Reviews

Jane Haddam: Blood in the Water

by

This is the 27th Gregor Demarkian novel, making Jane Haddam one of the steadiest performers around.  Each year she publishes a polished, thoughtful novel, with one of the more endearing of contemporary detectives.  While she surrounds Gregor with the Philadelphia and specifically Armenian neighborhood where he grew up and still lives, my favorite part is when Gregor is off cracking the case.

Long ago in the first novel (Not a Creature was Stirring, 1990), Gregor met his now wife, Bennis, a member of the Philadelphia mainline.  In that novel I was frustrated to discover that Gregor was a widower, and that Haddam was not going to give her readers much more detail than that.  However the meeting of the intelligent Bennis and the practical Gregor, over the killing of a member of her family, remains one of the great mystery couple match ups. read more

David Housewright: Curse of the Jade Lily

by

“You became Batman.”

“Hardly.”

Donatucci snorted.  “Everything but the cape and the car,” he said.  “Tearing around, working with the cops; sometimes working against the cops; doing good for goodness sake…”

Miss Robert B. Parker?  There’s really no need – give the excellent David Housewright a try to fulfill your Spenser jones.  All things being equal, Housewright would be as well known a quantity as Parker, as their skillsets are not only similar but similarly enjoyable.  Housewright’s central character, Rushmore MacKenzie (though he goes by MacKenzie, and can you blame him?)  lives in St. Paul rather than Spenser’s Boston, and he has no sidekick, but other differences are less discernible. read more

S.J. Bolton: Dead Scared

by

S.J. Bolton, one of the most original of all contemporary crime writers, has apparently decided to embrace a series identity instead of writing a string of stand alones.  Her last novel, Now You See Me, was, for her, her most conventional book.  It’s a police procedural set in contemporary London, though she added her own twists to the formula: the story was rooted in Jack the Ripper lore, and she used a gender lens to tell her story, subtly including a female-centric point of view throughout. read more

Paul French: Midnight in Peking

by

The best true crime books have a few things in common.  One is a vivid setting, one that’s well described and felt.  Even better is an unusual setting – in this case, the setting is Peking right before the Japanese took over in 1937.  Another thing is a sense of outrage at what happened to the victim portrayed in the book – and the victim needs to be portrayed, not just presented as a dead body.  Just like in a fictional mystery, investment in the victim is investment in the outcome of the story. read more

Bryan Gruley: The Skeleton Box

by

I guess I believe in doing my best, trying to be a good guy, be nice to my mom, take care of the people I love.  Is that good enough?

One of my favorite things about selling books is watching an author grow not just career-wise, but grow as a writer.  Each book of Bryan Gruley’s is better than the last, and this third in his Gus Carpenter series really hits it out of the park.

His first novel, Starvation Lake, established Gruley’s character.  Gus has come back to Starvation Lake from a big time Detroit paper to run the tiny Pilot.  The balance of kinship, friendship, and community ties and history are finely drawn in the first two novels (the second is The Hanging Tree), but in this third installment Gruley goes to the heart of the matter: family. read more

Richard Lloyd Parry: People Who Eat Darkness

by

It’s no mystery—a book, any kind of book, has to contain certain key ingredients to be good and generally the more of these ingredients it has, the better it’s going to be. Look at the case of People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry, which, although an example of the not always respected true crime genre, has more than enough of the right stuff to be a truly enthralling read.

Let’s start with plot, which, despite what the more literary than thou crowd says, is absolutely crucial, always has been, always will be. People Who Eat Darkness has a set up most thriller writers would kill for—Lucie Blackman, a twenty-one year old English blonde working in Japan as a bar hostess, goes on a date with a client (in Japan, as Parry explains, none of these terms require the ironic quotation marks they would over here) and fails to return. Her roommate, Louise Phillips, perturbed, asks around, learns nothing, contacts the disinterested police and eventually receives a disturbing phone call. The person on the other end says that Lucie is fine, but has decided to join a cult and has no interest in communicating with her old friends ever again. When Louise insists on speaking to her, the caller, a Japanese man, informs her that Lucie isn’t feeling very well at the moment and hangs up. He quickly calls back, saying Lucie is determined to start a new life and, by the way, what’s your address? He claims that he wants to return Lucie’s belongings, and when Louise points out that Lucie surely knows her own address, repeats that she’s not feeling well and can’t remember, and what did you say that address was again? A horrified Louise protests and the man hangs up for good. read more

Ed Lin: One Red Bastard

by

“…You have to suck at it for years until one day your experience pays off and you reach a point where you know what you’re doing.” “It’s like everything else, then, isn’t it?”

I was a big fan of the first book Minotaur published by Ed Lin, Snakes Can’t Run, and I enjoyed this one maybe even a little bit more.  Lin’s central character, Robert Chow, is a Chinese American Cop in New York City’s Chinatown circa 1976 (Carter and Ford are battling it out for the presidency).    Robert has a good backstory—he’s a Vietnam Vet, he was a drunk but is now sober, and he is now feeling his way through his job, hoping for a detective’s gold shield as well as trying to figure out  his relationship with his girlfriend, Lonnie. read more

Loren D. Estleman: Burning Midnight

by

In olden times Loren Estleman would have been regarded as a master craftsman.  He’s sixty plus books into a more than impressive career, setting the bar high in both the Western and the Private Eye genres, while also writing the occasional standalone as well as a couple other mystery series (Peter Macklin, Valentino).  This outing is the 22nd in his Amos Walker franchise, the present gold standard for private eye mysteries.  Sure, there are other private eye masters at work right now – Robert Crais, Steve Hamilton, and S. J. Rozan come to mind – but for the pure, traditional private eye experience no one can beat Estleman. read more

Elizabeth Hand: Available Dark

by

In her first appearance, Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand’s protagonist Cassandra Neary provides this memorable self-portrait:

I caught a glimpse of myself in a dark window: a gaunt Valkyrie holding a spear taller than I was, teeth bared in a drunken grimace and eyes bloodshot from some redneck teenager’s ADD medication.

“Hey ho, let’s go,” I said, and went.

Neary has many of the qualities more expected in a male noir protagonist. She’s violent, bad tempered, substance abusing, cynical, haunted, corrupt, but yet able to tell the difference between right and wrong at the crucial moment and equally able to act decisively on that knowledge. read more

Rhys Bowen: Hush Now, Don’t You Cry

by

For pure entertainment value, Rhys Bowen simply cannot be beat.  Whether it’s her light and funny Lady Georgie mysteries set in the 30’s, or her “flagship” series featuring Molly Murphy, her skill as a storyteller is almost unmatched.  I’d compare her to such different authors as Harlan Coben or Michael Connelly, in that once you pick up a Rhys Bowen book, if you’re very lucky, you won’t have to look up until you’re finished with it.

Molly, for the uninitiated, is an Irish immigrant who came through Ellis Island in the first book, which was set in 1900.  Now ten books into the series, Molly has had her own private detective agency (though the fate of her agency is up in the air), and she has at last married her long time suitor, New York City police detective Daniel Sullivan (see the last book, Bless the Bride).  Daniel has asked Molly, now that they are married, to settle down and give up her private detective agency.  So far his plan isn’t working out too well. read more