Mystery book panel: Plan your holiday escape with The Next Chapter

A sneak peek at The Next Chapter (12/27/10)

This time of year, there's sometimes nothing better than a little holiday escape. So light a fire, pour a glass of something nice and curl up with a good book.

But which one? That's where The Next Chapter's mystery book panel steps in. Margaret Cannon, the mystery book columnist for the Globe and Mail, J.D. Singh, the co-owner of The Sleuth of Baker Street bookstore, and P.K. Rangachari, a lover of crime fiction and a professor in the faculty of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, offer their picks for the best new thrillers.



Margaret Cannon's pick:
The Woodcutter
by Reginald Hill

"Hill's standalone novels are every bit as good, if not better, than his series. And this, I do believe, is one of his best novels, ever. It's very topical, but like all of Hill's novels, it's based on old stories. This is a fairy tale -- a poor man who rose by dint of his own talent and intelligence to become an international entrepreneur. He's made millions of dollars, he married a princess, he has a beautiful daughter, he lives in a gorgeous place, and one day everything comes falling down. He's arrested and charged with a really vile crime. He's charged with possession of pedophilic pornography. He's convicted. His business tanks. His wife leaves him for his lawyer. And his daughter dies. And this is all just in the opening. So "happily ever after" becomes "horror ever after," except that we know from the outset that he didn't do any of the things he's accused of.

"So then it turns into a revenge novel. There's a certain amount of bloodthirstiness, but tasteful bloodthirstiness. It's all beautifully structured. I really, really recommend this. I loved it. I couldn't put it down."




P.K. Rangachari's pick:
Started Early, Took My Dog
by Kate Atkinson

"Many years ago, Kate Atkinson wrote a book called Case Histories, which was really a lovely book. It introduced a character called Jackson Brodie, who comes back in this book. This book is, in a sense, a kind of deconstruction of the class system in Britain. Permeating the whole book is an aching sense of loss. There is a police officer who seems to be losing out on life, Jackson Brodie has lost a woman who has stolen things from him, there is a girl who's lost and there's an actress who is losing her mind. She can't remember her words. So the whole book is permeated with that sense of a society that is going away somewhere. It's brilliantly plotted. It's a beautiful book, and yes, there is a mystery. But the mystery really isn't the point."




J.D. Singh's pick:
Collusion
by Stuart Neville

"Over the last year or so, I've talked incessantly about a British writer by the name of Stuart Neville (though he's probably Irish and wouldn't forgive me for calling him British). He wrote a book called The Ghosts of Belfast, which had to be the best debut novel that I think I've ever read, certainly in all of last year. And finally, this year, he's come up with a sequel.

"The only thing about The Ghosts of Belfast that didn't quite work for me was the ending. It seemed to me that everybody should have died at the end, especially our hero, Gerry Fagan. So when I found out that the author was going to write a sequel, I wasn't sure how it was going to work, but work it does.

"The new one is called Collusion, and once again Gerry Fagan is on the hunt. There are, of course, some typical bad guys, but it's the kind of thing that, like The Ghosts of Belfast, once you pick it up, you're going to have a hard time putting it down."

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Here's the full list of the panel's recommendations:

Margaret Cannon's picks:

The Woodcutter by Reginald Hill
Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith
The Damage Done by Hilary Davidson
A Lily of the Field by John Lawton


P.K. Rangachari's picks:
 
Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
Dead Politician Society by Robin Spano
Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo


J.D. Singh's picks:
Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva
Crime Machine by Giles Blunt
Savages by Don Winslow Collusion by Stuart Neville
A Likely Story by Eric Wright

You can hear more of the mystery book panel's picks for this holiday season in the clip above, or on The Next Chapter this Monday, December 27, at 1 p.m. (1:30 pm NT).
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