The Chameleon’s Shadow, a novel by Minette Walters.  Alfred A Knopf Publisher, 370 pgs., hardcover.  $24.95, ISBN: 978-0-307-26463-3.  Publication release: January 9, 2008.
        This is Ms. Walter’s thirteenth novel.  Ms. Walter’s work has been published in thirty-five countries, and she has received several major writing awards, including two Gold Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association in Great Britain and the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America.
        The Chameleon’s Shadow is a contemporary piece involving Lt. Charles Acland, a young soldier in his 20’s, wounded in the Iraq War, who returns to England after sustaining serious head injuries, the loss of an eye and much of his memory.  Suffering from a host of crippling aftereffects, including severe migraines, he nonetheless petitions to return to military life and, when rejected, becomes bitter and angry.  A series of violent outbursts brings him to the attention of the local police; they are in the midst of investigating three recent murders where the victims have been savagely beaten and placed in compromising positions.  They all have links to Acland.
        “Jackson,” a doctor, serves as a major thread in the hunt to find the murderer.  She runs a pub with her lesbian girlfriend, and is introduced to Acland  after he gets into a melee in their bar with a patron of Pakistani origin and his friends.  The Lieutenant’s former girlfriend, a young runaway and a homeless man provide enough red herrings to keep the reader turning pages.
         
   
City of the Sun, a novel by David Levien, The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, 320 pgs., hardcover, tentative price: $24.95.  ISBN: 978-0-385-52366-0.  Publication release: March 4, 2008.
        David Levien, best known for co-writing screenplays such as Ocean’s Thirteen, Runaway Jury, Walking Tall and Rounders, says that writing novels has always been one of his passions.  This story took three years to write.  It is a grim, heartbreaking yet suspenseful tale of child abduction—of a twelve-year old boy, Jamie Gabriel, who vanishes while delivering newspapers in an Indianapolis suburb.  The case languishes for fourteen months without a lead and the police are now busy with other cases.  Jamie’s parents, Paul and Carol, are sleep-walking through life, numbed by the horror of losing their boy. 
        They are at a dead end, until a chance encounter with a young police officer directs them to a private investigator, Frank Behr, a huge hulk of a man and a former cop, with a sack load of emotional baggage, and another member of the walking wounded.  Reluctantly he agrees to take the case.  In short order, Frank picks up some leads that the police never thought to pursue and, in following them up, he stumbles into the horrific world of sexual exploitation of children. One thug after another linked to the “disappearances” of young boys ends up dead.  Jamie’s father and Frank form a partnership of sorts to root out more clues.

        Frank and Paul eventually end up in Mexico, trying to figure out a way to get onto the grounds of a ranch that provides abducted young boys as sex toys for a wealthy, international clientele.  The rest is a violent, bloody quest to retrieve the Gabriels’ young son and make it back across the border without dying.
        Although the story itself is compelling, the characters suffered from a lack of emotional resonance; they were flat, two-dimensional.  There was too much “telling” (exposition, history and background), and not enough “showing,” which distances the reader from the characters.                The ending, splattered with gore, is over the top in terms of believability.  But then, suspension of belief is what makes for a good film these days, isn’t it? 
  
  
Killing Rommel, a novel by Steven Pressfield, The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, 368 pgs., hardcover, tentative price, $24.95.  ISBN: 0-385-51970-0.  Publication release: April 15, 2008.                 Steven Pressfield, bestselling author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, The Virtues of War, and The Afghan Campaign, turns his attention to World War II and the little-known British, elite commando unit—the Long Range Desert Group—that took on the Afrika Korps and its legendary commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, also known as “The Desert Fox.”  
        Told in “journal” format, from the point of view of a young lieutenant, R. Lawrence Chapman, this “look-back” historical novel relates how a 22-year old Oxford student found himself heading off to war as a part of the Armoured Brigade, but ended up seconded to an elite group of men charged to go behind enemy lines to stop the advancing German forces from taking over vital positions in North Africa.
        Intermixing actual historical figures with fictional characters, Pressfield weaves a vibrant tale of daring, courage, and camaraderie, where friendly fire occurs all too often and chaos and privation is the order of the day.  Pressfield aptly describes the hardships associated with desert fighting: the harsh climate—boiling under the sun and freezing temperatures at night; flash floods that kill sleeping men and wash away their equipment; and disease.  I won’t reveal whether the Long Range Desert Group was successful in their mission, only that Chapman comes face-to-face with Rommel at one point.  (This is fiction, remember.)  But how Chapman and his men get to that point is the best part of the novel.
        The advance copy I read indicated that maps would be included in the final package—some photos of the tanks and equipment would be a worthy addition as well.  This is a must-read for aficionados of World War II history.
  
       
                                  Copyright © Sandy Raschke