The Sign of the Book by John Dunning. Scribner, 2005. $25 — 368 pp.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton. HarperCollins, 2004. $27.95 — 603 pp.

Last spring, when I read and reviewed John Dunning’s The Bookman’s Promise, I remember thinking that, based on Dunning’s past record of writing books about his Denver bookman and ex-cop Cliff Janeway, I would have to wait another three or four years for another Janeway adventure. Imagine my delight then when Dunning’s latest Janeway novel The Sign of the Book flagged me down two weeks ago from the new-book shelves of the Haywood County Public Library.

In this latest Janeway adventure, we find Janeway still making his living in the rare books market while at the same time acquiring both a business partner and lover in Erin D’Angelo, the attorney whom we met in The Bookman’s Promise. It is Erin who lures Janeway into his latest adventure; an old and once dear friend, Laura Marshall, has just been arrested for the murder of her husband, Bobby, who was once the love of Erin’s life. Though her affection for Laura died years earlier — it was Laura who, by having an affair with Bobby, helped end Erin’s relationship with him — Erin feels duty-bound to ask Janeway if he can informally investigate the murder. There are books involved, of course, and so Janeway drives from Denver to the small town of Paradise to see if he can help the imprisoned Laura.

The more Janeway investigates Bobby’s murder, the more deeply he finds himself embroiled in the life and conflicts of Paradise. He has one run-in after the other with the sleazy Deputy Lennie Walsh, who arrested Laura and obtained her confession; he befriends the affable and gentlemanly Parley McNamara, the older attorney who is counsel for Laura and who acts as Janeway’s guide through the intricacies both of the courtroom and town life; he meets Willy and Wally Keeler, dumb as dirt brothers (and two of Dunning’s more humorous characters), who lead Janeway to Kevin Simms, also known as the Preacher, a con-artist and bully involved in book scams.

In The Sign of the Book, we find what has become vintage Dunning — crisp dialogue, the virtuous bookman/cop using both force and intelligence to defeat his enemies, a fascinating array of “bad guys.” Dunning, who makes his home in Denver and who operated the Old Algonquin Bookshop there for years (he now sells books over the Internet), also makes us feel the Colorado winter and the mountainous terrain.

Some fans may be disappointed to find that The Sign of the Book is somewhat less concerned with the world of books than were Dunning’s previous three Janeway novels, though we do get insights into book fairs and the forging of signed copies of books. We also find — in the character of the Preacher, a sort of stock figure used both by Dunning and by James Lee Burke — the Christian as racist, criminal, and hypocritical.

But these are minor quibbles. If you’re new to Janeway, begin with the first book, Booked To Die, and read the others in order. If you’re a fan, then here’s a book to help make your spring even more of a delight.

•••

Michael Crichton’s State of Fear is a gutsy book to write in our age of mass superstition and quackery. I am not a Crichton fan (one of my students even had to correct my pronunciation of his name, which is correctly said CRY-ton), but another review drew me to read this fast-paced, engrossing, and ultimately important book.

State of Fear is on one level a techno-thriller in which a U.S. government agent, a wealthy entrepreneur interested in global warming, and two attorneys take on a powerful group of eco-terrorists. As they race to try and prevent the four disasters planned by the terrorists, Kenner, Morton, Evans, and Sarah, joined later by Jennifer, Kenner’s neice, also educate the reader in what false fears can be created in our enlightened times. Though Crichton assails certain developers for their greedy ways, he also attacks some environmentalists for incompetence and for making deliberately false claims about the earth’s resources. We learn, for example, that the banning of that chemical DDT, which may actually be eaten by human beings without harm, has caused up to 50 million deaths from malaria in Third World countries. We learn that the great fear that power lines cause cancer was totally unwarranted. We learn that the debate about global warming is far from over, that in fact we may be entering a cooling period. We learn that our weather is no more erratic than in the past. We learn that Native Americans used to manage the forests and plains by means of fire and that we probably do no better a job than they in managing our own forests.

Perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn from Crichton is this: that so many of our fears of the last 50 years, fears aroused by certain prognosticators using what some scientist call “California cosmology,” are, in fact, unfounded. Our “state of fear” regarding the environment is all too often based on bad science and media misinterpretations. Of particular value in the book are the two appendices, the first a warning about the dangers of politicized science, the second a lengthy annotated bibliography of scientific and political works that Critchton found helpful in writing this controversial book.

(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)