Reviews

Jenny Milchman: Ruin Falls

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Ruin FallsJenny Milchman’s new novel concentrates on a mother’s primal fear: the vanishing of her children. Her main characters in this stand alone novel are the Daniels family, Paul, Liz, Ally and Reid, on their way to visit Paul’s parents. Rarely do the Daniels leave their homestead and their contact with Paul’s family has been minimal.

Milchman begins to skillfully sketch in the family details: the processed snacks snuck by Liz to her children when they are on the road, despite Paul’s objections; the clever and disturbing ability of Reid to pick pockets; the sweetness of Ally; and the apparent controlling nature of Paul. We’re seeing it all through Liz’s lens. When Paul decides they can spend the night in a hotel before reaching his parents’ house, Liz is delighted by the rare treat and chance to get cleaned up and prepared to face her in-laws. Wakening from a deep, comfortable sleep the next morning, she quickly discovers the children are missing, and she and Paul go into full panic mode. read more

Linda Castillo: The Dead Will Tell

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The Dead Will TellI am a sucker for this series. Castillo’s premise is a brilliant one: police chief Kate Burkholter, who was raised Amish in tiny Painter’s Mill, Ohio, left the Amish for the “English” world and returned home to join the police force. Her appointment as Chief is relatively new. Her status as an insider/outsider could not be more perfect as far as a mystery heroine is concerned, and her character’s knowledge of Amish culture, Amish families and at times, the Pennsylvania Dutch language the Amish speak, are all helpful to her as she solves crimes. read more

Malla Nunn: Present Darkness

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presentdarknessI haven’t read Malla Nunn since her first book, A Beautiful Place to Die, a beautifully written novel.  In that book she establishes her three central characters: Emmanuel Cooper, a white policeman; Shabalala, a Zulu policeman; and a Jewish doctor, Zweigman.  The books are set in 1950’s South Africa, which makes all of these relationships loaded.  In the first book the heaviness of the connections almost overwhelm the story.  In this novel, Nunn’s fourth, the characters are established and comfortable and the story being told can run on its own steam. read more

Michael Robertson: The Baker Street Translation

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baker-street-translationThis charming book is one of those told by a natural storyteller. Someone who just plain wants to tell you a story – other examples of this art form would be Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Michael Bond, and Elizabeth Peters. Robertson has no agenda other than giving your brain a nice workout as you figure out the puzzle along with his characters and relating a good yarn. Success on all fronts, as far as I’m concerned.

This is the third in Robertson’s series of Holmes embroideries set in the late 90’s. I can’t call this a pastiche, really, as only Sherlock’s address and letters to him are part of the equation, though the cases are solved by good old deductive reasoning. The central characters are Nigel and Reggie Heath, whose law firm happens to occupy 221B Baker Street. Letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes are delivered there, and a condition of Reggie’s lease is that he answer them. read more

Chevy Stevens: That Night

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That-NightWe get a lot of uncorrected proofs and advanced reader copies – those large format paperbacks that are sent to bookstores in order to drum up interest in a forthcoming hardback.  Much of the accompanying promotional literature is guilty of hyperbole to say the least, but in rare cases it’s spot on. As printed on the cover, with any justice the summer of 2014 will belong to Chevy Stevens’s fantastic, suspenseful novel That Night.

Earlier this year I lined up four or five proofs and read the first pages of all of them and That Night was the only one that grabbed me from the get go. After I quickly finished it, I gave it to Robin who also tore through it and then we subjected it to the most rigorous test of all, our son, who demands Harlan Coben quality readability and suspense in any book he picks up. When he loved it as well, I knew we were on to something. read more

Karen Dionne: The Killing: Uncommon Denominator

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thekillingKaren Dionne joins us to launch what is not really an adaptation of the AMC show “The Killing,” but a prequel using the characters and setting familiar to any fan of the show. Reading the cover, it’s interesting to see the progression: “The Killing” began as a Danish show, “Forbrydelsen,” was developed by Veena Sud for U.S. television, and is now a novel by Karen Dionne.  At that point of removal I think the work becomes so far from the source that it’s now Dionne’s own.

For those of you not fans of the show, it’s a police show set in Seattle, featuring the uncompromising, workaholic, single mother Detective Sarah Linden; and the slightly less tightly wound Detective Steven Holder, back from working undercover.  Dionne goes backward in time from the show. read more

Nancy Allen: The Code of the Hills

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Code-of-the-HillsNancy Allen refers to her first novel as “hillbilly noir” but I’d call it “legal noir,” as it’s a harrowing, inside look at the legal system and its many faults. It’s also a harrowing look at life in a small town in the Ozarks: Barton, Missouri. Allen’s main character is a prosecutor named Elsie who apparently has the world’s most horrible boss and she’s working on the world’s most horrible case.

I think folks who work sex crimes are probably vastly underpaid for the heartbreaking and soul-sucking work they do – unless they are each paid a million bucks a year, they’re working for us for free. Despite Elsie’s flaws and blind spots she’s still fighting to do what’s right because that’s the way she works. Elsie has a special soft spot for child victims, and the case she’s assigned in this novel is a doozy. read more

Reed Farrel Coleman: The Hollow Girl

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hollowgirlWhen Reed Farrel Coleman decided to wrap up his now classic Moe Prager Private Eye series, he didn’t mess around.  This moving novel ties up many threads in beleaguered P.I. Prager’s life and sets him on his retirement path.  The story that goes along with this last entry is a show stopper, hard to put down and a joy to read.

For those readers unfamiliar with Coleman, he’s been a small press sensation, beloved in the mystery universe for his straight up, old school private eye novels featuring Moe Prager, set in Brooklyn.  Fittingly, Coleman has just been tapped to write Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone series, and his writing owes a huge debt to Parker’s ground breaking, wisecracking story telling style. read more

Kem Nunn: Chance

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Chance by Kem NunnKem Nunn’s latest begins with a pretty straightforward James M. Cain setup. The titular character, Dr. Eldon Chance, is a semi-hapless, yet highly intelligent psychiatrist who is going through a nasty divorce and burning out on his profession, which largely consists of lending his expertise in legal matters concerning people who have been damaged by various kinds of physical and mental trauma. Into this life of quiet desperation strides Jaclyn Blackstone, a beautiful, wounded woman who has evidently been abused and trapped by her husband, a corrupt cop. It’s no surprise that Dr. Chance soon finds that “His days of respectability were behind him. There was no getting around it and none of his present endeavors were likely to bring them back.” read more

Brett Halliday: Murder Is My Business

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Murder Is My BusinessHard as it is to believe, there’s a detective out there who has been the protagonist in novels that sold over 30 million copies, starred in hundreds of short stories, radio shows, movies, a television series, had his own digest magazine that lasted almost 30 years, and who at present has exactly one book in print. His name is Mike Shayne, his creator was Brett Halliday and I’ll wager that many of you have never heard of him, much less read any of his books.

I’d seen copies of Shayne paperbacks around, but it wasn’t until one of our faithful book scouts brought in (literally) a boxful of them that I really examined the phenomena. At first I was drawn to the covers, the early ones by master pulp artist Robert McGinnis, little paintings with a dramatic title like Violence Is Golden superimposed over a vivid image of a lush babe, work that if presented in a museum could easily pass for Pop Art. The later covers were much less art and much more camp, the kind of ridiculously posed photographs of random models that were inexplicably popular in the 70s and 80s. read more