cover image Crow's Parliament

Crow's Parliament

Jack Curtis. Dutton Books, $18.95 (348pp) ISBN 978-0-525-24513-1

Curtis is the pseudonym of a London-based poet turned thriller writer, but what he has come up with in this first novel is neither poetic nor thrilling, but rather a routine spy novel whose intriguing premises fail to yield excitement. Simon Guerney specializes in freeing kidnap victims, whether they are held in a hut in a Sardinian desert or hidden somewhere in New York or London. An Italian millionaire summons Guerney to Rome to ask that the detective locate his son who was seized in the U.S., where the college student and his mother, the millionaire's estranged wife, both live. Guerney travels to New York and back to his native England, getting help and trouble from friends in the intelligence services. As the narrative becomes cluttered with parapsychology, endless chases and a doomsday threat, the plot zigs and zags, spilling lots of blood everywhere. (June 5)