Bad-Luck Culprits and a Burned-Out Hero Collide in Thriller

Have you noticed how important bad luck has become to today’s crime novels? Take the case of Robert Crais’ new “Hostages” (Doubleday, 373 pages, $24.95), a tense thriller whose plot is triggered by the misfortunes of three slackers.

First, with all the mini-marts in Southern California, the trio picks one with a gun-happy clerk who they inadvertently kill. Then their getaway truck breaks down, prompting them to hide out at the home of an accountant and his two dependents, a feisty teenage daughter and a sullen preteen son.

When a cop arrives, canvassing the neighborhood for the owners of the stalled truck, the now-homicidal three stooges gun him down, guaranteeing them a busy night of watching detectives surround the house. Worse yet, the police are just part of their problem. The Zip disks the accountant has been downloading from his laptop contain the many financial dealings of West Coast crime lord Sonny Benza, who’ll stop at nothing to retrieve them.

Sucked into this cesspool is suburban Police Chief Jeff Talley, who is already lumbered by a load of woe. He’s a former LAPD hostage negotiator who quit after a botched job resulted in the death of a young captive. Guilt has caused him to withdraw to the ‘burbs, away from family, friends and frontline crime-fighting.

The home takeover places him in a position to relive his worst nightmare, which grows even darker when Benza targets his estranged wife and daughter in an effort to recover the disks.

Crais seems to be fond of heroes who are burnouts. Carol Starkey, the protagonist of his last bestseller, “Demolition Angel,” was an alcoholic basket case when we first met her. Now we have Talley, whose hands start shaking as soon as he reaches for the negotiating hotline. The author’s long suit is his ability to present these walking wounded in full, and to skillfully induce us to share their pain as they struggle to emerge from the inventive crucibles he has designed for their salvation. It’s worked in the past, and it works now.

Joe Pickett, the hero of C.J. Box’s debut novel, “Open Season,” (Putnam, $23.95, 293 pages) is no friend of Dame Fortune. A game warden in Wyoming’s high country, he, his pregnant wife and their teenage daughter are living about a dollar or two above the poverty line. And the work isn’t all that spiritually rewarding, either.

Unlike his predecessor and mentor, Warden Vern Dunnegan, an old pro who knew how to get the most out of the job and how to deal with the often-fractious hunters and other denizens of the outdoors, Joe is self-conscious and awkward. Assigned to the retired Dunnegan’s post, he almost immediately loses his gun to a poacher.

That kind of thing is not only demoralizing, it’s bad for one’s reputation, and Joe is still reeling from it when that same poacher arrives at his cabin, fatally wounded. Why had the murdered man sought him out? Trying to answer that question, Joe begins an investigation that puts him in hot water with an assortment of power players capable of taking away his job and destroying him and his family.

Box’s plot is intriguing, with a forest setting so treacherous it makes Nevada Barr’s locales look positively comfy, with a motive for murder that is as unique as any in modern fiction. Pickett is a refreshingly human and befuddled hero, trying to be moral and honorable while all about him folks are mindlessly and gleefully grabbing all they can.

His family is good company, too, especially his bright daughter, Sheridan. But it’s Box’s offbeat way of telling the story that puts it on the Best of the Year track. There’s a subtle dark humor at work here that surfaces at odd moments as smart slapstick.

For example, there’s a funeral scene, where a poacher-mountain man is buried in his 1989 Ford diesel truck, with the “unconventional” Rev. B.J. Cobb officiating from the vehicle’s hood. As the book progresses, the story grows more serious and Joe’s heroic qualities come to the fore.

He warns a character that “things are gonna get real western.” When his family is attacked, things definitely do, in a finale that drags the Wild West shootout kicking and screaming into this almost new millennium.

Denise Hamilton’s “The Jasmine Trade” (Scribner, $24, 283 pages), which appeared on last week’s bestseller list, is a thriller that takes its sense of place so seriously, at times it seems more like a Baedeker on Los Angeles than a work of fiction.

Hamilton, a former suburban reporter for this paper, was one of the first journalists to call attention to “parachute kids,” the Asian equivalent of latchkey kids, whose parents are not only working late, they’re working late in Hong Kong. It is not surprising then, that her heroine, Eve Diamond, is a Times reporter covering the Asian beat.

When she discovers a connection between two of her assignments--the slaying of a young Chinese bride-to-be and the aforementioned “parachute kids”--woe ensues. Eve is seduced, sedated, stalked and shot at. Fortunately, she can take the heat with only a minimum of tears. She reminds me of a younger, more vulnerable version of Edna Buchanan’s Miami-based Britt Montero, just as the novel’s street-level approach to journalism and justice are reminiscent of Buchanan’s earlier, stronger fictions.

“The Jasmine Trade” (the title refers to the illegal importation of young Asian girls for prostitution) is a solid novel, recommended with two caveats. Don’t pick up the book on an empty stomach; Eve eats often and with lovingly detailed descriptions, and, for dog lovers, a collie is shot and killed and, though she caused the death, Eve isn’t that broken up about it.

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Dick Lochte, the author of “Lucky Dog and Other Tales of Murder” (Five Star) and the prize-winning novel, “Sleeping Dog” (Poisoned Pen Press), reviews mysteries every other week. Next week: Rochelle O’Gorman on audio books.