A Shimmer of Hummingbirds
Sharon Magee

Detective Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune of Saltmarsh, a small English seaside town known for its birding, returns for his fourth outing in author Steve Burrows’ Birder Murder Mystery series. This adventure finds Jejeune in Colombia where he’s ostensibly vacationing on a birding tour. But those in the know understand the real reason: to discover evidence that will exonerate his fugitive brother Damian who has manslaughter charges hanging over his head in the death of four indigenous Colombian people.

Meanwhile, back in Saltmarsh, Dom’s nemesis, Marvin Laraby, has been brought in to handle Dom’s workload while he’s gone, including the murder of accountant Erin Dawes. It appears she’s bilked her three partners in an investment club—a perfect motive for murder. The partners, the investment broker, and the man who stands to benefit from the investment are all prime suspects.

Laraby, DC Laura Salter, and Sgt. Danny Maik find the investigation fraught with miscues and danger, but finally home in on a single suspect. However, when Dom returns home, he disagrees with Laraby’s findings, but is told to stay away from the case or risk losing his position permanently to Laraby. In true Domenic Jejeune fashion, he must find a way to lead the team in the right direction.

Author Burrows, winner of the Arthur Ellis award for the first book in this series, A Siege of Bitterns, has given fans—birders and non-birders alike—a well-paced and plotted story that jumps seamlessly between the frigid climes of the English seashore to the humid rainforests of Colombia. One caveat: read the first three books before tackling this one to better understand references to events from earlier in the series. All in all, a satisfying read.

Teri Duerr
2018-06-29 03:21:05
So Long, Jake Lassiter
Oline H. Cogdill

Back in 1990, author Paul Levine introduced readers to Miami Dolphin-turned-lawyer Jake Lassiter in To Speak for the Dead.

To Speak for the Dead was notable not just because it was a tightly plotted novel with a good swath of humor, but also because it was one of the novels that ushered in a new wave of Florida mysteries.

Jake was smart—with a smart mouth. He had a self-deprecating sense of humor that also included the law profession. He was fond of saying, “They don’t call us sharks for our ability to swim.”

Now, Bum Deal, the 13th novel in this series that has been spread over 28 years, will be the finale for Jake.

As Levine said, “That’s right. I’m bidding farewell to my old pal Jake, the second-string linebacker who trudged through night law school and became a combative Miami trial lawyer.”

The reason for Jake’s departure makes perfect sense—it’s his health.

“Jake’s been having these problems—fights with prosecutors and judges, memory lapses, confusion, headaches—and it’s time to say goodbye,” Levine stated in a newsletter.

“Dr. Melissa Gold, a neurologist who treats Lassiter during office hours and spends sultry nights with him in his Coconut Grove house, fears he may have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) as a result of all those concussions on the football field,” Levine added.

Or as Jake has said, “The past clings to me like mud on rusty cleats.”

With CTE in the news a lot lately, it’s also a timely topic.

Of course, Jake will not take retirement quietly. In Bum Deal, Jake undergoes experimental treatments, and makes a major career change. He switches sides in the courtroom and prosecutes a surgeon accused of killing his wife. Jake probably should have paid more attention to the law part of Law & Order. The case seems impossible with no forensic evidence, no witness, and no body. Add to that, Jake’s best friends, lawyers Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord, are defending the surgeon.

“Drained of his mental edge just when he needs it most, my old courtroom warrior faces the possibility of losing the case,” added Levine.

One of the hallmarks of the Lassiter series was Levine’s look at South Florida.

Now it seems everyone knows how weird Florida can be—hey, I live here, folks, and I know how odd it is.

In the early 1990s, Florida was still uncharted territory as far as weirdness went.

But those of us down here knew that Levine was not making up these details such as the courthouse steps being cleaned daily to remove chicken parts and goats’ heads used in Santeria rituals.

Jake would sometimes lose his way in Little Havana because numbered streets were renamed to honor heroes favored by the Miami City Commission, such as General Maximo Gomez Boulevard and Jose Canseco Street.

In an interview with me years ago, Levine said, “The problem is you've got to tone it down. If you re-create what's really going on, people won't believe it.”

Happy retirement, Jake. You were great fun.

Oline Cogdill
2018-07-07 02:12:10
Perfume by Kelli Stanley
Oline H. Cogdill

I don’t where I got my love of perfume from.

My mother never wore fragrance, though she had a little cart with mini perfumes that my father brought back from the war. She never opened one of the bottles, ever. That little cart is now on my dresser, still unopened.

But I always loved fragrance. I remember one of my grandmothers occasionally wore it, as did one of my aunts. But I am from a farming background, and perfume wasn’t high on the list.

But in high school I started wearing it, spurred on by the teen fashion magazines I read. I doubt I would ever wear those fragrances now that the teenage me loved.

And many thanks to author Denise Hamilton for re-triggering my love of perfume in her books.

Fragrances can mean many things to the wearer—a memory of an evening, a historical note, a feeling.

Kelli Stanley uses fragrances to establish a mood or a character’s personality in her Miranda Corbie novels, which are set in San Francisco during 1940, the time when war was raging in Europe but the US had yet to enter the battle.

In City of Sharks, private detective Miranda is interviewing potential client Louise Crowley, who is the assistant to ruthless publisher Niles Alexander. One of the first things Miranda asks is if Louise wears perfume.

Louise answers, “Mr. Alexander prefers me not to. He said—he said it distracts him when I take dictation.”

Miranda: “What about when you’re not taking dictation? Shalimar? Joy? Shocking, perhaps?”

Louise: “I wear Fleurs de Rocaille.”

So based on that short exchange, I had to know more about Fleurs de Rocaille.

According to Lucky Scent (my go-to site for all things perfume), Fleurs de Rocaille de Caron was created in 1933. It is a “a joyful, floral, impulsive perfume, which remains one of High Perfumery's great successes.”

Its notes, Lucky Scent states, are rose, jasmine, violet, lily of the valley, Aldehyde, musk, cedar, sandalwood, oak moss.

Later in City of Sharks, Miranda attends a party where “her nose wrinkled at the unholy amalgamation of Shalimar, Joy, and Tabu.”

This isn’t the first time Stanley has used fragrance in the Miranda Corbie novels.

In City of Ghosts, Miranda worries that she is down to her last bottle of Vol de Nuit, and she knows that there will be no more shipments of the perfume until the war is over.

Vol de Nuit is an apt perfume for WWII. Produced by the house Guerlain, Vol de Nuit was created in 1933 as a tribute to flight, celebrating the novel of the same name by pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Air France. The fragrance Vol de Nuit celebrated courage, according to Guerlain.

Oline Cogdill
2018-07-14 22:17:38
Author Predicts the Future, Maybe
Oline H. Cogdill

Gray Basnight, left, author of three novels, turned to fiction after almost three decades as a broadcast news writer, editor, producer, and reporter. His books and writing cross several genres.

He lives in New York with his wife, Lisa, and their golden retriever, Tinta.  

His latest novel is Flight of the Fox (Down & Out Books), in which an innocent math professor runs for his life as teams of hit men try to prevent publication of their government’s dark history.

In this essay, he discusses some of the “fictional forecasting” he created as a writer of futuristic thrillers.


Sci-Fi/Not Sci-Fi
By Gray Basnight

One of the fun things about writing a story set in the future is that I get to predict stuff.

In my new novel, the run-for-your-life thriller Flight of the Fox, the principal technological forecast centers on drones. That doesn’t exactly make me Nostradamus, because drones are the here and now (duh!).

But what’s new in the story is their pervasive influence in our everyday lives, particularly where they provide backup support, and in some cases, totally replace police presence.

But my fictional forecasting it not limited to the coming of these unmanned aerial devices. As my university math professor flees down the East Coast while dodging mysterious drones and black-ops hit men, he encounters a number of other innovations that are probably under development right now.  

And if they’re not, they should be.     

Here’s a rundown of my effort to channel Jules Verne:

Lens-to-Lens Networking:
An enhancement where the single user of a cellphone video camera can dial in another user who can then remotely view the image being filmed on the camera at the scene. The problem is that the images are really fuzzy.  

PC Packets:
Marketed as “Flexi Flats,” these are personal computers that are the same basic dimension as a paper towel. And they’re magnetic, so each one will adhere to the refrigerator. You can also roll it up and tuck it into your pocket when you go to the office, car, or airport. They conveniently come in packs of at least half a dozen. As for problems, web reviews will advise there are two: they’re very expensive, and each one has only a short lifespan. But hey, as with everything, Flexi Flats are new and the kinks still need to be worked out.

SCD, Stroke Counter Device:  
This may already exist, or I may have invented it. I know that’s odd, but I’m uncertain. In any case, it’s a device that your boss puts on your PC to record every keystroke you type and save the data forever in a separate file.      
 
GSP, Geo-Spatial Profiling:  
A future technology that forecasts where a fugitive is hiding or running at any given moment based on individual personality, intelligence, physical health, lifestyle, etc. (You may be thinking at this point that the author of Flight of the Fox is a little paranoid. Well, yeah, I am.)         

FIDROPRO:
Navy acronym for Fighter Drone Program, a fictional team that designs, tests, and deploys aircraft that can do everything a fighter jet can do, but without a pilot. The X-47 fighter jet, however, is authentic. Looking like a true spaceship, it does play a role in my novel. It’s an actual unmanned fighter jet developed at a cost of $800 million dollars that successfully passed all remote landing tests on aircraft carriers. The X-47 has since been mothballed as too costly. FIDROPRO, however, continues, even if only in my fictional world.      

DeepDecipher.com:
A website used by my math professor Sam Teagarden to help him decode a mysterious file discovered in his inbox. Successful decryption of that file may alter knowledge of US history as we know it. That could make him a new American Prometheus. It could also get him killed.

 I can’t actually say the website is fiction because I bought the domain rights. So, keep watching deepdecipher.com for more scintillating details.




Oline Cogdill
2018-07-21 22:28:33
Rob Hart on Ending a Series
Oline H. Cogdill

Rob Hart is the author of the Ash McKenna series, including New Yorked, City of Rose, South Village, The Woman From Prague, and Potter’s Field, published by Polis Books. He also co-wrote Scott Free with James Patterson. His next novel, The Warehouse, will be released in 2019 and has been optioned for film by Ron Howard. He lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.

Hart’s final Ash McKenna novel, Potter’s Field, comes out in a few weeks. In this essay, Hart discusses capping a crime series: how to do it, why to do it, and under what circumstances a character could be brought back.

How to Say Goodbye to Pretend People
by Rob Hart


On my desk, in my home office, is a set of bookends. Blocks of wood, weathered and rough, cut from something larger. According to the website where I bought them: lumber salvaged from the home of Ray Bradbury.

They were supposed to arrive with a certificate of authenticity signed by his daughter, Alexandra. I can’t remember if the certificate arrived or not. I certainly can’t find it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t here. My filing system consists of putting things in a pile until I forget about them.

Fahrenheit 451 was a formative book for me. It was the first book that knocked me on my ass and said: “This. This is what books can do.”

So when I saw the bookends on sale, I bought them, and when they arrived, I used them to hold up the things that I wrote.

I think a lot of authors do this, right? We have stray piles of contributor copies and comp books we get from our publisher, but those are earmarked for giveaways or houseguests.

One copy of everything I’ve got words in—from novels to lit journals to the honorable mention page of Best American Mystery Stories—goes into that display between the Bradbury bookends.

And just now I placed Potter’s Field, the fifth and final Ash McKenna novel, into that display. It’s the last time Ash—series character, amateur private detective, good-hearted kid with some bad habits—will go in there.

Which isn’t completely true. In a year, Potter’s Field will come out in paperback. In January, Ash makes a very brief appearance in a short story that’ll appear in Take-Out, my food noir collection. So I’m fibbing for dramatic purposes, but just give me this, okay?

Because it’s the end of Ash’s story. The last adventure of a character I figured would be one and done, and then decided I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. So I got it in my head I should follow him through five books, because the Joe Pitt series by Charlie Huston was five books.

Seriously, that was my entire thought process. I love those Joe Pitt books.

The number was less important than the fact that Ash needed an ending. He’s not an evergreen character like Bosch or Reacher or Rhyme. From the beginning, even when I thought New Yorked was a standalone, I was writing a story about a kid carrying a lot of anger and looking for his moral compass. The story only works if, one day, he finds it.  

Even when you know it’s coming, saying goodbye is hard. You get to this point where you feel like you’re the character, or the character is you, or something equally pretentious, and then you have to lock him up in a corner of your head and throw away the key.

Not that my publisher, Jason, isn’t trying. There was a 10-year gap between Dennis Lehane’s last two Kenzie and Gennaro books—which he has helpfully pointed out a dozen times. And we live in the age of the reboot. There’s a Karate Kid show on YouTube now.

I’m not saying this is my last ride with Ash. Except, right now it is.

It’s not about wanting to move on to different projects. It’s not about wanting to flex a new set of writing muscles. It’s those things, too, but it’s also the feeling like I got what I needed.

Ash’s story was meant to be fun, but it was also meant to be therapy—New Yorked was about whether I wanted to leave the city where I was born. City of Rose was about becoming a dad. South Village was about how I relate to the world around me. The Woman From Prague was about how I relate to myself.

And Potter’s Field is about taking that final step and accepting: yes, I am a grown-up now.

I excised the demons I needed to excise and I’m ready for my next adventure: taking a baseball bat to the knees of capitalism and big business in The Warehouse, coming sometime in the back half of 2019 from Crown.

So, when do you know it’s time to say goodbye to a series character?

And I’m not sure I have a very good answer, which is why I’m stalling.

Certainly, you want to go out on top, before people are tired, and I don’t think people are tired of Ash yet. Better to go now than after the reviewers and the readers turn against me.

There’s an element, too, where it’s less about knowing it’s time to go, and more about deciding it’s time. Ash’s voice is like a comfortable pair of shoes. I can slip it on and off with ease, but I can’t wear it forever.

Another reason I wrote Ash was because I wanted to write the origin story of a private detective. See what pushes a person into that life. Once, I suggested to Jason that yes, I’ll do a sixth book, but it’ll be Ash at the end of his career—an old man in postapocalyptic New York, working his last case.

After a long pause, he replied, “At least it won’t be boring.”

But I’m glad to be done. I’m happy to know I told the story I wanted to tell, on my terms, and best of all, I got to finish it, which is a luxury not all artists get—shows and series and movie universes get canceled all the time. You’re not safe just because you have an endgame.

I’m also glad because writing a series is hard, both on a writer and a reader. By book five, I’ve got to remember stuff I did in book one, and know that it’s all linking together. That the arcs make sense. And while the first book is a big, exciting thing, by the time you get to the fifth, you feel like you’re inviting people to a Tupperware party.

I’m going to miss Ash. I miss Ash already. Which is a little funny, because I made him up! But still, I do.

It’s nice to sit here and look at the five books in the series, lined up the way they are, held up by tactile pieces of history, these chunks of wood from the home of the man who put me on this path in the first place.

You could call this moment a beginning, with The Warehouse, or an end, with Ash, but I prefer to think of it as the everything in between. That wide-open space where a made-up character can live or be discovered or born again, depending on the reader.

Rob Hart photo by Anna Ty Bergman

Oline Cogdill
2018-07-28 22:38:45
“Decoy” a Classic
Oline H. Cogdill

A couple of months ago, I caught the tail end of a marathon run of the TV crime drama Decoy, which also was, at times, called Decoy Police Woman.

This was considered to be a groundbreaking show, as it was the first American police series that focused on a female police detective. Its 39 half-hour episodes aired from 1957 to 1958.

And having binged on the ten or so episodes I saw, it was indeed groundbreaking, and holds up pretty well.

Decoy had me from the opening scene, with actress Beverly Garland, who played police detective Patricia “Casey” Jones, running from a building and pausing to light a cigarette against the backdrop of New York City. New York’s looming image lets us know that the city is as much a character in this series as any person.

Casey works undercover, mostly dealing with women as victims but also occasionally as criminals. She moves into an apartment to get to know a woman whose boyfriend is a suspected thief. She also poses as a model to catch a murderer in the garment district, as a nurse to find the source of illegal narcotics, and as prisoner in a women's jail, among other undercover assignments.

While the assignments involved women, these were sometimes dangerous assignments. Casey often was in danger and her professionalism and calm under fire—literally—earned her the respect of her male colleagues. Considering the times, that was no easy feat.

At the end of each episode, Casey talks directly to the audience about the crime, showing much empathy for the women who have been victimized. Each episode was dedicated to the Bureau of Policewomen of the New York Police Department.

The glamorous Garland was perfect as Casey. I’ve been a longtime fan of the late actress who played Steve Douglas’ second wife in My Three Sons, among other myriad roles.

While Garland was the only reoccurring actor in Decoy, the series featured a lot of bit actors whose names are recognizable now, such as Edward Asner, Martin Balsam, Barbara Barrie, Peter Falk, Colleen Dewhurst, Larry Hagman, Diane Ladd, Lois Nettleton, Phyllis Newman, and Suzanne Pleshette, among others.

Decoy is a nearly forgotten gem.

Oline Cogdill
2018-08-04 22:57:19
See Also Proof
Robin Agnew

Larry Sweazy’s third Marjorie Trumaine novel, set in North Dakota in the ’60s, is informed by grief. Marjorie is newly widowed. Her husband Hank, maimed in the first novel in a freak accident, died in the second. Now Marjorie is living alone on her 700-plus-acre farm with her dog, Shep, doing freelance indexing work during a long, hard Dakota winter.

“His flannel shirts and gray Dickie work pants still held a faint smell of him: sweat, worry, and love. How could I get rid of such things?” This concise yet evocative sentence is emblematic of Sweazy’s skill as a writer. While this is a short novel, it’s packed full of character, emotion, and plot.

Marjorie, who is being visited regularly by ladies from church, reluctantly joins their number when the daughter of one of her neighbors goes missing. She trundles over the next day with some homemade pies, and finds worried, grieving parents wondering where their Down’s syndrome child has disappeared to during a blizzard. How long she can survive the brutal winter?

Marjorie accompanies the sheriff as he heads out for another round of searching, but instead of the young girl, they find the body of the manager of the town grocery store shot to death in his car on the property of the missing girl’s parents. Before long, Marjorie is joining the church ladies in the work of comforting, cleaning, and cooking for the man’s widow, Anna, as well.

With her precise, orderly indexer mind, Marjorie cannot help but start to index the puzzle that’s bedeviling the town and the new sheriff. Who killed Anna’s husband? Where is the missing girl?

The best historical fiction is almost like a possession. As you read, you’re in another time and place and inside the head of a character whose attitudes differ from your own, as they are (in this case) the attitudes of 1965, not 2018. Sweazy tackles some touchy topics in See Also Proof, namely, society’s treatment of individuals and their families affected by Down’s syndrome in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s—and the names they were called. Marjorie’s explorations are the reader’s. She invites you into the index of her orderly brain where, with persistence and logic, one can solve the crime along with her. This is a gem of a book.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-09 19:18:37
Rattle
Hank Wagner

Fiona Cummins’ haunting debut, Rattle, focuses on a kidnapper/killer who targets victims with rare medical maladies, like Jakey Frith, suffering from fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, and Clara Foyle, whose hands are deformed. Handling the case is Detective Sergeant Etta Fitzroy, who sees a connection with an older case that was never solved; obsessed with repairing her battered reputation, she vows to track the madman down at any cost.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-11 03:12:32
The List
Hank Wagner

If you haven’t yet experienced J. A. Konrath’s work, you’ve probably been living off the grid for the past few years. Well known for his Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels series (each of which bears the name of a mixed drink in the title), he really delivers with The List, which bludgeoned me with its very first sentence, “I found the head.”

Teri Duerr
2018-07-11 03:14:47
First Blood
Hank Wagner

Thoughts of Fawcett/Gold Medal classics, impressive first novels, great titles, and outright boldness in subject matter and writing prompted me to revisit one of the most iconic thrillers of all time, First Blood, by David Morrell. Although it has never been out of print since it was first published back in 1972, I’d like to recommend a recent reissue, a trade paperback issued late last year by Grand Central Publishing. It contains the text of the original, groundbreaking novel, and is bookended by two excellent bonus pieces, opening with “Rambo and Me,” an article from the author, and capped by “A Conversation with David Morrell.”

As for the novel itself, it remains just as bold and compelling as it was when it was first issued. Although set in a specific period of US history, it remains timeless somehow, capturing a primal battle between the old (represented by Korean War vet Wilfred Teasle) and the new (in the form of troubled Green Beret Rambo), a conflict between the system and the things it sometimes inadvertently creates. It is a dark, disturbing, seminal work, one which acts as a bridge between thrillers past (stories like Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” and novels like Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male) and thrillers to come (everything from Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series to the thrillers above), ushering in a new era of action and suspense, even as it expanded the boundaries of existing literature. If you haven’t read it in a while, pick it up and enjoy it all over again; if you have never read it, I can only ask, what the heck are you waiting for?

Teri Duerr
2018-07-11 03:20:48
Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense
Ben Boulden

Night-Gaunts and Other Tales of Suspense, by Joyce Carol Oates, collects six dark stories with a commonality of aging, particularly female loss of physical beauty and sex appeal, and monsters. Both genuine monsters, as in the title story, and the very human kind, which are far more disturbing in these stories than are the imagined.

“The Woman in the Window,” inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting Eleven A.M., opens with an unclothed woman sitting in a blue chair looking intently out a window awaiting her illicit lover’s arrival.

Nude he calls it. Not naked.
(Naked is a coarse word! He is a gentleman and he feels revulsion for vulgarity. Any sort of crude word, mannerism—in a woman.)

Her lover, wealthy and married, is late and the woman’s insecurity and her sinister plan shades the story with disquiet and provides the reader with an off-balance and, perhaps, misplaced empathy for the woman. “The Long-Legged Girl” is a disturbing tale about jealousy, betrayal, fear, growing old and, ultimately, self-pity and revenge. “Sign of the Beast” is the story of a teenage boy, Howard, and his dysfunctional relationship with his Sunday school teacher, Mrs. S__. The teacher gets pleasure from embarrassing and tormenting Howard in front of his classmates, with a sadistic touch, and Howard is terrified by his uncontrollable sexual attraction to the older woman.

Night-Gaunts is an excellent collection. Its tales are meaningful, but also dark and disturbing and should be avoided by the timid and easily distressed.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-11 03:24:35
Santa Cruz Noir
Ben Boulden

Santa Cruz Noir, edited by Susie Bright, is an uneven anthology made valuable by the combined effect of the stories rather than the quality of the individual tales. There are a fair number of average and even mediocre stories in this anthology. As an example, one story, written by a man, is unintentionally humorous because its female protagonist seems like Jack Lemmon playing a woman rather than an actual woman. But the anthology exceeds its stories because it captures California’s wacky and contradictory nature. Hardboiled and new age. Environmentalism and consumerism. Wealth and poverty. All side by side without apology or explanation.

“The Big Creep” by Elizabeth McKenzie features a juvenile private eye without a client and an unreasonable desire, unless you’re a fictional private eye, for justice. Margaret Elysia Garcia’s “Monarchs and Maidens” is a clever revenge tale with a supernatural twist. The plotline and its ominous ending is reminiscent of Joyce Carol Oates’ darker tales. My favorite story in the anthology is Lou Mathews’ excellent private eye tale “Crab Dinners” because it has everything that makes me want to keep reading: murder, gambling, cockfighting, and the promise of justice no matter the cost.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-11 03:28:02
Greeks Bearing Gifts
Dick Lochte

Though, sadly, its author passed away at the early age of 62, this 13th entry in the memorable Bernie Gunther series may not be the last. If one is to believe the Guardian, and why not, Kerr had completed another manuscript before his passing. Since it will be his ultimate work, one can only hope that it will be as thrilling and enjoyable as his penultimate, arguably one of the series’ best. His unique antihero, Bernie, a Kripo cop-turned-private detective in Nazi Germany in the 1930s when first met in Black Violets and thereafter employed in a number of other occupations, begins this adventure in 1956 Munich as a lowly morgue attendant, renamed Christoph Ganz in an effort to avoid the East German Stasi. In quick order, he’s recognized by a devious, bent police inspector and blackmailed into assisting in a robbery-murder for which he is supposed to take the fall. Bernie, an expert at table-turning, emerges with clean hands and the loot. When he delivers the cash to its rightful owner, said owner apparently repays this kindness by finding him a white collar job as claims investigator for a large Munich insurance company. There, he wanders into James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, exposing a murder plotted by the victim’s wife and a fellow insurance agent. (Kerr underlines the homage to the Cain plot by giving another employee of the company the same name as the Indemnity film’s hapless protagonist, Walter Neff.) Bernie’s reward for saving the company a hefty life insurance payoff is a trip to Athens to probe the sinking of the Doris, an insured vessel that had been used in a search for Greek artifacts. Also involved is a Nazi war criminal who in 1943 sent thousands of Greek Jews to meet their fate at Auschwitz and who now apparently is slaying people involved in the Doris’ sinking. Along with this event-packed, bullet-paced tale, Kerr, in his own miraculous way, was able to craft fully dimensional characters that reader Lee effectively brings to audio life. Chief among these is, of course, Bernie, the narrator of the series, heard here with all of his wit, sarcasm, self-preservation and, yes, humanity in play. At the end of this strikingly well-written and -performed novel, Bernie is given the chance to atone for his past by becoming a Mossad spy tracking down Adolf Eichmann and other war criminals. With luck, next year we’ll find out how well that works for him.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-11 03:33:29
Twisted Prey
Dick Lochte

Book number 28 in Sandford’s Prey series once again pits federal marshal Lucas Davenport against beautiful billionaire psychopath Taryn Grant. They last met in Silken Prey (2013), when Grant, in the course of a successful Senate run, murdered a few people and, in spite of Davenport’s dogged sleuthing, got away with it. Those pols, right? Now she’s a member of the Senate intelligence committee with a yen to become the next Democratic presidential candidate. Reader Ferrone takes us through the nonstop thriller, as he has for most, if not all, of the series, with an appropriately gruff, hardboiled delivery. His Davenport is tough-sounding and determined on the hunt, but almost whimsical when bantering with wife and pals. For Senator Porter Smalls, another character returning from Silken Prey, Ferrone uses a slightly higher pitch, along with an effective note of fear as he tries to convince Davenport that Grant wants to send him on the long goodbye. The vicious Senator Grant speaks with an angry, slushy hiss (Sandford writes that her fury causes “saliva to fly across the room”) while her homicidal fixer, Jack Parrish, counters that with an air of cool professionalism. They’re quite a pair. As noted, she is a Democrat, while Smalls is, in Davenport’s wife’s scornful opinion, a right-wing Republican, but Sandford’s speedy, seductive style whizzes the story past any commentary on real-life politicking. Still, the book’s over-the-top moments—Grant secretly leaving a party, slaying a couple of people, escaping Davenport and the cops and returning to the party for a glass of champagne and an alibi—act as reminders of the current fragility of the rule of law in our conflicted nation.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-11 03:37:44
True Fiction
Dick Lochte

Goldberg, in his guise as a mild-mannered television writer, has successfully walked the comedy-suspense line (usually with collaborator William Rabkin) on more series than you can shake a stick at, if, as Groucho Marx once quipped, stick-shaking is your idea of a good time. (The TV list includes Nero Wolfe, Monk, Diagnosis: Murder, and a personal favorite of mine, She-Wolf of London, aka Love and Curses.) Goldberg also has written an almost alarming number of crime novels, a few coauthored with Janet Evanovich, several with Rabkin and others. Not all of these are comedy mysteries, but True Fiction fits into that category. Here’s the premise: when a terrorist plot he concocted at a supposedly government-sanctioned weekend seminar actually takes place, thriller writer Ian Ludlow, an ordinary guy in the midst of a book-signing tour, begins phoning other writers who attended the meeting. Discovering their high mortality rate, he goes to ground, hoping that when push comes to shove he’ll be able to emulate his series Renaissance man hero, Clint Straker. Ian, his ultra-resilient author escort Margo French, and Ronnie Mancuso, the now delusional, tin pyramid hat-wearing former star of Ludlow’s TV series, Hollywood and the Vine (“Half man, half plant, all cop”) stumble from one assassination attempt to the next. The chronicle of their struggle definitely has its hilarious moments (especially the excerpts from Straker novels), but the present political atmosphere, which is having its effect on genre literature, adds a chill to the book’s humor. It feels a little like laughing in a graveyard. On the other hand, the credibility of the thriller aspect is considerably enhanced, with the good guys facing villains—Wilton Cross, head of the powerful, CIA-endorsed Blackthorn Global Security and his cold-blooded assistant Victoria Takahara—who are the sort of nasty sociopaths you might find in novels that take themselves much more seriously than this one. Reader Verner has the kind of clear, youthful, intelligent, and mildly sarcastic voice that works well for Ian. He sharpens it and increases the sarcasm for Margo and adds a bit of goofy good cheer for the whacky, self-amused Ronnie. Cross sounds middle-aged and soulless, the kind of ends-justify-the-means CEO who doesn’t hesitate in ordering a few hundred deaths to prove a point, while Victoria speaks with a lyrical femininity that belies her actions, like, for example, emptying her Glock in a room full of people. They’re a horrendous duo but, thankfully, Goldberg isn’t one of those modernists who believe that letting evil triumph is telling it like it is.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-11 03:43:24
Chester B. Himes: A Biography
Jon L. Breen

The ideal subject of a major author biography should meet several criteria: a significant body of work, a complex and interesting personality, a variety of life experiences for good or ill, and association with major figures and significant events. Chester Himes (1909-1984) meets all of these requirements. He was a major figure in African-American literature of the 20th century, both in his early mainstream novels and short stories and later in his satirical, seriocomic, and socially important Harlem-based detective fiction. Personally, he was by most accounts polite, humorous, and charming, if somewhat mercurial and volatile. He was a brilliant and ambitious writer whose compulsive truth-telling often got him into trouble. He was sensitive, accident-prone, profligate in money matters, often irresponsible in personal relationships, and deeply angry for good reason about the plight of African Americans. He went from childhood in a middle-class family of Negro college academics to a brief stint as a student at Ohio State University to a longer term as an inmate of the Ohio State Penitentiary, convicted at 19 of armed robbery, and a writing career that began with short stories sold while in prison to a variety of periodicals, notably Esquire, where his identity as a prison writer was revealed but not at first that he was black. Through a rocky writing career, he would sometimes be flush, often broke, and even while his books were on display in the stores and being reviewed in major journals, the only day jobs he could get ran to the custodial or servile. For a brief time, he served as butler to novelist Louis Bromfield. He lived in or visited Cleveland, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and London, ending his life as an expatriate in Spain. He knew socially or worked with major African American writers: Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Melvin Van Peebles, Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones). He was a friend and supporter of Malcolm X.

In 2001, James Sallis published a very good biography of Chester Himes. The picture it gives of its subject is in no way contradicted by anything in this newer life, but Lawrence Jackson adds much more detail. Some biographies overdo the minutiae or explore the family background beyond the point of relevance or reader interest. That is not the case with Jackson’s work, which can be seen not just as the story of one man, but as a history of African American intellectual life from the early 20th century of W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington through the civil rights advances and setbacks of the Depression 1930s and wartime 1940s, the postwar anti-Communist witch hunts, Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, the movement in Hollywood films from comic black stereotypes to more varied black-centered stories, to which the film of Himes’ Cotton Comes to Harlem made a significant contribution, and the sometimes explosive 1960s of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, both victims of assassins’ bullets.

Jackson’s book is one of the most intensely involving biographies I’ve ever read, a highly deserving nominee for the 2018 Edgar Award in the biographical/critical category. Himes was nominated for an Edgar only once, for Blind Man With a Pistol (1969), a late entry in the series about Harlem policemen Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. An author of real detective stories, complete with clues and surprise culprits, Himes appreciated and respected the conventions of the form. Late in life, he wrote that the detective stories were “the best of my writing and the best of my thinking and I am willing to stake my reputation on them.” He must have recognized the irony of being nominated for the single one of his Harlem series that can be called an anti-detective story, subverting the form by leaving its mysteries unsolved.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-12 03:05:44
Maigret’s World: A Reader’s Companion to Simenon’s Famous Detective
Jon L. Breen

The authors, who maintain websites on Simenon and Maigret, are well qualified to survey the life and career of the Parisian police officer, who appeared in print from 1931 to 1972. The three sections are “Maigret the Man” (biographical details as known, plus such matters as appearance, clothing, pipes, food and drink, and home life, including a dozen pages on Mme. Maigret); “The Policeman at Work” (describing methods, work environment, principal police associates, the judicial system, the city of Paris, and transportation methods); and “The Saga,” discussing some of the cases, categories of characters (e.g., doctors, less-central police, lawyers, servants, clergy, postmen, reporters, cats), and a chronology of the series’ publishing history. Appendices list the Maigret novels in order of writing, crime novels outside the series, and works published under pseudonyms. As an example of the companion’s utility, reference to a Parisian detective named Lucas in the non-Maigret novel published in English as The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By made me wonder if this was the same Lucas as appeared in Maigret novels. It was indeed, and the authors devote six pages to the character, who along with his role in the Maigret saga, appears in some of the pseudonymous novels and several nonseries crime novels, among them L’homme qui regardait passer les trains.

Of course, Simenon wrote in French, and the authors work from primary sources, i.e., the original French texts. Several pages are devoted to Maigret’s use of the familiar tu or the more formal vous in addressing his closest colleagues. That books are cited in the text by their original French titles makes it challenging for the English-language reader to locate references by titles of the translated editions, not all of which are as easy to figure out as The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By. Many of the Maigrets have appeared in English under multiple titles. For example, La téte d’un homme has been known as A Battle of Nerves, Maigret’s War of Nerves, The Patience of Maigret, and A Man’s Head. None of those English titles appear in the index, but the list of abbreviations at the front of the volume provides a three-letter code for each of the Maigret novels and stories and follows the French title with all the translated titles. The appendix of non-Maigret works does the same service for the crime novels and pseudonymous works, giving a literal translation in brackets for those works that have never appeared in English.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-12 03:14:13
Last Call
Eileen Brady

Maggie Lewis is the best darn bartender at the North DeSoto, Florida, VFW, but she isn’t feeling the love. Instead, when Jack Hoffman, one of the regular “old farts” is murdered, she is unceremoniously fired from her job. Annoyed at being set up by the killer, who used her code to enter the bar off-hours, she tries to prove her innocence, with the help of her neighbor, Michael Bradley, a soon-to-be licensed Florida private investigator.

Author Paula Matter gives us a strong, enjoyable voice in Maggie, and has a real knack for making her VFW patrons memorable. As we get deeper into the mystery, we learn more about each one of the men who hang out at the VFW every day until closing. The stories of these veterans are varied and surprising, and Maggie’s big heart feels for her patrons. Middle-aged and made a widow by a senseless and still-unsolved murder, she doesn’t let her now-precarious financial position depress her. Instead, she continues to pick up whatever work she can get, including cleaning house for two VFW board members’ wives, snooty Pam Nelson and secretive Diane Reid. Was the murder of bar regular Jack an inside job? Skillful sleuthing and writing has Maggie finding out the answer the hard way. A very enjoyable read.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-12 03:21:36
Find You in the Dark
Hank Wagner

In this impressive debut, Nathan Ripley (the pseudonym of the Canadian Journey-Prize winner Naben Ruthnum) tells the story of retired family man Martin Reese, a dot-com millionaire who has channeled his personal obsessions into a unique sideline, one where he anonymously uncovers bodies hidden by known serial killers. Subsequently, he notifies the authorities, chastising them for their failure to provide closure to victims’ families.

At the site of his latest venture, he uncovers something totally unexpected, a fresh body, secreted there by another killer who has taken notice of Reese’s activities and has become intrigued by this odd man and his strange proclivities. Reese’s discovery marks the beginning of a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the killer, and with aggressive Detective Sandra Whittal, whose cop instincts tell her that Reese may be the man she contemptuously refers to as “The Finder.”

Dark and disturbing, Find You in the Dark is a thriller that defies expectations, sporting an original premise and a truly unreliable protagonist, whose point of view dominates the book. The suspense is inextricably woven into the daily routines of Reese’s existence, as his secret life starts to intrude on his family life, endangering everyone he loves. Although the novel and its (anti?) hero may remind some of Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series, I think the stronger association will be with the work of Ira Levin (Stepford Wives, A Kiss Before Dying), who always managed to give the everyday a sinister tinge.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-12 03:26:01
No Cure for the Dead
Robin Agnew

I usually dislike real people as characters in mystery novels unless they are tangential (we all have our rules!), but with No Cure for the Dead I liked being proven wrong even more. Christine Trent’s novel about Florence Nightingale is engaging and believable. While many people know Florence Nightingale’s name, fewer, I think, know exactly what this revolutionary reformer did to earn her place in history.

What Florence did, through force of will and a belief that she was called by God, was revolutionize health care. When your doctor washes his hands before an exam, thank Florence Nightingale. When we meet Florence in Victorian England, she has taken over the Establishment for Gentlewomen During Temporary Illness in London, her first nursing gig and the one preceding her famous exploits in the Crimean War.

It’s her first week on the job and, unfortunately, it begins with Florence finding a young woman hanged in the library. Trent then proceeds to create a claustrophobic, very Victorian atmosphere for her story, grounding it with the life stories of the various nurses and the patrons of the hospital. While telling a complex mystery, Trent is also able to illuminate the lives of the women working at the hospital.

Florence Nightingale has often been portrayed—most notably by Lytton Strachey in his classic Eminent Victorians—as acerbic and unpleasant. As Trent portrays her, though, Florence is simply a driven career woman with a vision. In Victorian England this may have been hard for people to understand—Florence’s mother and sister were devastated by her life choices—but in the 21st century what was once cause for disapproval is now worthy of admiration.

Because Trent keeps things firmly in 1854 London, however, she lets the reader see the effect Florence’s manner and brusque behavior may have had on those around her. The mystery part of the novel is clever and complex, with many hanging threads that are ably clipped by Florence during the denouement. Trent is doing double duty here: telling a great story, and educating the reader a bit. I am grateful for both the story and a lesson on Florence Nightingale, a quiet revolutionary.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-12 03:31:46
The Fens
Ben Boulden

The Fens is Pamela Wechsler’s third novel featuring the likable Boston prosecutor Abby Endicott. Abby, a Harvard Law School graduate whose wealthy family cut off financial support until she finds a less dangerous job, is relentless in her pursuit of justice, albeit also melancholy at her recent inability to shop Nieman Marcus. Abby’s tenacity for justice is required when Rudy Maddox, starting catcher for the Boston Red Sox, goes missing on the season’s opening day.

Abby’s boss and every resident of Beantown wants the investigation solved yesterday, but the case is harder than it should be, since no one who knows anything is talking and Maddox left few clues except for evidence of a lifestyle beyond his means and a long list of scorned lovers. The trail starts at Fenway, but veers into performance-enhancing drugs, doctored baseballs, crooked cops, and murder.

The Fens and Abby Endicott have a hip vibe with a television mystery drama style. Abby acts as both investigator and prosecutor, think Law & Order without ever changing characters between the streets and the courtroom. The mystery is light fare, but enjoyable. Abby makes more courtroom errors than a rookie pitcher facing J. D. Martinez with the bases loaded, but somehow she gets the win. Her self-deprecating humor is a nice touch, and the tour of Boston, from Fenway to city high-rises to wealthy and downtrodden suburbs both, goes a long way to covering the mystery’s shortcomings.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-12 03:35:13
Hydra
Ben Boulden

Hydra, Matt Wesolowski’s second novel in his Six Stories series, is a complex and original suspense tale. Scott King operates a true crime podcast discussing crimes that have been solved, but have nuances and perspectives yet to be explored. Each story is developed into a series of six podcasts, each podcast features an interview with a person that has in-depth information about the crime, perpetrator, or victim. Scott’s latest subject is the so-called Macleod Massacre, where a 21-year-old woman, Arla Macleod, bludgeoned her father, mother, and younger sister to death with a hammer.

Convicted of the murders, Arla is serving her sentence in a medium security mental health facility. The sentence is seen as overly light by the Stanwel’s residents, the small northern England town where Arla was raised and the murders took place. As Scott delves into the case, unexpected things occur: ominous and personal threats on Six Stories’ social media pages and threatening text messages regularly ping his unlisted mobile phone. And disturbing new facts are uncovered about Arla’s restrictive childhood—her parents were staunchly religious and overbearing—and about the case.

Hydra is that rare novel straddling two genres, in this case horror and crime, that will satisfy readers of both. There are moments of spine-tingling creepiness as Arla’s frightening and bleak psychology is examined, but it’s the underlying crime that drives the narrative. Presented as a true crime investigation in podcast form, the novel is entirely carved from dialogue: Scott King’s monologues and his guests’ interviews. The execution perfectly allows the reader to see and believe every event as the mystery develops. Hydra is as surprising as it is good, and should appeal to readers who enjoy crime with an eerie, dark vibe.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-12 03:40:44
The Killing Habit
Matt Fowler

Dead cats. That’s what sets the mystery in motion for the main characters in Mark Billingham’s The Killing Habit. The latest in the Tom Thorne series sees Thorne and an equally (if not more) badass Nicola Tanner working two separate cases. One involves the use of a dangerously addictive drug and the other involves, well, dead cats. It’s not long before Thorne understands that these feline fatalities might be symptomatic of something more dangerous than he thought.

While the two mysteries can make the novel feel bloated at times, Billingham ultimately does a good job intersecting the stories. When Tanner and Thorne are working together, the story is at its best. The banter and classic detective speak that crime novels have taught the reader to appreciate are very much present in the pages of the book. The stakes are high and it is a treat to meet the characters that surround the mystery that has been built. The Duchess, one of the criminals we meet along the way, is particularly enthralling.

Billingham is an international bestselling author and shows a strong command of his story. The Killing Habit is well-done piece of crime fiction—if you can get beyond the cats.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-12 03:44:12
The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey
Ben Boulden

The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey is the eighth novel in J. Michael Orenduff’s consistently good Hubie Schuze mystery series. Hubie is a potter, the proprietor of a pottery shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico’s fashionable and touristy Old Town, and a self-described pot thief. Hubie illegally digs ancient pots from public lands to sell in his Old Town shop, rationalizing that the original potters would want their work admired for their beauty rather than analyzed by archeologists.

Hubie’s surprised when he’s asked to teach a pottery class at the University of New Mexico, ART 2330, Anasazi Pottery Methods, since his amateur sleuthing sent the art department’s chair to prison a few years earlier and, as a graduate student, he was expelled for removing pots from an archeology site. The class is a non-credit studio course, but that doesn’t stop the students from complaining about Hubie to school officials for offenses large and small. And when a student is murdered while modeling for a full-body plaster cast, everyone in the art department, including Hubie, is a suspect.

The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey is a humorous and satisfying traditional mystery with strong characters and a rich setting. Hubie is an eccentric—no cell phone, internet, or email—with a clear eye for cultural peculiarities that never views differences unkindly. The students are stereotypical millennials with their mobile phones and short attention spans.The art department faculty are hilariously odd (two professors inform Hubie they aren’t speaking to him, but keep talking anyway), and Albuquerque is presented as the thriving and diverse and water-deprived city it is. It’s a place, as long as Hubie is there, most readers will want to return to again and again.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-12 03:49:36
Gentlemen Formerly Dressed
Jean Gazis

Gentlemen Formerly Dressed is the fifth installment in the award-winning Rowland Sinclair mystery series. It’s 1933, and Sinclair, a handsome, wealthy Australian artist, and his eccentric, bohemian friends Clyde (also a painter), Milton (a poet prone to quoting others without attribution), and Edna (a beautiful, pragmatic, and independent sculptress) have just escaped Germany, where Rowly was beaten and tortured for creating “degenerate” art.

Determined to warn those in power about the threatening developments and the dangers of appeasing the Nazis, the friends travel to England, hoping to influence the international diplomats gathered for the London Economic Conference. Just before it begins, Rowly stumbles upon the murdered Viscount Pierrepont impaled with a ceremonial sword and dressed in a woman’s nightie and makeup in his quarters at an exclusive men’s club. Pierrepont’s naive niece—and private secretary—Allie, is soon arrested for the crime, but Rowly and the others are certain she must be innocent.

Ranging from posh hotels, private clubs, and country estates, to back alleys and seedy taverns, to the Geological Museum and Madame Tussaud’s, and peopled with a wide array of colorful characters, Gentlemen Formerly Dressed is a lighthearted romp through 1930s high and low British society.

Rowly and his friends find themselves in one sticky situation after another, attending a wild, cross-dressing party, visiting eccentric acquaintances from Rowly’s university days at their country house, battling the fascist followers of Oswald Mosley, and getting unexpected help from Rowland’s conservative older brother Wil, as they attempt to find out who had the motive and opportunity to murder old Pierrepont. Real-life figures, including H.G. Wells and Winston Churchill, make cameo appearances in this entertaining tale.

Teri Duerr
2018-07-12 03:54:30