Reviews

Jenny Milchman: Cover of Snow

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Jenny Milchman’s atmospheric debut novel would probably make you feel a chill even in August. Set in a tiny Adirondack town, main character Nora Hamilton wakes up one morning to find her whole world blown apart. She’d been happily married to a police officer – one terrible morning she finds he’s hanged himself in the attic.

From there, it’s almost as you are with Nora on her confusing journey of grief and revelation as she tries to figure out why her apparently happy and loving husband would have done something like this. Of no help are her cold, stand-offish mother-in-law; any cop in town, most of whom tell her to stay home and get better; or her own parents, who are whisked off canvas almost immediately. read more

Michael Palmer: Political Suicide

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I’m immune to John Sandford and James Patterson, but I’m a sucker for Michael Palmer, a medical thriller writer whose books are a complete guilty pleasure.  Usually I get an advance copy in December, right about the time I’m fried by Christmas, and it’s just the ticket for relaxing at the end of a busy day.

Palmer has written a long string of medical “stand alones,” but it seems like he now may be tackling a series, beginning with his most recent paperback, Oath of Office. In that book he introduces Dr. Lou Welcome, an ER doc, recovering drug addict, and divorced father who also works in the Physician Wellness Office (PWO) where he mentors physicians with substance abuse issues. read more

A.D. Scott: Beneath the Abbey Wall

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There’s a popular nostalgic myth concerning the idyllic nature of small town life in the fifties, back when everybody knew their place and civility and godliness ruled. Of course the truth is considerably more complicated – it’s not always a great thing when everybody knows everybody, and hatred and passion seem to grow more virulently in enclosed places.

Nobody knows better that there are secrets festering behind even the most proper façade of their small Scottish town than the staff of the local newspaper The Highland Gazette, but even they are shocked when one of their own, quiet, efficient, reserved office manager Mrs. Smart, is murdered, that shock compounded when another staff member, well liked editor Don McLeod, is arrested for the crime, which was evidently motived by a long standing relationship their co-workers knew nothing about. read more

Jussi Adler-Olsen: The Keeper of Lost Causes

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Adler-Olsen joins a long line of wildly popular (and actually wildly different from each other) Scandanavian crime writers who started with Henning Mankell and were really ramped up by the popularity of Steig Larssen.  I haven’t been a huge fan of some of the other Scandinavians (including Jo Nesbo), but I love Karin Fossum’s lovely prose and her Ruth Rendell-ish manner of telling a searing and concise story.  Adler-Olsen may prove to be a favorite for me – I couldn’t put this book down. read more

Margaret Maron: The Buzzard Table

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It’s a privilege to enter Margaret Maron’s world.  She has created Deborah Knott’s world every bit as much as J.K. Rowling created Harry Potter’s, and the texture of it is practically a living thing.  On every page, Judge Deborah Knott will be doing nothing predictable – she’ll be cooking, working, interacting with her husband or stepson or huge (and I do mean huge) extended family.  In short, she’ll be living her life, and you’re welcome to join in for the duration of the story. read more

G.M. Malliet: A Fatal Winter

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We had a surprise break-out hit last fall with Malliet’s Wicked Autumn. It really shouldn’t have been a surprise, though, because Wicked Autumn, just like A Fatal Winter, is a well crafted British traditional mystery, the kind the Brits themselves no longer seem interested in writing.  (Malliet, like Elizabeth George, Martha Grimes, and Deborah Crombie, is American). But the appetite for this kind of book and storytelling is ravenous.

Malliet, referencing both Father Brown and Hercule Poirot in her series centering on Anglican priest Max Tudor (he resembles Hugh Grant), in fact reminds me more of Ngaio Marsh.  Her central character, like Marsh’s Alleyn, is self-deprecatingly handsome, and though he’s not secretly titled, like Allyn (or Mr. Campion, come to that) he does have the secret of being a former member of the MI5.  This adds to his dash. read more

Rhys Bowen: The Twelve Clues of Christmas

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This is another fun entry in Rhys Bowen’s delightful Lady Georgie series, about the travails of a young woman in the 1930’s who is 35th in line to the throne.  There are references to “Great Grandmother” Victoria and the horrors of Mrs. Simpson.  My favorite in this series, A Royal Pain, involves Queen Mary’s request for Georgie’s help in quashing the romance between Mrs. Simpson and the (then) Prince Edward.

The tone of these novels is lighter and funnier than Bowen’s Molly Murphy series, but like that series, the action revolves around a strong female lead.  Georgie is impoverished and forced to eke out a living in various “lady like” occupations, none of them very remunerative.  In this novel she is rescued from the gloom of her ancestral Scottish castle by an ad asking for a hostess at a country house party. read more

Rick Blechta: The Fallen One

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Mysteries set in the world of music are few and far between, but those that are musically inclined tend to be excellent.  Perhaps it’s because a gifted musician also has some of the skills of a mathematician and so is skilled at assembling a good puzzle, but whatever the reason, the addition of music as a “setting” always adds quite a bit to a good read.

My favorites are Cynthia Harrod-Eagles series where the main character’s partner/wife plays for an orchestra, and Gerald Elias’ wonderful series that reflect his own skills as a classical violinist.  Rick Blechta’s novel, The Fallen One, features a female opera singer.  This was new territory for me, as I’ve seen an opera once or twice – but decades ago – so my knowledge of opera (other than knowing titles of famous operas) is limited.  I enjoyed what Blechta had to share about this art form. read more

P.M. Carlson: Audition for Murder

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Jim Huang’s publishing imprint is re-issuing P.M. Carlson’s enjoyable series featuring Maggie Ryan, which begins with Maggie as a student at a small, upstate New York college.  The college is staging Hamlet and has decided to bring in some “real” New York actors to play the main parts, with the students filling out the rest of the cast and supplying the crew.

Carlson is an “old school” cozy writer – at times, the situations she is writing about aren’t so cozy, and the world she is writing about, while it has a hook (in this case both academia and the theater), what she’s really interested in are  the characters and their relationships to one another.  This series fits nicely next to Sharyn McCrumb’s Elizabeth McPhearson books or Nancy Pickard’s long lived Jenny Cain series.  There are eight books in this series, with Maggie growing from a young student into a woman, but this first one almost embraces her naiveté. read more

Laura Lippman: And When She Was Good

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Laura Lippman keeps growing as a writer.  For a reader, this is a true delight, and each novel is something of a surprise.  She’s hewing more, lately, to the standalone model than to the Tess Monaghan novels that started her career, and she has plenty to say.  This novel is both a good story and a nuanced look at ethical behavior and choices.

Her central character is Heloise Lewis, who, it quickly becomes apparent, is a high class madam in the Heidi Fleiss mode.  Making the novel a look at the politics of prostitution from the opening scene, Heloise overhears a conversation in line at the Starbucks about the recent suicide of a “suburban madam”.  As she challenges the easy assumptions of the couple behind her in line, she’s really challenging her own assumptions.  The articulation of her thoughts to a strange couple merely starts her own thought process. read more