Reviews

Kristen Loesch: The Last Russian Doll

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The Last Russian Doll is an epic, set both during the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the more recent revolution – the one that abolished the Soviet Union in 1991.  The more present day heroine, Rosie, or Raisa, her actual name, is a British grad student who fled from Russia with her mother to the UK after the murders of her father and sister.  Her mother is now an ancient drunk who rarely gets out of her bed; as the book opens, she dies, but Rosie is headed back to Russia as an assistant to a famous writer (he brings to mind Alexander Solzhenitsyn).  She will be there to help with research, but what she really wants is to solve the mystery of her father’s and sister’s deaths. read more

Jesse Sutanto: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

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This charming, hilarious, sweet and beautiful book is a real breath of fresh air.  Vera Wong owns a tiny and underappreciated tea store in San Francisco.  She’s a widow, and her son is a busy professional, but that does not stop Vera from texting him instructions about sleep, food, and anything else she feels is important.  The tea shop is dusty and lonely and most days Vera just has one customer, an older man who leaves after 10 minutes to get back to his wife with Alzheimer’s.

Then one morning (very very early, as Vera likes to get up at 4:30), Vera comes downstairs – she lives above the shop – to start out on her morning walk when she discovers a dead man in the middle of her floor.  She calls the police, but as she waits she decides to make tea for them and to trace the outline of the body with a sharpie.  The police really don’t want her help and don’t seem to take the dead man too seriously.  As Vera is sure it’s murder, she decides to investigate on her own. read more

Charles Todd: The Cliff’s Edge

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It’s been several installments of Charles Todd’s Bess Crawford series since Britain has been at war. Bess herself has been kept busy, often far from home, but The Cliff’s Edge brings her all the way back, finding her restless and unsure of what she will do next. She’s left with only the decision of what color she will pick for new curtains when a letter arrives in the mail, asking for her help. Her cousin Melinda begs for Bess to go oversee the surgery of one of her longtime friends, Lady Beatrice. Hesitant at first, Bess realizes she doesn’t have much else to do, and agrees to go. But what started as a simple overnight watch for a routine surgery quickly gets much more complicated. read more

Cara Black: Night Flight to Paris

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The second novel from Cara Black featuring WWII sniper/assassin Kate Rees is just as nail-bitingly difficult to put down as the first book.  Kate is getting her mojo back in Scotland, training recruits, when she’s whisked to London to renew her spycraft skills and get a new assignment.  She’s given specific instructions, but little information.  She’s to be sent to Paris with some penicillin, kill a target, extract an operative and return – within two days.  Black gives the reader the full treatment on every step of Kate’s journey, so you are with her on the bumpy flight to Paris, the landing in a field, and her exhaustion as the finds her way to the city to begin her mission. read more

Margaret Mizushima: Standing Dead

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Book eight of this strong, enjoyable and very readable series finds Mattie Wray on the precipice of avenging the family trauma that made her childhood an extremely difficult one.  Two books back (Hanging Falls) Mattie at last reunited with her long lost sister; in the previous installment, Striking Range, she reunites with her mother.  As this book opens, she and her sister are heading to Mexico to see their mother together, but when they arrive, she and her husband have vanished.

There’s quite a bit of backstory to wade through at the beginning of the book.  To set the stage for a new reader, Mattie is an officer in the Timber Creek, Colorado, police department, where she works with her K-9 companion, Robo, who always has a key role in the stories.  Mattie is involved (and on the verge of marrying) the local vet, Cole, and his veterinary work and family are part of the strong backstory of the novels that ground the books, making them pack an emotional and relatable punch. read more

Carlene O’Connor: Murder at an Irish Bakery

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Few protagonists have ever managed to draw me in as quickly as Siobhan O’Sullivan in Carlene O’Connor’s Murder at an Irish Bakery. The Garda of Kilbane is to provide security at a bakery competition at the old mill bakery called Pie Pie Love, which is a dream assignment for the pastry addicted Siobhan. While she takes her duty seriously, Siobhan is also delighted with the prospects of samples a-plenty of both confections and coffee. Her enthusiasm is infectious, and I found myself needing a little tasty treat as I read her very relatable internal musings about her sampling expectations. Sadly, things aren’t all cakes and lemon tarts. read more

Darcie Wilde: The Secret of the Lost Pearls

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The Secret of the Lost Pearls is Darcie Wilde’s sixth mystery about Rosalind Thorne, a Regency gentlewoman fallen on hard times after her father abandoned his family.  (But see my note at the end of the review for more about series numbering.)  Rosalind undertakes discreet investigations for gentlewomen in distress, and her cases often involve solving murders.  Readers familiar with the series will know there is a cast of regular characters who help Rosalind with her investigations: most importantly her best friend Alice, a gossip columnist who has become a novelist, Rosalind’s resourceful maid Amelia, and her love interest, the handsome Bow Street Runner Adam Harkness. read more

Hank Phillippi Ryan: The House Guest

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Awhile ago, I thought about the elements of a novel that make it a (good) suspense novel, rather than a straight mystery.  Hank Phillippi Ryan’s new novel, The House Guest, hits these marks pretty perfectly, so I thought it would be fun to enumerate them.  The first element, to me, is “upping the ante.”  By this I mean the main character has to have some kind of mission which is tied to a deeply felt allegiance.  In the case of this novel, the main character, Alyssa Macallen, is a society wife who has been unceremoniously dumped by her husband.  Because Ryan is excellent at making a reader care about her characters, you begin to care about Alyssa, as she’s living on a knife’s edge, unsure of which way her world will implode. read more

Anastasia Hastings: Of Manners and Murder

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Of Manners and Murder, the first in Anastasia Hastings’ new series starring an agony aunt heroine, is far from the author’s first book. Anastasia Hastings is one of many pseudonyms for Casey Daniels, a veteran author with dozens of works to her name. Of Manners and Murder reads like it was written by a practiced hand. It opens with Violet, our heroine, discovering that her aunt, Adelia, is the most famous agony aunt in London in 1885. Adelia writes as Miss Hermione and has managed, for years, to keep the truth from everyone, including the two girls living with her. Just as Violet is given this information, Adelia leaves on vacation – and puts Violet in charge of answering her mail. read more

Kate Collins: Gone but Not For Garden

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Kate Collins’ fourth addition to her Goddess of Greene Street Mysteries is Gone but Not for Garden. Readers will find themselves drawn in by main character and detective Athena Spencer. She has only recently opened up her own detective agency with her boyfriend Case Donnelly, works for her family gardening store called Spencer’s, and also posts a blog as a way to vent about her family and personal life struggles and triumphs. However, she does remain anonymous in her blog, and it is amusing to see her family discuss it with such interest. Anyone who has a large family can appreciate and relate to how Athena has both love for her family as well as frustrations. While her family means well, they often push Athena’s boundaries and exasperate her. She does her best to be considerate and kind, while also remaining firm with her family. They mean well, and their pushing clearly comes from a place of love. Athena’s awareness of this makes her all the more relatable to those with more complicated families themselves. Athena also has a son and pet raccoon that add both a humorous element to the story, as well as interesting plot twists later on. read more