Reviews

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

Elizabeth Haynes: Into the Darkest Corner

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You know how back in the 30’s and 40’s there was a famous “Detection Club”, with members like Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh?  That was the so-called “golden age” of detective fiction.  I think the U.K. now needs a new club for writers – “The Creepy British Women Mystery Writers Club.”  Either it’s something in the water over there or a national predilection, but it can’t be a coincidence that writers like S.J. Bolton, Sophie Hannah, Jane Casey, Denise Mina, Mo Hayder, Tana French, Val McDermid (and I’m sure there are others) are producing such genuinely disturbing books that they almost make you flinch to open them.  All of these women are the direct descendants of the great Ruth Rendell, who could teach just about any of them the meaning of the words “concise, yet creepy.” read more

Susan Elia MacNeal: Princess Elizabeth’s Spy

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This is a totally charming book, and MacNeal is deservingly nominated for both an Edgar and a Dilys this year (and probably an Anthony and an Agatha, though I am not always the best predictor).  Set during WWII, this is the second book in the Maggie Hope series.  Featuring a fledgling spy (Maggie) fresh from Churchill’s office and spy school, she was an abysmal failure at the physical aspects of her training, presenting a conundrum for her handlers.  She tells a friend it was terrible, like gym class every day, and if there aren’t a lot of readers nodding their heads in recognition over that comment, I’ve misjudged the mystery reading public. read more

Deborah Crombie: The Sound of Broken Glass

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Deborah Crombie’s new novel explores the world of music and the limits of friendship. Set in the neighborhood of London known as the “Crystal Palace,” after the legendary and long ago burned down icon of Victorian progress, the neighborhood itself is not so legendary.  It’s instead a bit gritty, and in the past it’s home to a miserable 13 year old boy who is looking out for his alcoholic mother, learning to play the guitar, and being befriended by his next door neighbor, an “older” woman who seems exotic to him.  The woman, Nadine, often shares her dinner with him, sensing he’s hungry; it’s the first time an adult has looked out for him. read more

Elly Griffiths: A Dying Fall

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When books by Erin Hart, Deborah Crombie and Elly Griffiths come out all at once it’s almost an embarrassment of riches.  To my mind, the three women have some similarities (and some differences), but enough similarities of the soul that reading three in a row, one by each, is a soul encompassing experience.  Elly Griffiths’ was the last one I picked up of the triumvirate, and it was like slipping into pages written by an old friend.

Ruth Galloway, Griffiths’ main character, remains unapologetically herself – and readers love her for it.  She’s a bit over weight, she doesn’t care about her clothes, she loves her job, and she’s passionate about her toddler, Kate.  Because Kate’s father is Nelson, a married police detective, Ruth’s life is nothing if not a complicated web of relationships.  Playing with this theme, Ruth hears first of the death of an old university friend, and then she receives a letter from him asking for her help. read more

Erin Hart: The Book of Killowen

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This lovely book is a kind of spiritual meshing of Agatha Christie – for plot –and P.D. James, in that the setting and characters are as richly captured as any in a James novel.  The fourth in Hart’s fine Nora Gavin series, The Book of Killowen finds Nora and Cormac back in Ireland and back in another bog, this time on the trail of an ancient bog man as well as a much more recent one.

Like the bogs of Ireland that Hart chooses to write about, her stories are richly layered creations, right down to two, not one, bodies found on top of one another in the trunk of a car dug up by a peat scavenger at the beginning of the book.  As the threads of Hart’s story begin to coalesce, we meet the victim, Benedict Kavanaugh, a TV host who delighted in humiliating his guests, and his wife, one Mairead Broome, who connects the story back to an Artist’s colony in Killowen. read more

Brad Parks: The Good Cop

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In 2010 Brad Parks won the Shamus award for first P.I. Novel for Faces of the Gone. It’s a really good book, deserving of all sorts of accolades, but the interesting thing is that Parks’s protagonist isn’t a private investigator, he’s an investigative journalist. I’ll take this as evidence that the traditional P.I. novel ain’t what it used to be – as James Crumley said, no fault divorce really took the wind out of the sails of the profession, which was never really the way it was portrayed in books anyway. A few masterful old masters keep writing in the traditional vein, but these days most private eyes, like Steve Hamilton’s Alex McKnight, are more often of the reluctant variety. read more

Peter Robinson: Watching the Dark

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Ostensibly refreshed after last year’s standalone novel, Before the Poison, Peter Robinson returns to his much loved Inspector Banks series, slipping back into his familiar character like a comfortable old shoe. Banks has mellowed, gotten used to his divorce, resolved his love life issues for the time being, and is enjoying his red wine and his music. The case he’s called in to handle involves the death of a colleague at a police rehab center, where the unfortunate Bill Quinn had gone to recuperate. read more

Michael Robotham: Bleed for Me

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Bleed for Me is an interesting mix of very early Jonathan Kellerman (the good stuff) and Tana French.  Robotham has French’s writing chops and a way with prose – but he has Kellerman’s knack for suspense, some of it down and dirty. His central character is Joseph O’Loughlin, a psychologist and sometime police confidant and consultant. While Kellerman’s Alex Deleware is always specifically called in on a case, O’Loughlin’s ties seem more tenuous, though he certainly has friends on the force. read more