DECEIT

James Siegel has demonstrated in three finely honed thrillers prior to Deceit that he is one of the most adroit practitioners at work in the field today. Those books (all distinguished by their terse, one-word titles: Epitaph, Derailed and Detour) were a triumph of no-nonsense, ever-accelerating writing whose purpose was to transfix the reader -- a trick that Siegel pulls off once again with Deceit. Tom Valle is a Californian journalist with a very unspectacular career, covering what appears to be an everyday car crash. Then strange facts present themselves to Valle -- including the fact that the autopsy indicates that the car crash victim has been castrated. And although the driving licence says otherwise, the corpse is that of a black man rather than a white. Valle sees this as a chance to re-energise his career, and uncover some nasty secrets. But he has made a rod for his own back by some ill-advised journalistic double-dealing in the past, such as some fictitious stories he has ...