Reviews

Allison Leotta: Law of Attraction

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Law-of-AttractionAllison Leotta’s first novel featuring prosecuting attorney Anna Curtis is a hard- to-stop-reading type thriller, with an interesting central character and a tight plot. Leotta’s Anna has a background including domestic violence – her father beating her mother – and she’s become an attorney for that very reason: to help people like her mother. As the book opens she is on “papering room” duty – processing papers as cases come in, and one of them involves a bleeding young woman who has been beaten by her boyfriend. read more

Fuminori Nakamura: The Thief, Evil and the Mask, and Last Winter We Parted

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thethiefAlthough The Thief was not the first novel Fuminori Nakamura published, it is the first to come out here, and it’s a good place to start, though not entirely representative of his work. Of course since only three of his fourteen books have been translated (a fourth, The Gun, which was, in fact, the first issued in his native Japan, comes out in October), it’s hard to say comfortably generalize about his work (but try and stop me!). The Thief is the tight, taut crime story of an expert pickpocket who’s gotten in a little over his head. Nakamura unfolds his story expertly, working in the slow revelation of the big job that still haunts him with his daily life of boosting wallets. Eventually the past comes back to get its due and things wrap up in a suitably fatalistic fashion. With its philosophic overtones and gritty noir realism it reads like a combination of David Goodis and Albert Camus, which is a pretty interesting combination, even if I found it a bit restrained and derivative, especially with the introduction of a little neglected kid who allows the protagonist to demonstrate that even if he is a criminal, he isn’t such a bad guy. read more

Colette McBeth: The Life I Left Behind and Sophie McKenzie: You Can Trust Me

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As I read, I often mentally try to categorize, to fit what I’m reading into a mystery context, wondering about the predecessors of what I’m reading. When I first picked up Colette McBeth’s book, I was thinking Ruth Rendell; but then I started Sophie McKenzie’s book and it all fell into place. These women aren’t following Rendell, they’re following feminine suspense writers like Charlotte Armstrong, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Mignon G. Eberhart, Celia Fremlin, and even Mary Higgins Clark. They’re writing stand alone thrillers with a domestic twist. And they’ve brought them oh so creepily into the 21st century – these are genuinely scary reads, difficult to put down, and ultimately, all ends happily. read more

Rhys Bowen: The Edge of Dreams

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edge-of-dreamsThe series writer who manages to write many books with the same characters and settings, keeping things vivid, fresh, and interesting, is performing a difficult feat. Rhys Bowen does this with not just one, but two, series, and she continues to be solidly entertaining in every way while still maintaining the integrity of her series and her writer-ly vision. Her Molly Murphy series, now fifteen books in, still is a delight in every way.

Even though Molly is now a married wife and a mother, Bowen has managed not to dilute the pleasant tension between characters that keeps a series interesting. She and Daniel are married, yes, but Daniel and his mother are none too fond of Molly’s friends Sid and Gus; and Daniel is not amenable to Molly continuing to work as a private detective. Molly finds ways to investigate anyway—she can’t help herself—but it seems like the way it would happen, as Molly manages to (more or less) appease both her husband and her mother-in-law. read more

Julie Hyzy: All the President’s Menus

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presidents-menusIt’s no secret that I’m a giant Julie Hyzy fan, whose White House Chef series just about reads like an episode of “The West Wing” only set in the kitchen. In the last book, to sort some personal stuff out, Chef Ollie Paras has to – gasp – leave the kitchen. Well, I understand. She had a lot on her plate and (spoiler if you haven’t yet read Home of the Braised) she got married to her Secret Service sweetie, Gav.

OK. She’s married, Gav is on medical leave, but she’s – yay – back in the kitchen. There’s a gentle jab from Hyzy aimed at the government sequester (it’s forced Ollie’s prized assistant, Cyan, on leave) and the lack of activity as state dinners have pretty much shut down. Ollie is just wishin’ and hopin’ for a little more of a lively time when word comes down that there will be a team of visiting chefs from the country of Saardisca, and they’ll be working with Ollie’s team to create a dinner for a Saardiscan Presidential candidate, to be held across the street at Blair House. read more

Barbara Fradkin: Do or Die

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do-or-dieBarbara Fradkin is well known in Canada, and deservedly so. Her Inspector Green series, of which this novel is the first entry, are solid police procedurals with the charming Inspector Green using that favorite device of mystery readers everywhere: deductive reasoning. And as most mystery readers prefer to read a series in order, I’m reviewing the first in Fradkin’s series though she has now written ten novels in the series, the most recent being None So Blind.

I loved the set up of this first novel and I really loved the way the book and the characters who inhabit it hit the ground running. They obviously had a life going before we hit the scene, and it’s a sure sign of a writer able to create fully dimensional, realized characters. As I was reading I was sometimes curious about events in Inspector Green’s past but Fradkin presents him as he exists in his present reality. As it is with getting to know an actual human being, meeting Green is like getting to know someone you may become friends with later. read more

Eva Gates: By Book or By Crook

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ByBookorByCrookBerkley reliably cranks out an entire line of cozies, hitting many specialized areas of interest for readers. This one hits several of the cozy tropes – there’s a lighthouse, a library in the lighthouse, a cat, a young heroine, two suitors, and for an extra fillip, Jane Austen. All familiar tropes and yet, Gates brings something a little more kick ass to the cozy table. A little extra verve, and a brisk, hard to put down way of telling a story that will have you flipping pages.

Gates is the pen name of Canadian Vicki Delany, who has a long series featuring Constable Molly Smith, several books set in the Klondike, as well as several stand alones. She’s a real pro and it shows in her narrative chops. She knows how to pace and she knows how to end each chapter making you want to read on to the next one (I finished this is a day and a half, a real inhale of a read). read more

Alan Finn: Things Half in Shadow

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things-half-in-shadowReally, this book is a lot of bank for your buck. Clocking in at over 400 pages, this book is chock full of rich narrative, coincidence, vivid setting, intriguing characters, and ghosts. I devoured it. Set in post-Civil War Philadelphia, the central character, Edward Clark, is a newspaper reporter and Civil War veteran who is assigned the task of de-bunking the city’s many mediums.

During any post-war period, mediums always pop up, as bereaved family members hope to reconnect with the dead. The first séance Edward attends is presided over by one Lucy Collins, and unfortunately for Lucy, Edward grew up in a family of magicians. He’s on to her tricks and spots almost all of them. read more

Kate Rhodes: The Winter Foundlings

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winter-foundlingsPsychologist Alice Quentin had a rough time in Rhodes’ last novel, A Killing of Angels. A consultant for the police, she got caught up in a serial killer case that almost ended her own life. So, in this book, for a relaxing change of pace, Alice decides to spend some time at a hospital for the criminally insane, doing research. Ahhh, how refreshing!

Rhodes is devoted to a Victorian love of coincidence and it actually serves her quite well, especially in this novel, where the central crime is connected to the very Victorian Foundling Home. Really, the entire set up could not be more Victorian – the hospital where Alice is doing her research is an old, somewhat renovated throw back out in the country, and Alice has rented a picturesque, if freezing, cottage in the middle of the woods, the kind you might think belongs in a fairy tale. It’s probably the one belonging to the witch in Hansel and Gretel. read more

Judith Flanders: A Murder of Magpies

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murder-of-magpiesJudith Flanders is a well known expert on Victorian manners and history, whose most recent book The Invention of Murder sits on our history mystery table. This is her first foray into fiction, and it’s delightful, causing me to both laugh aloud and copiously dog ear pages as Ms. Flanders is exquisitely quotable.

I loved her premise and setting. Her main character, Sam Clair, is a senior book editor at a major British publisher, and she’s in her forties. Flanders makes full use of Sam’s age, experience and gender, sliding in blindingly astute vignettes illustrating how women of a certain age tend to be ignored. As this book proves, ignoring a middle aged woman comes with its own perils. read more