Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 25, 1990 TAG: 9003252189
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by Geoff Seamans
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Without its dust jacket, "Landscape of Lies" would be impenetrable. The jacket depicts the medieval painting whose clues hero Michael Whiting and heroine Isobel Sadler must follow in quest of hidden trove at the end of a trail back and forth across the south of England.
Physical suspense is provided by a nasty chap who seems always a step ahead of Whiting and Sadler. But the greater suspense comes in the mental hurdles that the 20th-century protagonists must leap to decipher the painting's medieval "logic."
Symbolism might be a better word; there's little of the intellectual substance that made Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" such a delight. Still, "Landscape of Lies" is a pleasurable adventure/mystery romp - provided you don't lose its jacket.
\ Criss Cross By Tom Kakonis. St. Martin's Press. $18.95.
Any book with the quote on its front, "Kakonis can really write," starts out with one strike against it. Happily, the count doesn't reach strike three.
"Criss Cross" is a gritty crime novel set in gritty Grand Rapids, Mich. (Actually, Grand Rapids may be a lovely place, but it's not in this book.) The dialogue of Kakonis' characters rings true, and he doesn't spare the gory detail.
Oddly, the book is also funny, in places hilariously so. Even more oddly, the funniest characters are the bad guys. They're also the most interesting. Played against them, putative hero Mitchell Morse - the personification of white-knight, go-it-alone toughness - is positively tedious.
I didn't know quite what to make of "Criss Cross." But I liked it, a lot.
\ Unbridled By Mark Daniel. Ticknor & Fields. $17.95.
A `thriller' about steeplechase racing in England, told in the first person by its main character, a steeplechase jockey ... hmmm, Mark Daniel must be bidding to become the next Dick Francis.
Wrong.
Sure, Daniel's first novel is set - like many of Francis' mysteries - amid the steeplechase scene of England. And no less than Francis, Daniel seems steeped in knowledge of the sport.
But `Unbridled' is only a little bit a thriller, and even less a mystery. Instead, it's the sometimes hilarious, some- times depressing autobiography story of its protagonist-narrator, whose courage on the racetrack is exceeded only by his lack of common sense.
And where Francis is as English as they come, `Unbridled' is permeated by its Irishness. The hero, Georgie Blane, is Irish, and so his approach to life: a mix of fatalism and cocky defiance of the gods. Rather than in measured English cadences, Georgie tells his story with the loquaciousness and love of the English language so characteristic of Irish writers (and so seemingly at odds with traditional Irish hostility to English culture.)
But then, irony also is part of the formula. Francis has his thugs and crooks, too, but his world is essentially well-ordered: Right is right, wrong is wrong, and plots march steadily toward their proper conclusions. Daniel's world is ragged: The plot of the chapterless `Unbridled' advances in fits and starts, and self-mockery more than morality is what the plot is about.
by CNB