Time to Say Goodbye is not Pat MacEnulty’s first novel but it’s her first try at crime fiction. It’s terrific. In 1978, a precocious teenager, Vera Lee Gifford, escapes from prison after being found guilty of three murders, including that of her lover’s wife. She changes her life and name, and for 25 years lives in freedom and boring family respectability . Detective Rodney Ellis is one of the few who recalls her from time to time. He arrested her, a drugged-out girl in a bikini who called him “Daddy” and claimed she could remember nothing of the killings. In 2004 a quiet middle-aged maid is found bludgeoned to death in a motel in Florida. Ellis discovers that she had been in prison for murder at the same time as Vera Lee. An old boyfriend of Vera Lee’s reappears. Other connections come to light. The woman who thought herself safe gradually becomes aware of her past closing in; first, as a trickle of incidents, then a frightening rush. Ellis’s inquiries bring him closer to the solutions of crimes nearly 30 years apart. Time to Say Goodbye is perfectly paced as the jigsaw puzzle of Vera Lee’s is slowly assembled. The climax is reached during a vicious Florida storm. Riveting.
Andrea Camilleri’s Sicilian novels get better and wittier as his hero, Inspector Salvo Montalbano, gets moodier and ruder. In Excursion to Tindari, a 21-year-old playboy is shot outside his apartment. Soon afterwards, a distraught man reports the disappearance of his aged parents. They live in the same block as the murdered young man, but there appears to be no link. The old couple were seen for the last time aboard an excursion bus to a nearby town; they sat silently, apart from the other travellers.
Montalban, as usual in trouble with his superiors, seeks the identity of a woman in a porn video and has secret meetings with the Mafia. It all comes together cleverly and the aroma of Sicilian food lingers long after the last page. The translation by Stephen Sartarelli deserves praise, because he has coped so interestingly with translating Sicilian speech patterns and slang, and also for providing, at the end, explanations of the political and social backgrounds of remarks made and events referred to in the text.
Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves, is perhaps the first murder mystery to be set in the Shetlands, allowing her to demonstrate her talent for writing about small communities in desolate places. It is a bleak, snowy mid-winter in Lerwick, and the body of a schoolgirl is found strangled. Ravens circle above. The obvious suspect is a local loner of low intelligence, known to have spoken to the girl before her death. But when Inspector Jimmy Perez starts asking questions, other suspects emerge. The tight-knit community knows that it is harbouring a killer. There are no great surprises, but Cleeves is a very good writer — strong on atmosphere, plot and people.
Time to Say Goodbye
Serpent’s Tail, £8.99; 288pp
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Excursion to Tindari
Picador, £12.99; 224pp
Raven Black
Macmillan, £10.00; 320pp