Liars and Saints

 Donna Leon has said that there is one main reason people turn to detective fiction: It's a great pleasure to see someone smart trying to solve a problem. If you read about a detective, you're simply reading about someone going to work, day after day, until a particular project is completed. Detective stories are conservative stories: You know that there will be a solution, and you know justice, or something like justice, will triumph in the end. (This is a nice break from actual life, where solutions are scarce, and so many issues involve a murky compromise.) Jane Harper's "Exiles," one of the standout crime novels of 2023, features a decent guy, Falk, with a problem. Someone he knows--a mom--has gone missing. She attended a local fair, in Australia, left her infant in a carriage, and disappeared. Why on Earth? Falk is driven to find a solution because he knows the missing woman's teenaged daughter; this kid is suffering, and she can't imagine that her mo...

Jane Harper made a sensation just a few years ago with her debut, "The Dry." A second novel--"Force of Nature"--wasn't as celebrated. Now people are saying "The Lost Man" is her best book. She had been a reporter for something like thirteen years before turning to crime fiction. When people use the term "slow burn," I get nervous. I'd prefer a fast burn. But "slow burn"--done well--can be very enjoyable. What do you need for an effective slow burn? You need to persuade the reader--from sentence one--that important, shocking information is being withheld. Everything that happens--no matter how apparently pedestrian--needs to have an aura of dread; you have to tease and frustrate the reader, with full confidence that you can deliver the goods. Confidence that the revelations will be worth the wait. I have that confidence--as I make my way through the first third of "Lost Man"--because the heavy-hitter Val McDermid ha...