Ice Fire

Grisham fans will enjoy at least the opening of Lyons’s debut thriller, the first in a series featuring Jock Boucher, a newly appointed federal judge in post-Katrina New Orleans. When a heart attack fells a colleague, Judge Epson, Boucher takes on Epson’s duties on a temporary basis. By chance, that coverage coincides with the return-on-warrant of scientist Bob Palmetto. Shortly before Palmetto vanished 20 years earlier, Epson had held Palmetto in contempt after he refused to disclose confidential documents that detailed his discovery of a way to meet the country’s energy needs by “withdrawing methane gas from the frozen subsea surface.” Palmetto tells Boucher he believed that Epson had been bribed by a huge company that filed a bogus lawsuit solely to get access to Palmetto’s research. Boucher soon finds himself in the midst of a murderous conspiracy that threatens his nascent career on the bench. Some improbable developments, especially in the closing section, undermine the realism of the book’s earlier chapters. (May)