Reviews

Chris Pavone: The Expats

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This novel has garnered lots of praise and attention, as well as winning the Edgar for Best First Novel.  I can say it was a well-deserved award – this is a very original and quirky novel that is more than worthy of all the attention.  It’s not much like any other novel I’ve ever read – it has spy elements, international elements, and a strong domestic element that brings what is primarily a spy thriller into the more human realm.  It made me like it much more.

expats_coverI’m not big on spy thrillers and they haven’t been a big part of the genre for awhile – though it’s making a comeback, certainly, with the success of authors like Vince Flynn or the slyly imaginative Mike Lawson.  Pavone brings yet another take. read more

David Housewright: The Last Kind Word

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There are seriously few writers who can beat David Housewright for sheer storytelling power.  His books hit the ground running and don’t let up until the last page.  This is the latest Rushmore “Mac” MacKenzie novel, and Housewright has taken a slightly new tack.  Mac is undercover as desperate criminal Dyson  in order to help catch a band of robbers and more importantly, the gunrunners who are supplying them with weapons at the Canadian border.

thelastkindwordThe opening chapter is pure, classic Housewright.  The only other author who can match his opening chapter skills is Barbara D’Amato, who has several first chapters that remain my favorites of all time,  her ultimate being the baby crawling across Chicago’s Dan Ryan expressway in 2010’s Other Eyes. read more

S.J. Bolton: Lost

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Bolton’s reputation and popularity has been a slow burn, but she’s catching on more and more with readers and if you like her – boy – do you like her.  Lately she’s focused on a series rather than the amazing stand alone novels which began her career (Sacrifice, Awakening), but her series is wonderful as well.  Her Lacey Flint books began with the outstanding Jack the Ripper thriller, Now You See Me, and she followed it up with the ultra creepy Dead Scared.

lost-sjbWell, she’s put Lacey through the wringer and this novel seems to be the one where she’s trying to set Lacey back to rights.  It’s certainly original to have the main series character be both so troubled and so actually physically tormented just by way of doing her job.  Lacey is part of the police force, ending up on a big case in the first novel by virtue of having a victim literally die in her arms; in the second, she’s undercover, and becomes the victim herself; in the third, she’s literally, as the title suggests, “lost.”  She’s not the only lost one here, of course, but it becomes a theme of the book. read more

Steve Ulfelder: Purgatory Chasm

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When is a P.I. not a P.I.?  Today’s rash of younger male writers are taking a look at that question, and they all have a different answer.  Tim O’Brien has a teacher; Brad Parks, a reporter.  Steve Ulfelder has an auto mechanic AA member whose main motive is revenge.  Really, though, the motives of the P.I. haven’t changed:  to a man, the new P.I.s  are interested in putting things right simply because it’s the right thing to do.  It looks like what’s surviving from the long standing P.I. trope is not the private eye aspect itself, but the white knight aspect.  That’s something I can get behind. read more

Michael Harvey: The Chicago Way

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This is a stunning debut novel.  Featuring Chicago P.I. Michael Kelly, Harvey manages to take the very tired old formula, initiated by Raymond Chandler, and somehow make it fresh and new.  His P.I. is a tough Irish ex-cop, with an educated heart of gold.  He reads Aeschylus in his spare time.  The vengeful, bloodthirsty stories told by the ancient Greeks have plenty of relevance in Kelly’s 21st century life.

chicago-wayWe’re introduced to Kelly in the most classic of ways: his old partner walks into his office and asks for his help.  Neither the P.I. or the cop code of honor allows not helping out an old partner, and Kelly is all in.  The story his old buddy, Gibbons, has to tell is horrible and gripping enough to get anyone’s attention.  Gibbons has always been haunted by the brutal rape of a young woman who was stabbed while it happened and left for dead.  She’s reached out to him and asked for his help in finding her rapist, who was never caught. Gibbons had been talked into forgetting the rape by his superiors, but a letter from the victim is a whole other story.  He wants someone from outside the department to help. read more

P.J. Parrish: Heart of Ice

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P.J. Parrish – or the sisters who write as P.J. Parrish – are paperback writers in the very best sense of the word.  They deliver a good story, well told, with reliable characters and settings, asking only that their readers enjoy the journey they deliver. Almost always, they fulfill this promise.  With their new novel, set on Mackinac Island, I was holding my opinion in reserve.

heartoficeFull disclosure:  I grew up on Mackinac Island, so I wasn’t so sure they could get it right, having read other novels set on the island that had a misfire or two (or more).  I was at first cautious but then more and more delighted as they really seemed to “get” the island (and it may help that one of the sisters lives in nearby Petoskey), but after awhile the story they were telling was simply so good, the island details really didn’t matter. read more

Loren D. Estleman: The Confessions of Al Capone

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Loren Estleman has written a lot of books, but many of them have been in one or another of his excellent series, so when he writes one that isn’t, it’s news. Actually The Confessions of Al Capone more resembles one of his westerns or Detroit novels than an Amos Walker effort because it’s a historical saga that uses a fictional character to portray a period of high lawlessness and great social change, seasoned with the presence of actual figures and events.

confessions_of_al_caponeThe set up is typical masterful Estleman – a low level F.B.I functionary, Peter Vasco, is one day brusquely summoned to the highest level of power, J. Edgar Hoover himself. Peter assumes he’s going to be canned, but in fact he learns that Hoover has groomed him for a long cherished ambition, to once and for all learn the secrets of Al Capone. Scarface is greatly diminished in 1944, in exile in Florida, having been paroled from his tax evasion prison rap, riddled with syphilis and waiting to die. Hoover’s plan is masterful, if manipulative, and Peter is uniquely equipped to carry it out. He’s an almost priest, having left the seminary just short of graduation, and thus equipped to travel down to Miami, masquerade as a padre and hear the addled Al’s final confessions. His entree to the tightly controlled Capone household is his own father, once a driver for Capone in Chicago and now a fishing boat owner in Fort Lauderdale. Peter’s relationship with both his father and the church for which he’s to pose as a father is conflicted, so there’s a lot of soul searching involved with his pursuit of Capone, but he’s also glad, in these war years when Al’s racketeer colleagues have turned to black market profiteering, to be able to do something to help the war effort. read more

Adam Mitzner: A Case of Redemption

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While there are many, many legal thrillers out there, there are few of them that I personally enjoy.  I am a big fan of David Ellis, as well as a sometime fan of Scott Turow, Linda Fairstein and Lisa Scottoline, and now I can add to that short list Adam Mitzner.  This is apparently his second novel, though, like Ellis, he doesn’t write a series.  Like many other writers of legal thrillers, he is also an attorney.  The legal backdrop, to this non-attorney, seems very authentic.

Taking a plausibly ripped from the headlines storyline, the novel centers on murder charges against a rapper whose stage name is Legally Dead.  His back story is that he was shot four times and left for dead, thus the name.  L.D. (as he’s called by his friends) is in prison for clubbing his girlfriend, a famous singer (think Beyonce or Rihanna type famous) named Roxanne.   The thing that seems to clinch his guilt is the fact that one of his songs – now getting constant airplay – discusses killing a singer with a baseball bat.  As a final nail in his coffin, it was written before Roxanne’s murder. read more

Jane Casey: The Last Girl

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With her wry sense of humor, British writer Jane Casey most closely resembles her fellow country woman Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. Slightly gritty, her police stories are still tempered by some humor and interaction between the central characters that lightens the heavy load of the stories she tells. This fourth outing deals with the grisly murder of a mother and daughter. They’re discovered by the surviving daughter – a twin. The father is a well known barrister.

Called on to the case are Maeve Kerrigan and her brash partner Josh Derwent. Refreshingly, they aren’t romantically interested in each other – they just work together. Maeve is involved with a fellow officer, Rob, who has transferred divisions so they can continue to see each other. read more

Alyse Carlson: The Azalea Assault

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A smooth fit with Berkley’s line of cozy “themed” mysteries, The Azalea Assault features a PR pro from Roanoke, Va. who works with the local garden society. This book hits on a lot of fronts — there’s gardening, there’s a little cooking, and there are three pretty interesting women at the center of the story.

The main character, Camellia Harris, lives with her more free and easy BFF, Annie. While Camellia is more rule oriented and super organized, Annie is more of a free spirit in peasant skirts to Camellia’s Talbot’s slacks, getting things done by the skin of her teeth. They are a well matched pair and their living arrangement — same house, each with her own apartment — suits them perfectly. read more