstep and then abducted at gunpoint. It's an unusual abduction because she is thrown into the back of a van, forced to strip naked and then is driven around for a while before being dumped back at her own home. Confused and scared, she rings the police but when she tells them her story they are very sceptical and take little action.

Mim's response to her ordeal, as it is with most situations, is to get completely and utterly rat-faced drunk. From this point her life begins to nosedive as she experiences personal tragedy (response: get drunk), is publicly humiliated (response: get drunk), is blackmailed (response: get drunk), her father is kidnapped (response: well...you get the idea).

After what seems like an eternity Mim finally takes some sort of control of the situation and comes up with an idea about who is blackmailing her and how she can fight her way out of the problem. What annoyed me the most about Mim's helplessness was her utter refusal to let anyone else, such as the police, help her in any way. I don't yell at books very often, but I sure did this time, pleading with her to get some bloody help before we ran out of pages.

I found the way that Mim's alcoholism was dealt with to be extremely frustrating and unrealistic. Here was a rich and famous young woman who was sent home by her fellow band members to "dry out", yet she was given absolutely no support at all. In fact, she was just shoved on a plane by herself, expected to go home where she lived alone and then, all be herself, she had to "dry out".

Just a little bit of help from someone would have served the duel purpose of giving the story some added interest, and it would have helped move things along a little more quickly.

Finally, things begin to fall into place after numerous disagreements with the police which I simply found annoying and distracting. Once Mim pulls herself together the action picks up and we are treated to an ending with one or two unexpected twists. But on the whole I found the book rather disappointing with the resolution leaving me with a feeling that it was too little, too late.

Starting out as a missing person story this debut novel by Jodi Compton slowly evolves into a wonderfully emotional hunt that raises some difficult questions of whether ethics should prevail over grief. It's a story that builds up the momentum until reaching a climax that, although not earth-shattering, unearths a few surprises.

Written in the first person perspective of Sarah Pribek, a detective with the Hennepin County sheriff's office, we meet a capable yet vulnerable woman. The reason for her vulnerability stems from the recent semi-retirement of her partner, mentor and friend Genevieve Brown. Genevieve had recently suffered a mother's worst nightmare when her daughter was raped and murdered. To make matters worse, the man who did it escaped punishment due to a legal technicality, a technicality that Sarah feels responsible for.

But that is just one sub-plot. The other main sub-plot involves her husband Mike Shiloh. Shiloh is also a cop who was working with the Minneapolis Police Department until he was recruited by the FBI. From early on it is established that he and Sarah are very much in love and go out of their way to show how much they care for each other. Which is why Sarah thought it was unusual when Shiloh left for Quantico without so much as a note to say goodbye. By this time it has also been established that Shiloh tends not to do the expected all the time, so Sarah is not particularly concerned.

It's only when the FBI ring to ask why Shiloh hasn't shown up that the alarm bells start to ring. Fortunately, Sarah happens to specialise in finding missing persons and immediately begins to track down his last known movements. What's not so fortunate for her peace of mind is her knowledge of the probability of finding a missing person alive after they've been missing for longer than 36 hours. The tension brought about from searching for her missing husband soon consumes all other thoughts and takes over the mood of the book.

Even though this is first and foremost a mystery story, it's main focus turns out to be about relationships. Starting with the husband and wife relationship displayed by Sarah and Shiloh. Although it appears strong at the start, and indeed it probably is, Sarah soon comes to the realisation that there is much about her husband she doesn't know. The next relationship spotlighted is the friendship forged as fellow police officers by Sarah and Genevieve. But this too is revealed to be fragile as Sarah fells she is unable to supply the support Genevieve needs in her grief. Finally there is a brother / sister relationship that is revealed towards the end of the book that holds secrets from Shiloh's past.

The way the book finished gave me the strong impression that this was the first of a series featuring Sarah Pribek. If this is the case then Jodi Compton will definitely be an author to look out for by readers who like a bit more depth to their characters.

In his latest novel, John Grisham has returned to the small town of Clanton, Mississippi, the scene of his first book A TIME TO KILL. Once again he has proven that he has the knack of drawing you into the book, compelling you to read more. I found that this was both good and bad in the case of THE LAST JUROR, good because I always had the sense that something was about to happen and I was desperate to find out what it was. Bad because, more often than not, I was left hanging.

Covering the years 1970 to 1979, it's written in the first person from the point of view of Willie Traynor, a young outsider to the town who has just purchased the town newspaper. It's through his eyes that all the events in Clanton are reported.

The big story of the day was the rape and murder of a young local woman who was able to identify her attacker as Danny Padgitt to her next-door neighbour. Much is made of the powerful and infinitely corrupt Padgitt family. We hear how dangerous they are when they're crossed, how ruthless they are when dealing with invaders to their land. They are an ever-present, menacing storm cloud lurking on the horizon of the peaceful town of Clanton. Traynor, as an outspoken mouthpiece against Danny Padgitt looks to have put himself firmly within the Padgitt's sights, as have the potential jurors for the trial.

Callie Ruffin is the last juror chosen for the Danny Padgitt trial. She is a notable selection because she is the first black juror chosen in Ford County and she is a god-fearing mother of eight adult children and a friend of Willie Traynor. She is a fascinating character and her past is drawn out over a series of extravagant home cooked lunchtime meals that she prepared for Willie.

As it turns out, the trial of Danny Padgitt is over one-third of the way into the book. From that point on it really reads like a study of life in a southern small town during the 1970's. Consequently the pace of the book settles down to match the comfortable lifestyle that comes with living in a small town. While this is fine and pleasant enough, it all became a bit frustrating after being revved up by the frenetic activity in the opening and the continual references of retribution that could possibly come from the Padgitt family.

Admittedly, we do see some action later in the book, but these sequences too are punctuated by long pauses of inactivity. So much so that rather than building up tension and suspense, I found that it had the opposite effect and it was more a sense of relief that something was happening that I felt.

I suppose the most damning observation I could make is the realisation that the anecdotes told to Willie about the misdeeds of the Padgitt family sounded a lot more interesting than the actual events of the book. The story of sheriff's deputies going missing on Padgitt land appeals to me a lot more than the manoeuvrings of minor politicians in an election race.

It also seems that Grisham's chronic ending problem is continuing. I've been disappointed in the way Grisham has ended his books in the past (notably in THE FIRM, THE CLIENT and THE SUMMONS), often leaving the whole story unfinished at the final full stop. I felt that he did it again here. After meandering through town learning about every religious belief in the county, renovating Willie's house in record slowness and drawing out the discussion of whether or not to sell the newspaper, we were suddenly nearing the 350-page that appears to be Grisham's limit. Before I knew it, everything was wrapped up in a clumsy package and the book was finished. Long and carefully constructed plotlines were cut without a by your leave and characters who had become very familiar were abandoned.

As mentioned at the start of the review, Clanton Mississippi was the setting of Grisham's first book, A TIME TO KILL and as such, we are reacquainted with a few of the characters from that book. Making his reappearance is Harry Rex Vonner, lawyer and source of all sorts of useful local knowledge for Traynor. Also, there's the deliciously unscrupulous defence attorney, Lucien Wilbanks, one of the better "man you love to hate" characters I've come across. Smaller appearances are made by D.A. Rufus Buckley and Judge Omar Noose who both have much larger roles in Grisham's earlier book.

All is not lost with THE LAST JUROR. Read it for the pleasant imagery of rural living in Mississippi. Relax on Callie Ruffin's front porch over a delicious home-cooked meal. Delight in the increasingly profitable newspaper business built by Willie Traynor. But don't go looking for a tension-charged mystery.

Readers hoping for a light mystery that is full of intricate plot devices that will challenge their own powers of deduction while being taken on a thrill-ride of adventure should be well advised this is not the book for you. THE GUARDS reads like a celebration of hardboiled fiction, the mood is dark, some might even use the term nourish and the style is spare as Bruen has stripped the prose down to the bare bones.

The story focuses on Jack Taylor, an ex-Garda Siochana officer (Ireland's National Police Service) who was kicked out of the service after he punched a member of parliament in the mouth. He spends his time, when he's not sitting drunk in his local pub, working as a private detective. Or at least, he would be working as a private detective if Ireland recognised the profession. As Jack explains it, he just finds things for people, thanks to two qualities, patience and pig stubbornness, particularly the latter.

One day, while sitting in Grogan's bar working on his latest drunk, Jack is approached by Ann Henderson who wants to hire him to investigate the suicide of her daughter, Sarah. Ann is convinced that her daughter wouldn't kill herself and wants Jack to find the truth. Jack, drunk at the time, agrees to take the case. Once Jack starts working the case, it becomes obvious that he has a specific sense of right and wrong as evidenced when he targets his enemies. But he offsets that with a distinctly underdeveloped sense of self-preservation, or perhaps it's just dulled by alcohol abuse, as evidenced by the forthright approach he uses to confront these same enemies.

Written in the first person from Jack's point of view, it is narrated in terse, clipped sentences as though Taylor is telling us his story through tightly gritted teeth, absolutely exhausted by his ordeals. It is very reminiscent of Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder series or George Pelecanos' Nick Stefanos series. Both of these series feature characters that battle constantly with alcoholism as Jack does. Further clues to the hardboiled qualities that Bruen achieves can be found in the quotes used at the start of selected chapters, the authors of these quotes include Ed McBain, Walter Mosely, Elmore Leonard and Pelecanos. At different times you can see the influence of each of these authors making their presence felt.

As a devotee of hardboiled fiction this book really appealed to me. It's dark and occasionally depressing but the character of Jack Taylor is an honest to goodness survivor greeting most setbacks with stoic good humour he becomes a strangely endearing character and I found myself cheering for him by the end. I think it is a worthy Edgar Award nominee.

By the way, between blackouts, a trip to the mental asylum, attempts at sobriety, recovering from beatings and cataclysmic falls off the wagon, Jack does actually put some time into the case he was hired to investigate. Whether he solved the case is neither here nor there really, the important thing is how he survives.

For those who are late to Jasper Fforde's books, the quick overview is that he has created a brilliantly imaginative parallel world where Wales is a communist country, the Crimean War has been in progress for over 120 years, dodos and thylacines are household pets and it is possible for people to read their way into books. To get a better feel for his world and to appreciate this book more fully, it is strongly recommended that you read THE EYRE AFFAIR and LOST IN A GOOD BOOK first.

While the first 2 books were set mainly in the real world with occasional visits into various classic novels, this one takes place almost exclusively within books and the result is a breathtaking expansion of what was already a superb creation.

Thursday Next, heroine of the first two books is hiding out from the evil Goliath Corporation, among other enemies, inside The Well of Lost Plots. To be specific, she's hiding out in a dreary crime thriller called Caversham Heights where she takes over a role of Mary in the story as part of the Character Exchange Programme. The Well of Lost Plots is where all of those books that are still being written are kept, along with a wealth of plot devices, characters both good and evil who are waiting to be used and members of Jurisfiction who rule on problems within books and who generally maintain order.

Thursday encounters various dangers while working as a Jurisfiction apprentice including a dangerous flock of grammasites, verbisoides in this instance, who attack and consume any stray verbs they could find. She also has terrible problems with a mispeling vyrus that threatens to reduce the story and it's characters to an unrecognisable shambles. But there is also a murderer in their midst and it's left to Thursday to work out who the murderer is and why the victims were killed.

This really is an incredibly imaginative and entertaining book that expands Fforde's BookWorld to unbelievable proportions. It's left me fervently hoping that there are more Thursday Next stories still to come.

Every now and again you come across an author who writes a good first book and you think, Okay, that's a great start, but can they back it up? Reed Arvin is just such an author with his terrific debut THE WILL under his belt. He has followed it up here with another heck of a legal thriller. In this book, as in his first, Arvin takes the principal character out of his comfortable, secure life and throws him into turmoil, threatening not only his job, but also his life. The result is an unpredictable thriller in which I found it easy to put myself in the protagonist's shoes and ask myself, "Now, what would I have done?"

The protagonist thrust into the extreme situation in this case is Jack Hammond, an up and coming lawyer who works for a major Atlanta law firm. After making a serious error in judgement while working on a criminal case, he loses his job and winds up working as a public defender, relying on a friendly judge's clerk to send cases his way. When he hears that friend and former client Doug Townsend has died of a drug overdose he is at first saddened, then surprised because although Townsend was known to take drugs, he thought he was clean now. He decides to have a look around Townsend's apartment in an attempt to find a clue as to why he would have killed himself and in doing so he discovers 2 surprising things. The first is, not only was Doug clean of drugs but he seemed to be doing quite well for himself, particularly when you consider the number of airplane trips he had taken recently. The second, judging by the hundreds of photos stuck to the walls of one of the rooms in his house, was that he had a rather disturbing obsession with noted opera singer Michele Sonnier. Not only that, but the airplane trips coincided with Sonnier's performances.

Jack's next step is to seek out Michele Sonnier to find out what she knows about Doug Townsend. It's the first of many chances he is to take. Sonnier turns out to be the lynchpin to the whole story, linking Townsend to a groundbreaking company called Horizn Pharmaceuticals, but the question is - was the link friendly or deadly? The company has some sort of involvement with a potential new cure for hepatitis C and will soon be listing on the stock market. The money involved is huge, therefore so are the stakes and the desperation to keep Hammond's nose out of Horizn's business.

From the moment that Michele Sonnier makes her appearance the story splits off into numerous themes taking in the world of the opera diva, computer hacking, the possibility of a cure for hepatitis C, big business and a conspiracy that may be behind the deaths of 8 people. As you can tell, it's a fairly diverse story and Arvin does well to hold the various threads together to ensure that it's compelling throughout.

From very early on you get the impression that Hammond is operating under a feeling of complete acceptance of the consequences of his earlier actions. He seems perfectly willing to take whatever chances are necessary to accomplish his goals and so, because of this, I was prepared to accept that he would be willing to make difficult decisions. The result is a continual increase in momentum as he puts himself in ever greater danger, always against his better judgement.

A very important part of the story and a point that makes him a particularly endearing character is that Jack is a flawed character. He falls in love with women he shouldn't, he enters places that he knows will be dangerous to his health and he ignores warnings to stop investigating things he shouldn't. I found that I was pulling for Hammond to succeed even more than I usually might because of his flaws and because he was aware of them and accepted them. It made him much more believable as a character.

There was also a feeling throughout the book that someone was lying but I found it difficult to decide who it was because everyone's stories were so darn convincing. Sure, I had my suspicions but I kept thinking they were based on who I wanted to be telling the truth rather than who actually was. It kept me guessing which way the story might head right up until the bittersweet ending.

Anyone who loves a good legal thriller in the John Grisham style will certainly enjoy this book and it shows that a riveting courtroom battle is not necessary to make a legal thriller terrific reading. With sharp dialogue, a complex, but not convoluted plot and likable central characters, THE LAST GOODBYE provides terrific entertainment.

One very important point to remember when reading Clive Cussler books, they are meant to be purely entertaining. Any rescue or feat of survival that appears possible in the real world is merely accidental, the escapes from certain death are to be expected and accepted.

Dirk's back, but there has been a major change to his life. He has discovered that he is the father of a pair of fraternal twins who are now 23 years old and he has had to make a complete readjustment of his life's priorities. His children, named Summer and Dirk, are every bit as intrepid as their father and have both been given jobs working with him at the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA). The whole Pitt family are all involved in the start of adventure, with Dirk and Summer trying to work out the origin of a massive slick of brown crud that is killing the sea-life in the Caribbean. Like so many other Dirk Pitt adventures it appears that a mysterious multi-billionaire megalomaniac is behind the environmental disaster in the making, with even grander and earth shattering plans in store. Again, like other Dirk Pitt stories, the evil mastermind is willing to use deadly force to keep his nefarious activities a secret. It's up to Dirk and his sidekick Al Giordino to save the day - and the world.

Clive Cussler sticks to his tried and true formula, starting with a brief history lesson, this time harking back to the Trojan Wars around 1190 B.C. and then fast forwarding to 2006 and the research being undertaken in the Caribbean where, lo and behold they come across an ancient artefact. As usual, a nice job is made of marrying the ancient story to the present day crisis. The second part of the formula involves Dirk Pitt saving the world, yet remaining stoically modest about his role in proceedings. We all know it's going to happen; it's just a matter of how Dirk's going to get us there.

Unfortunately, this Dirk Pitt thriller isn't the fast-paced thrill ride of earlier books. You get the distinct impression that Dirk Pitt is getting tired and is preparing to call it a day. The usual snap is missing and the heights of excitement just aren't reached, probably reflective of Dirk's malaise. Sure, the corny dialogue, improbable escapes and unbelievable rescues are there, but the edge feels as though it's missing. Could it be that the young Pitts will soon be taking over from their old man?

If you've never read a Dirk Pitt story before I would advise against starting with this one. Dirk Pitt has come a long way and been through many adventures and does quite a bit of reminiscing about the past. Better books to start with (and these are the first ones I read) might be Dragon, Sahara or Inca Gold, but don't forget the warning at the top of the review because this can't be stressed often enough, these books aren't to be taken seriously.

Here is a wonderful example of black humour as the unlikely mixture of poetry and gangland violence are brought together in a hugely enjoyable story. It's wildly entertaining, managing to go from laugh out loud funny to viciously violent in the blink of an eye.

Harold Jenks is a lieutenant to a St Louis drug lord who sees his only opportunity for escape from the life lies in assuming the identity of a scholarship-winning poetry student. Stealing the name Sherman Ellis along with a bag full of his boss's drugs he heads for Eastern Oklahoma University and a new life of academia.

Jay Morgan is the poetry professor who doesn't quite know what to make of Jenks / Ellis, but points out to his fellow professors that Ellis' poetry is just as awful as his fellow students. Anyway, Morgan has his mind on more important matters, not the least of which is working out what to do with the body of the dead girl in his bed.

Finally, there's the enigmatic Fred Jones, an inspired character giving a refreshing injection of the unusual to the story. Jones is a rich old man who has promised to donate a large sum of money to the university with the understanding that someone (Jay Morgan) agrees to help him to get his poetry published. Not surprising to us, but very surprising to Morgan, the poetry is very, very good. But it's Jones' other talents that Morgan finds he has a more immediate use for.

Of course, all sorts of hell and mayhem are rained down upon the quiet university town of Fumbee, when Harold Jenks' former boss and his team of thugs come looking for his drugs. Between this mob and a rogue private investigator who becomes a one man crime wave, there's no shortage of action.

The cold violence displayed in the book appealed to the hardboiled reader in me, but it was mixed with plenty of humorous moments which managed to take the wicked edge off and put a smile on my face even as the bodies piled up. After reading this, the old gun lobby catch-cry may have to change to "Guns don't kill people - poets kill people".

Mike Hammer is the classic hard-bitten private detective. He talks hard, he fights hard and when it comes to love he falls fast and hard. Nothing at all is held back in this highly charged murder case that cuts straight to Hammer's core.

The tough, no-nonsense Hammer is faced with the cruel shooting murder of Jack Williams, a close friend, and takes it hard. In front of Pat Chambers, another good friend who just happens to be the Captain of Homicide, he vows that when he catches the murderer he would gladly shoot him in the gut, just like Williams had been. The case quickly becomes a race between Hammer and Chambers, as Hammer is determined to have his vengeance.

This is hardboiled detective fiction as it should be. There are no qualms when it comes to violence, no regrets over shooting the bad guys, whisky is swallowed easily in one swallow and the dames are kept begging for more. We charge from suspect to suspect watching Hammer extract information under threat of violence, and following through on the threat whenever necessary. Moving at breakneck speed, the bodies pile up while Hammer finds himself falling in love. It makes for terrific reading for lovers of the hardboiled detective genre.