{"id":150,"date":"2012-01-02T18:53:21","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T00:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=150"},"modified":"2012-01-02T18:53:21","modified_gmt":"2012-01-03T00:53:21","slug":"ellen-hart-the-lost-women-of-lost-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/ellen-hart-the-lost-women-of-lost-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Ellen Hart: The Lost Women of Lost Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Ellen Hart is the best writer you\u2019ve never heard of. This is her 26th book, the 18th in her fine Jane Lawless series. Jane is a Minneapolis restaurant owner who solves murders in her spare time \u2013 thus, she\u2019s the very definition of amateur detective. She\u2019s gay and since the death of her partner Christine, she\u2019s drifted from relationship to relationship. Jane is also the calm center of the storm in every novel; while everyone around her reacts to events, Jane deducts and analyzes.<\/p>\n

Hart is also one of the best contemporary practitioners of the traditional mystery \u2013 if you\u2019re a fan of Agatha Christie, you\u2019re probably going to enjoy Ellen Hart, with her crisp plotting, no nonsense pacing, and vivid characters. Several of her novels are among my favorite contemporary mysteries \u2013 The Iron Girl<\/em> and An Intimate Ghost<\/em> being particular favorites. This latest novel is a worthy addition to a solid series.<\/p>\n

Hart often structures her stories using traumatic past events that are shaping the present. In this novel, the past of two women in the Minnesota resort town of Lost Lake come to light, and because one of the women, Tessa, is a friend of Jane and the flamboyant Cordelia Thorne (Jane\u2019s sidekick, though if Cordelia were actually real I don\u2019t think she\u2019d care for that term), the two women step in to help when Tessa sprains her foot. The sprain, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

It becomes clear that Tessa and another woman in town were responsible for a death, and there\u2019s a stranger in town asking uncomfortable questions. When a few deaths follow the stranger\u2019s arrival, there\u2019s a perfect snarl of tangled relationships, old tensions, and kinship that make Jane\u2019s look at the crimes a difficult task. One of the threads involves the nephew of Tessa and her partner, Jill, who has run away from home and come to Lost Lake to live with his aunts. One involves the nephew\u2019s former girlfriend who seems to be involved with his thuggish former best friend, and of course the main thread involves the rearing up of Tessa\u2019s past as it threatens to engulf everything in its path.<\/p>\n

As always, Jane\u2019s deductive skills are superior as she untangles the web of circumstance and mysterious past events that lead to a solution. What makes Hart a contemporary mystery writer is the fact that her characters are fully fleshed out, and the psychological underpinnings are complex and realistic. She may tell a story with Christie\u2019s bravura, but she also brings a contemporary storyteller\u2019s toolbox to the table. There\u2019s nothing not to like in these novels. Dig in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ellen Hart is the best writer you\u2019ve never heard of. This is her 26th book, the 18th in her fine Jane Lawless series. Jane is a Minneapolis restaurant owner who solves murders in her spare time \u2013 thus, she\u2019s the very definition of amateur detective. She\u2019s gay and since the death of her partner Christine, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-americancozy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}