Barron’s ‘Black Mountain’ stars his ex-mob enforcer


Barron’s ‘Black Mountain’ stars his ex-mob enforcer

“Black Mountain,” by Laird Barron (Putnam)

Like a lyricist, Laird Barron excels at manipulating the tones and cadence of language. Like a Gothic novelist, the mood he creates is often bleak.

“You don’t teach a child to become a killer by rote lectures,” he writes. “To create a predatory machine, you foster an appreciation of the natural world and our minuteness upon its canvas. ... We are as nothing and that permits us to do anything.”

It comes as no surprise, then, that Barron wrote both poetry and horror before turning to crime fiction with 2018’s “Blood Standard,” a novel that introduced former mob enforcer Isaiah Coleridge. At the start of that violent book, Coleridge appeared to be a predatory machine; but, by its conclusion, he vowed that from then on he would kill only those who have it coming.

Barron’s new novel, “Black Mountain,” finds Coleridge working as a private investigator in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. There, the local mob boss hires him to find out who brutally killed two organized crime strong arms – and why.

As Coleridge digs into the case, he learns that many other victims, mostly derelicts and prostitutes, have been murdered in a similar fashion. Soon, his suspicions focus on another retired hitman, a mysterious psychopath known as the Croatoan, the name of a Native American tribe to which he may or may not be related.

Vile conspiracy is taken down in novel ‘Big Sky’

“Big Sky,” by Kate Atkinson (Little Brown)

Former soldier and policeman Jackson Brodie, who last appeared nine years ago in “Started Early, Took My Dog,” makes his long-anticipated return in Kate Atkinson’s new novel, “Big Sky.”

Although the book is billed as the fifth installment in the Brodie series, the brooding, modern-day white knight isn’t the protagonist of this alternately depressing, inspiring and slyly funny tale. In fact, he blunders into the vile conspiracy at the center of the story without realizing it and has little to do with taking the bad guys down.

As the story opens, Brodie is coping with his shambles of a personal life while working as a private detective on the west coast of England. His cases are mundane, and they clearly bore him.

The plot develops slowly at first as Atkinson introduces a cabal of seemingly ordinary professional men whose sideline is luring girls into the sex trade.

As always in a Kate Atkinson book, whether it’s the Brodie series or her mainstream novels, the pleasures derive from her mastery as a storyteller, her skillful character development and the beauty of her quirky and poetic prose.

Associated Press