Reviews

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

Cath Staincliffe: Dead to Me

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Dead to MeMinotaur does a good job picking up and publishing British police procedurals and this is one of their latest finds – a genuine, no-holds-barred procedural with not one central female character, but three, which makes it a bit different.  The men in the book are either villains, eye candy, present or ex husbands, or sidebar co-workers.  It’s the women Staincliffe is interested in and that sets this novel apart.

It’s labeled on the cover a “Scott and Bailey” novel which gives things away a bit as the two main characters, Janet Scott and Rachel Bailey, are immediately front and center.  Janet’s boss, Gill, encounters Rachel on a crime scene and likes her enough to ask her to join her elite homicide team, which is Rachel’s dream job.  Janet is older, seasoned, experienced and irritated with Rachel, who is like an overeager puppy, charging in and acting without thinking.  Part of the novel is definitely concerned with Janet and Gill’s efforts to “train” her to act like a grown up police officer. read more

S.J. Gazan: The Dinosaur Feather

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The Dinosaur FeatherThis is an original and captivating novel.  Set in Copenhagen on the campus of the University of Copenhagen, the politics swirling through academe are apparently brutal to the point of fatality.  The central character, Anna Bella Nor, would probably get along well with Lisbeth Salander in terms of both brains and anger.  Unlike Lisbeth, she’s more anchored to the world – she has parents, a toddler, an ex, friends, and she’s juggling the planned defense of her PhD thesis in biology while taking care of her daughter and, it turns out, helping to solve the murders of some colleagues. read more

Robert Crais: Suspect

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Robert Crais is hands down one of the absolute best writers of action.  That’s not an easy thing to do, though he makes it look that way.  The miracle of his writing is that he combines the action of his stories with some real emotional punch.  If, when you finish this book, you aren’t a) crying your eyes out, and b) wishing you had a dog (if you don’t already have one), there’s something the matter.  I heard Crais at a conference say that he starts every story with something that breaks his heart, and this one has a whopper of a heartbreaking beginning. read more

Laura Lippman: After I’m Gone

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Laura Lippman is truly a master at what she does.  Her latest novel, a stand alone, takes a ripped-from-the-headlines story and she puts her own Lippman-esque spin on it.  The story concerns one Felix Brewer, a slick operator who decides to vanish rather than face prison time over his many unlawful misdeeds.  Lippman’s concern and interest, however, is not so much Felix as the women Felix leaves behind: his beautiful wife, Bambi; his three daughters; and his mistress, Julie.  The connecting thread is not only the women, but the cold case officer who is trying to figure out, many years later, who caused the death of Felix’s mistress ten years to the day after his own disappearance. read more