Anne Hillerman: Rock with Wings

by

rockwithwingsAnne Hillerman may be a unicorn—that very rare writer whose relative was a bestselling author, and who is able to continue that series and make it her own. In fact, I can’t think of another example. Tony Hillerman’s classic and beloved Leaphorn and Chee novels put me off of his daughter’s work but they shouldn’t have—this is a terrific novel and I can’t wait to read more. The younger Hillerman has made the series her own by having Leaphorn retire, and Chee married to the lovely Bernadette “Bernie” Manuelito, also a police officer. Shifting the storytelling focus (or at least 50% of it) to a woman’s perspective changes things up enough to make these books Anne Hillerman’s very own. read more

Judith Flanders: A Bed of Scorpions

by

abedofscorpionsI loved Judith Flanders’ first Sam Clair novel, A Murder of Magpies, and I may have liked this one even more, as some of her plotting was clearer than it was in the first novel. In truth, though, that part didn’t matter so much to me. What I really love is the setting – Sam is a 40-something book editor in London – and in this novel she’s caught up by the apparent suicide of the business partner of one of her dear friends. The friend and his partner own(ed) a London art gallery specializing in a well known pop artist (Flanders creates an artist who would have been a contemporary of Lichtenstein and Warhol) and then she plunges the action full bore into the world of publishing and art and where the two sometimes collide. read more

Interview: Jamie Agnew

by

Recently Jamie was asked a few questions about mysteries by a reporter at The Michigan Daily, Rebecca Lerner. She agreed that we could publish the questions & original answers here. (An edited version was published in her column.) He gets to the heart of why mysteries are so great & why we love them so much.

Q: Why did you open/run a bookstore specifically devoted to mystery? 

A: Most of all because we love mysteries.  Of course, we also thought it would be economically feasible. Mystery readers are very loyal, and mystery books have only grown in popularity. Many authors write in series with a continuing character, and specializing allows us to carry their backlist as well as the current bestseller. We’ve been here twenty-four years now, so we must be doing something right. read more

Author Interview: Carrie Smith

by

Carrie SmithI was delighted to be able to interview Carrie Smith, a real discovery. I loved her first book and loved her answers to my questions.

Q; Let me say up front I’m a big fan of police procedurals, especially police procedurals written by women.  I’ve loved books by Lillian O’Donnell, Lee Martin, Margaret Maron, Barbara D’Amato, Leslie Glass and more recently Theresa Schwegel and Karin Slaughter (the excellent Cop Town) and ALL of them deal with the way women are treated in the workforce and how they must adapt to deal with it. Sadly, I think your book published in 2015 is dealing with some of the same issues that Lillian O’Donnell was writing about in 1972.  All that being said, was this something on the top of your list when you started your novel? read more

Loren D. Estleman: Shoot

by

ShootWhen you think about Loren D. Estleman, you probably associate him with the Amos Walker novels. He is, after all, the premier living exponent of the traditional P.I. novel in all its hardboiled glory. But more than that, he’s simply a very, very good writer, and like one of the progenitors of the genre, Dashiell Hammett, who wrote both The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, Loren is quite capable of distinct variations in tone.

It would be a little facile to say that Estleman’s Valentino series is his take on the “cozy” novel, but in the beginning of the fourth installment, Shoot, Valentino is looking at rug samples. Similarly, the alcohol and violence levels are low, the sunshine and frivolity are high, and the one night stands with endangered Femme Fatales are replaced by long term committed relationships and wedding planning. Valentino even has a smart phone. The detectives are alike in some ways, though, because as Walker is often a seeker after missing persons, film detective Valentino goes down the mean boulevards of Los Angeles in search of the movies of the past that are considered lost and gone forever. And I’m sure it will surprise no one that the sharks of Hollywood are just as rapacious and morally compromised as those of Detroit. read more

Carrie Smith: Silent City

by

Silent CityThe two books I’ve read so far by new publisher Crooked Lane have knocked me out, and I am really smitten with Carrie Smith, who writes in one of my favorite subgenres: the police procedural with a female central character. NYPD Detective Claire Cordella is returning to work after a vicious and nearly deadly bout with cancer, and she’s out to prove she can handle the job no matter what. Of course she’s handed a doozy of a case her first day back: the murder of a popular public school principal, Hector Sanchez. He’s been found dead in his apartment, laid out like Christ on the cross. Even a cursory look reveals there are two sides to Sanchez, and Claire is determined to get to the bottom of it. read more

Author Interview: Steve Miller

by

Steve MillerSteve Miller is a highly regarded journalist who has lately turned his hand to true crime; he’s now written four and this one sparked my interest so much I wanted to hear what he had to say about it. He graciously agreed to answer a few questions.

Q: True Crime as a genre is kind of looked down on—but to me it shows a real true side of human behavior; maybe not a nice one, but a true one.  What motivates you personally to write true crime?

A: True crime is the pornography of non-fiction. Literary agents steer you away from it and publishers treat it like a place for castoffs. Yet you see how many titles come out every year, and you see these TV shows in Investigation Discovery and truTV and the other networks. Someone’s digging it. And someone’s making money. read more

Steve Miller: Murder in Grosse Pointe Park

by

murderingrossepointeThis is Steve Miller’s fourth true crime book, the second set in the Detroit area. The case he’s chosen to write about this time around concerns the brutal murder of Jane Bashera, a blameless wife and mother from Grosse Pointe Park who was found dead in her SUV in a not great area of Detroit. If you live in Southeastern Michigan there’s a pretty small chance you didn’t read about this case and end up following it in the newspaper, as details of her husband Bob’s sordid sex life leaked out. It quickly became apparent that Bob Bashera had paid a guy who did odd jobs for him to kill his wife. read more

Julia Dahl: Invisible City

by

invisible-cityThis is a true coming-of-age finding-yourself novel, a genre I sometimes find irritating, but I liked this one as it also illuminated a little examined culture. Dahl sets her first novel in Brooklyn, featuring fledging reporter Rebekah Roberts. Rebekah is a “stringer,” sent out wherever her paper thinks she can score a quote from someone involved in a breaking story. This finds her all over the city and as our story begins, it finds her in her own section of Brooklyn where a woman’s body had been found by a crane in a scrap metal yard. read more

Andrew Grant: False Positive

by

falsepositiveThis book is a departure for Grant, whose first three books were James Bond style thrillers, and whose most recent, Run, was a straight up, no holds barred thriller. This one is a police novel set in Birmingham, Alabama. The central character is one Devereaux Cooper, a detective and damaged soul, scarred by a terrible childhood. Throughout the novel his backstory is teased out as he’s assigned the case of a missing child.

Grant gives the reader a look inside the head of the kidnapper as well, threading the kidnapper’s actions with the actions of the police. As the detectives begin to follow wrong paths thanks to false clues laid down by this person, it’s Deveraux who has the flashes of intuition that begin to lead them in the right direction. He’s assigned a new partner who seems a bit stand offish and it’s not clear if she doesn’t trust him or if it’s the department in general that doesn’t trust him. When he urges some actions that aren’t strictly legal (but that are expedient) you begin to worry about him, and that’s a good sign that Grant has really made you care about this character. read more