Michael Harvey: The Chicago Way

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This is a stunning debut novel.  Featuring Chicago P.I. Michael Kelly, Harvey manages to take the very tired old formula, initiated by Raymond Chandler, and somehow make it fresh and new.  His P.I. is a tough Irish ex-cop, with an educated heart of gold.  He reads Aeschylus in his spare time.  The vengeful, bloodthirsty stories told by the ancient Greeks have plenty of relevance in Kelly’s 21st century life.

chicago-wayWe’re introduced to Kelly in the most classic of ways: his old partner walks into his office and asks for his help.  Neither the P.I. or the cop code of honor allows not helping out an old partner, and Kelly is all in.  The story his old buddy, Gibbons, has to tell is horrible and gripping enough to get anyone’s attention.  Gibbons has always been haunted by the brutal rape of a young woman who was stabbed while it happened and left for dead.  She’s reached out to him and asked for his help in finding her rapist, who was never caught. Gibbons had been talked into forgetting the rape by his superiors, but a letter from the victim is a whole other story.  He wants someone from outside the department to help. read more

P.J. Parrish: Heart of Ice

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P.J. Parrish – or the sisters who write as P.J. Parrish – are paperback writers in the very best sense of the word.  They deliver a good story, well told, with reliable characters and settings, asking only that their readers enjoy the journey they deliver. Almost always, they fulfill this promise.  With their new novel, set on Mackinac Island, I was holding my opinion in reserve.

heartoficeFull disclosure:  I grew up on Mackinac Island, so I wasn’t so sure they could get it right, having read other novels set on the island that had a misfire or two (or more).  I was at first cautious but then more and more delighted as they really seemed to “get” the island (and it may help that one of the sisters lives in nearby Petoskey), but after awhile the story they were telling was simply so good, the island details really didn’t matter. read more

Loren D. Estleman: The Confessions of Al Capone

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Loren Estleman has written a lot of books, but many of them have been in one or another of his excellent series, so when he writes one that isn’t, it’s news. Actually The Confessions of Al Capone more resembles one of his westerns or Detroit novels than an Amos Walker effort because it’s a historical saga that uses a fictional character to portray a period of high lawlessness and great social change, seasoned with the presence of actual figures and events.

confessions_of_al_caponeThe set up is typical masterful Estleman – a low level F.B.I functionary, Peter Vasco, is one day brusquely summoned to the highest level of power, J. Edgar Hoover himself. Peter assumes he’s going to be canned, but in fact he learns that Hoover has groomed him for a long cherished ambition, to once and for all learn the secrets of Al Capone. Scarface is greatly diminished in 1944, in exile in Florida, having been paroled from his tax evasion prison rap, riddled with syphilis and waiting to die. Hoover’s plan is masterful, if manipulative, and Peter is uniquely equipped to carry it out. He’s an almost priest, having left the seminary just short of graduation, and thus equipped to travel down to Miami, masquerade as a padre and hear the addled Al’s final confessions. His entree to the tightly controlled Capone household is his own father, once a driver for Capone in Chicago and now a fishing boat owner in Fort Lauderdale. Peter’s relationship with both his father and the church for which he’s to pose as a father is conflicted, so there’s a lot of soul searching involved with his pursuit of Capone, but he’s also glad, in these war years when Al’s racketeer colleagues have turned to black market profiteering, to be able to do something to help the war effort. read more

Adam Mitzner: A Case of Redemption

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While there are many, many legal thrillers out there, there are few of them that I personally enjoy.  I am a big fan of David Ellis, as well as a sometime fan of Scott Turow, Linda Fairstein and Lisa Scottoline, and now I can add to that short list Adam Mitzner.  This is apparently his second novel, though, like Ellis, he doesn’t write a series.  Like many other writers of legal thrillers, he is also an attorney.  The legal backdrop, to this non-attorney, seems very authentic.

Taking a plausibly ripped from the headlines storyline, the novel centers on murder charges against a rapper whose stage name is Legally Dead.  His back story is that he was shot four times and left for dead, thus the name.  L.D. (as he’s called by his friends) is in prison for clubbing his girlfriend, a famous singer (think Beyonce or Rihanna type famous) named Roxanne.   The thing that seems to clinch his guilt is the fact that one of his songs – now getting constant airplay – discusses killing a singer with a baseball bat.  As a final nail in his coffin, it was written before Roxanne’s murder. read more

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