BOOK REVIEW: ‘Forty Thieves’

OPINION:

FORTY THIEVES

By Thomas Perry

Grove Atlantic, $26, 386 pages

Sardonic humor is rare in American mysteries. It is the kind of humor that creeps up on you and suddenly your reaction is a wry smile as you read the double-edged melodrama which abounds in Thomas Perry’s work.

For example, according to an Interpol official, the multiple criminals who populate this romp are Eastern European diamond thieves known in Europe as the Pink Panthers who were nicknamed after a movie in which jewels were hidden in a lotion jar. The Los Angeles police are taken aback when the Interpol man tells them cheerfully,”You’ve got a panther infestation.” They are even more disturbed when he recites the history of the Panthers as thieves of Bostnian, Serbian and Montenegrin extraction operating in large groups and among whom are many war veterans.

This is the kind of lopsided book that Mr. Perry does so well. He is the man who usually writes about Jane Whitefield, a mysterious Indian woman who rescues people, sometimes whether they want to be rescued or not. In this case he writes about two unusual couples whose success in life often depends on their expertise with guns. They are the Abels, former Los Angeles Police Department officers who in retirement are detectives solving assorted murders, and the Hoyts, who are assassins for hire living in the Los Angeles suburbs. They are both hired to do damage control on the same killing of a man found in an abandoned storm sewer. He is James Ballantine, a middle-aged African American research scientist with two bullets in his head and no clue as to who did it.

Enter the Panthers who don’t want the killer of Balllantine exposed and who hired the Hoyts to kill the Abels. If you are still following the plot, which is accompanied by a blaze of bullets, it gets better. The Hoyts set fire to the home of the Abels, who are hiding in a fireproof basement — it is noted that they always neighbor-proof their homes — and when that doesn’t work, they have a roaring shoot-out with the Abels who survive that too. It is somewhere around this point in the plot that the Hoyts and the Abels realize they don’t want to die over a crime they know nothing about and don’t much care about. It turns out that Ballantine was a most unsavory individual who made life miserable for his legal wife and several other women who are enamored of him. And these developments are getting in the way of the Panthers’ debut as diamond thieves in the United States.

It is perhaps difficult to realize that the plot is as funny as it is. The Abels and the Hoyts in fact have missions in common. The former L.A. detectives want to live to enjoy their retirement even if it means killing off a few past and present criminals. The Hoyts are more ruthless and their goal is whatever the market will bear in terms of payoff. What is fascinating to the reader is the precision and care with which their work is planned, especially where guns are involved. All four of them are expert shooters and practice diligently. The Abels are more of a normal couple with an unusual hobby, but Nicole Hoyt keeps up her shooting practice as one way of keeping an eye on her sexy husband Ed. The Hoyts punctuate their killing sprees with violent sessions of marital sex. And they have a mutual agreement that whatever their next assassination assignment will be, they will avoid any collision with the Abels.

Mr. Perry’s brand of black humor kicks in when the Abels and the Hoyts become allies as a self protective measure. But the real disappointment is suffered by the Panthers and their glamorous leader Mira who feels responsible for so many of her diamond thieves winding up dead in demolished houses in the course of the war between the Abels and the Hoyts. The Panthers are disappointed in America. One of their leaders calls a halt to the proceedings, and observes sadly,”Now we’ll have to try in a new country. I’m never going back there. The whole country is inhabited by criminals.”

• Muriel Dobbin is a former White House and national political reporter for McClatchy newspapers and the Baltimore Sun.