tuesday april 01
Back in medieval times, it was very important to keep the Royalty happy, lest all hell break loose. Therefore the King's fools, or court jesters, were no fools at all, since they played such an integral role in the well-being of the court. Members of the Fool's Guild in the mystery series by Alan Gordon are especially savvy. They use their inside knowledge and the anonymity of their masks to undermine all varieties of political trickery and deceit.
Author Alan Gordon is a marvelously clever writer, who has a 'day job' as a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society in Queens, New York. He has received praise for his series featuring the Fool's Guild, displaying a cunning group of unlikely heroes mixed in with history, suspense, and even a little Shakespeare before his time. All six of Gordon's Medieval Mysteries are available at the Library:
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wednesday march 19
Twelve-year-old Jamie Gabriel gets on his bike to run his morning paper route in the Indianapolis suburbs. He never comes home.
If you can keep reading past that gut-wrenching premise, keep reading. David Levien’s debut novel, City of the Sun, keeps tightening the suspense from there.
Jamie’s parents, Paul and Carol, spend a year anxiously following the police case on their son while their marriage falls to ashes and the case turns cold. Then a sympathetic patrolman passes them the name of a private investigator. Though they’ve already tried two, Paul finally makes the contact with p.i. Frank Behr. Behr is reluctant to take the case, as the odds of finding any information (much less the boy himself) are so remote. But Paul doesn’t know that the case has a hook that Behr can’t pull away from: Behr’s own son died at the age of seven.
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tuesday march 11
Move over Emmy, Tony, and Oscar. Make room for the Edgar, the literary award that is given annually by the Mystery Writers of America. Named for Edgar Allan Poe, who managed to be a quite a mystery in his own right, the award honors the best mystery writers of the year in a wide variety of categories: Novel, First Novel, Paperback Original, Critical/Biographical, Fact Crime, Short Story, Young Adult, Juvenile, Play, TV Episode, and Motion Picture, plus five 'special awards'. The Edgar Award Ceremony will be held in New York City on May 1.
This year's finalists were just announced, and for mystery lovers it makes for a fine reading list. The nominees for 'best novel' are all available at the Library:
wednesday february 20
I keep seeing trailers for a new movie with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, but the Fool's Gold that pops into my mind every time I see them is a completely unrelated 1993 novel of that title by Albert DiBartolomeo. Only his second novel (and apparently his last), it was a crisp little mob thriller about a cache of gold coins.
As the book opens, Benny Bean, a violent young thug, steals those coins from a beach house. But before he has even got them out the door, someone in turn steals them from him. Furious, Benny tracks down the second thief and kidnaps his daughter, Claire, for ransom. But the second thief has already been robbed of the coins, too.
Those are just the opening twists in a spirallingly complicated plot. The coins (which belong to a mob boss) pass through several more pairs of hands while Benny keeps Claire a prisoner and Claire's boyfriend races to recover the coins that will buy her life.
Fans of the genre will appreciate DiBartolomeo's snappy plotting. I remember the book as being pretty violent, though with a comic edge, so keep that in mind. But let me know whether it stands up to my memory of it. And whether it would make a good movie itself.
wednesday january 09
“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation."
That’s the first line of Donna Tartt’s cult classic The Secret History, and the first time I read the sentence, I was hooked.
When narrator and native Californian Richard Papen transfers to Hampden College in Vermont, he joins an exclusive group of five other students studying ancient Greek taught by an eccentric professor. Gradually Richard earns their trust and becomes privy to the group’s secret history: they accidentally murdered a farmer during their recreation of an ancient Greek bacchanal.
One of the members, Bunny Corcorran, did not participate in the bacchanal and learns of the murder. As Bunny threatens to reveal their secret, Richard must decide whether to go along with their decision to silence him.
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saturday november 24
The astounding commercial success of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, with its irresistible combination of cabalistic hokum and pseudo-historical authority, spawned imitations that left many book lovers with piercing conspiracy-fiction hangovers. It happened to me. But my breaking point came when I encountered "The Da Vinci Code Diet."
Paul Sussman's new thriller, The Last Secret of the Temple, seems to possess standard ingredients found in a Da Vinci Code knock-off. It posits a deep archaeological mystery, involving a treasure from the Temple of Jerusalem, which the Romans destroyed in 70 AD. It has a mysterious document penned in coded Latin during the Crusades. And, of course, it has the Nazis storming into the conspiracy in 1944.
But Sussman aims higher in his intriguing police novel set in Israel and Egypt amid the violence and acrimony of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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thursday november 15
Here are the rest of the titles I previewed last week.
The political love story is Letter to Lorenzo, by Amanda Prantera. Julia, the English wife of a wealthy young Roman, is devastated when she is told that he has been killed by a car bomb. Her agonizing grief for her husband is complicated by her bewilderment: why would Red Brigade terrorists kill her husband when the two of them were known for their own socialist convictions? It must be a neo-fascist plot to discredit him. But careful, relentless interrogation by the investigating magistrate reveals that the police think her husband was a terrorist transporting the bomb himself. Julia’s world is turned upside down again. Her grief is powerfully portrayed, and her painfully honest attempts to understand her marriage and her politics are utterly persuasive, as is the subtle characterization of the magistrate who forces her into this possible reconsideration of everything she believed.
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monday october 29
During preparations for a Halloween party in the English village of Woodleigh Common, 13-year-old Joyce Reynolds boasts that she saw a murder years ago. Nobody believes her, until she is found drowned during the party in a tub for bobbing apples. Detective Hercule Poirot is on the scene to investigate in Halloween Party, another tale from master of suspense Agatha Christie.
Want to curl up with more Halloween-themed murder mysteries on October 31st? Try these spooky suggestions, also written by women:
Witches’ Bane by Susan Wittig Albert: When a Halloween prank ends in murder, herb shop owner and private eye China Bayles’ friend Ruby becomes a prime suspect after being accused of practicing witchcraft.
Hallowed Bones by Carolyn Haines: As Halloween approaches, Private Investigator Sarah Booth Delaney probes the controversial case of Doreen Mallory, accused of killing her handicapped infant daughter.
Trick or Treat Murder by Leslie Meier: While preparing for the annual Halloween festival in Tinker’s Cove, Maine, Lucy Stone investigates a series of arsons that are destroying the town’s historic homes, one of which claims the life of socialite Monica Mayes.
wednesday october 10
The word “haunting” has shown up in virtually every review I’ve seen of The Tenderness of Wolves, Stef Penney’s debut historical, which won the 2006 Costa first novel award (formerly the Whitbread).
Partly, that may be because of the book’s ending, which isn’t entirely resolved—fair warning if you like to close a book and have things wrapped up. But mostly it’s because the book is so eerily atmospheric. Fair warning number two: don’t read this book in February.
Dove River is a nineteenth-century settlement in Canada’s Northern Territory. Despite its tenderly peaceful name, it’s a harshly isolated place dominated by the majestic, menacing subarctic winter.
Mrs. Ross, one of the settlement wives, finds the murdered body of Laurent Jammet, a Hudson Bay voyageur turned hunter. She rouses the authorities, but then realizes she has a stake in the investigation—her seventeen-year-old son, Francis, Laurent’s friend, has disappeared and is soon a suspect in Laurent’s murder.
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wednesday september 26
I just read Stuart M. Kaminsky’s The Dead Don’t Lie, the latest Abe Lieberman mystery.
I’ve enjoyed the series since its 1991 debut with Lieberman’s Folly. That volume introduced the Chicago police detective—sixty-ish, feeling the first twinges of mortality in his arthritic knees, a world-weary basset hound of a man whose mild manner hid decades of street smarts. We also met Lieberman’s partner, Bill Hanrahan, a decent but troubled man who was drinking too much since his wife left.
Great minor characters rounded out the cast, from Lieberman’s energetic wife, Bess (leading light of their local temple); to Iris, the quiet Chinese waitress whom the Irish-Catholic Hanrahan found himself courting; to Lieberman’s brother, Maish, and the chorus of “alter cockers” who frequent Maish’s deli.
In The Dead Don’t Lie, our heroes have a few more years on them. And this time around, they’re working a pair of puzzling mysteries.
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friday september 07
If you're looking for a new mystery series to delve into, I highly recommend Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan series. The Baltimore-based series began in 1997 with Baltimore Blues. Tess, an ex-reporter-turned-PI, enjoys rowing, food, and arguing with her large extended family. In this, her first case, a fellow rower asks Tess to investigate his fiancee, whom he believes is having an affair with her boss. When the boss, a prominent lawyer, ends up dead, Tess must fight to find the real killer and clear her friend's name. Tess is nothing if not a dogged investigator and has a habit of putting herself into dangerous situations. A statuesque redhead with a quick temper and fierce loyalty to both her boyfriend and slightly wacky (not to mention slightly corrupt) family, Tess is one PI you won't want to miss. If you enjoy Baltimore Blues, you'll want to read all of Tess's adventures, including the latest, No Good Deeds.
Lippman has won many awards for her work, including the Edgar, Shamus, Agatha, and Anthony awards. She is also the author of three stand-alone thrillers: What the Dead Know, about the disappearance of two sisters; To the Power of Three, about a school shooting; and Every Secret Thing, about the murder of a young child by two adolescents.
friday august 24
Anyone who sets out to write a mystery has to start with the development of a great sleuth: a character who is clever yet who also has enough human foibles to create a certain charm. Hercule Poirot and Stephanie Plum are fine examples of detectives, professional or amateur, who truly seem to have a life of their own.
Enter Inspector Enrique Alvarez, who first appeared in 1974 and continues to entertain readers in his characteristically continental style.
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wednesday august 08
Twenty-six years ago, Gorky Park transported American readers to a frozen crime scene in Moscow and introduced Senior Inspector Arkady Renko, a homicide specialist in a country "that had little organized crime and no talent for finesse." A murderer is frequently a drunk nearby.
But evidence of a triple murder has emerged in the thawing ice and snow of April. A KGB major is already on the scene when Renko arrives. Renko's relationship with the KGB is testy and antagonistic. The victims—two men, and a woman wearing ice skates—will be difficult to identify. Each has a gunshot wound in the head and in the heart. The hands have been removed to prevent fingerprinting.
Renko lights a cigarette. His job is to find killers, but he can’t stand the sight of a dead body.
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sunday july 22
There is one corpse in the body count and the novel isn't open yet. Richard Bachman, pseudonym for Stephen King, died of cancer of the pseudonym back in 1985. This novel, Blaze, was unearthed by Stephen King and published just this year. It's about a dead guy and written by a different dead guy yet the codex exists right here in my hot little hands in all it's jacketed black and orange glory.
Clayton Blaisdell Jr. is one of the most unfortunate characters of the lot of Stephen King's books. His mother dies and Clayton is left with his alcoholic and abusive father who throws him down the apartment stairs one time too many.
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friday july 13
One of my favorite mystery authors is Texas native Susan Wittig Albert. Of her series, her most well-known is probably the one starring former lawyer-turned-herbal shop owner China Bayles. China co-owns a tea shop and catering business with her best friend Ruby Wilcox in Pecan Springs, Texas, where the two women have a knack for stumbling across dead bodies and sticking their noses into dangerous situations. Every mystery includes some great recipes and tips for using herbs in either cooking or medicinally. The latest is Spanish Dagger.
China Bayles' Book of Days is a non-fiction companion to the series, complete with recipes, crafts, and gardening tips.
Albert also pens an Edwardian mystery series with her husband, Bill, under the pseudonym Robin Paige. Death on the Lizard is the latest entry. You might also want to check out her Beatrix Potter series, including The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood.
wednesday july 11
Shortly before the outbreak of Word War II, 16-year-old Paul Christopher resides in Berlin with his American father, Hubbard, and his beautiful German mother, Lori, a baroness. It’s a time of great tension for Jews and non-Germans in Berlin, especially for the Hubbards. They have helped Jewish families escape the Reich to Denmark on their small sailboat. The secret police, directed by an SS officer named Stutzer, are watching them.
The danger for the family increases after Paul meets Rima, a Jewish girl, and he falls in love. Their relationship possesses a fatalistic gravity far beyond their adolescent years. As the threat of arrest increases, Paul’s parents send him home to New York City for safety. But Paul can think only of Rima's safety, and he returns to Germany.
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wednesday july 04
I’ve been blogging mystery and suspense novels for the past few weeks. This one’s a mystery, too, but a delightfully charming period mystery quite unlike those other titles.
Kate Ross’s series debut, Cut to the Quick¸ introduced Julian Kestrel, a London dandy of the 1820s. Invited to a country house to be the best man at a wedding, he finds that the groom’s aristocratic family is being blackmailed into accepting a former stable hand’s daughter as the bride.
More startling still, Julian finds the body of an unidentified young woman in the bed of his guest room. When his own manservant (a former cutpurse) is accused of her murder, Julian steps in to find the real culprit, and of course discovers that the murder and the blackmail are linked.
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wednesday june 27
Virgin Lies is the second suspense novel by Roderick Anscombe to feature forensic psychiatrist Dr. Paul Lucas. You don’t have to have read the first one, The Interview Room, to catch up, though—you’ll be caught up in the suspense from the very first scene, when Lucas fields a frantic phonecall from his wife, Abby, who wants him to use his professional skills to find a missing child—a child who may die while the adults who care for her stand helplessly by, just as their own child did.
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tuesday june 26
Joyce Maynard is only five years older than I, but unlike me she's published a whole lot of good books, starting with the memoir she wrote when she was 18, Looking Back; A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties. Later she wrote a memoir of her affair with J. D. Salinger; the darkly funny Baby Love, about three teenaged mothers, a deranged escaped killer, and an equally deranged though less violent grandmother. Before they divorced, she wrote children's books with her ex-husband, and a syndicated column about the joys of family life. She probably portrayed family life as more joyful than it was in her case, and it's clear in Internal Combustion that she has still not completely moved on from that divorce.
Later she wrote the engrossing To Die For, a novelization of the Pamela Smart case. Finally, she's crossed the line into serious True Crime, with Internal Combustion: The Story of a Marriage and a Murder in the Motor City.
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Summer reading naturally conjures up thoughts of ocean breezes and sand-laden books. An ideal summer climate can be found in New England, and if you add the relative freedom of being on an island, what could be better? The island of Martha's Vineyard is a mere 7 miles from the coast of Massachusetts, but that is distance enough to allow for an indigenous culture uniquely its own.
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sunday june 24
Justin Evans’ psychological thriller debut, A Good and Happy Child doesn’t open, it launches. Once began, the story grimly informs the reader that the protagonist, George Davies is neither good nor happy.
George Davies is a married New Yorker with a newborn son. George and his wife aren't getting along because he cannot hold his infant son. His wife orders him to seek help, so he begins to see a psychiatrist and record his past in notebooks. Each chapter is representative of a notebook and they reveal that George was admitted to a mental institution in his adolescent years for violent behavior and possible demonic possession.
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wednesday june 20
I just read Jo Bannister’s sixth Brodie Farrell mystery, Requiem for a Dealer. I’ve always liked her work—her Castlemere books are great police procedurals set in northern England—but I think I like these best.
Brodie is a brisk, resourceful woman who runs a finding service in a little coastal English town. She tracks down missing pets, locates china patterns in online auctions, whatever needs finding.
In the series debut, Echoes of Lies, she was given a photograph and asked to find the man in it. She quickly and cleverly identified him as a local teacher, Daniel Hood. What she didn’t know was that she was finding him for people who then tortured him for information they believed he had, and left him for dead.
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friday june 15
Do you love to cook? Are you always on the lookout for a fantastic new recipe? Then you might want to peruse the library's listing of recipe websites. If you prefer reading about food to cooking it (and don't mind a little murder mixed in here and there), then check out the following culinary mysteries:
- Dark Tort--Diane Mott Davidson--Colorado caterer Goldy Schulz tries to solve the mysterious death of Dusty Routt, a promising young paralegal.
- The Flaming Luau of Death--Jerrilyn Farmer--While throwing a bachelorette party in Hawaii for a valued employee, event planner Madeline Bean feels compelled to investigate when a body washes up on the beach.
- Key Lime Pie Murder--Joanne Fluke--When a teacher is found murdered during Lake Eden's bakery contest, Minnesota resident and bakery owner Hannah Swensen once again plays amateur sleuth to unmask a murderer.
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wednesday june 13
You wouldn’t guess it from the title, but Leaving Disneyland, the debut suspense novel by Alexander Parsons, is one I recommended to a fan of Walter Mosley and George P. Pelecanos.
The book’s main character, Doc, has served sixteen years of a twenty-year sentence in the grim and crumbling Tyburn Federal Penitentiary. He is almost due to face the parole board again when is assigned to a new cell. And it can’t be a coincidence that his new cellmate is a young druglord from a rival gang, whom honor requires Doc and his friends to kill.
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tuesday june 12
Mystery writer Chris Grabenstein takes his readers to a place that evokes memories of surf, sand, and sunburn. Anyone who has ever been lucky enough to spend a few summer days at the Jersey Shore knows all about the essential components of a seaside resort town: boardwalks, salt water taffy stands, fried clam shacks, family-run motels, souvenir shops, and amusement park rides. In the fictional town of Sea Haven, those old familiar rides and carnival games also serve as the titles for Grabensteins's clever mysteries, as in Tilt-a-Whirl, the first entry in the series.
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wednesday june 06
Big Red Tequila is a great title for a Texas mystery, isn’t it? This novel gets it right right on the title page.
Rick Riordan is probably more famous nowadays as the author of a teen fantasy series based on Greek mythology—his bestselling The Lightning Thief was our teen book choice for On the Same Page.
But back in 1997 he debuted an adult mystery series set in San Antonio. He got more than the title just right. All of you readers who enjoy a nice semi-hard-boiled mystery with an appealingly thoughtful but smart-talking hero and a well-realized regional setting should try the Tres Navarre series.
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tuesday june 05
The inaugural Discovering New Mysteries International Mystery Writers' Festival will be held in Owensboro, Kentucky, June 12 to June 17, 2007. Some of your favorite writers of mystery and suspense novels, and luminaries from the worlds of film and television, will be on hand. New mystery plays, screenplays, and teleplays will be judged in competition and presented in live performances.
Among the writers attending will be: Stuart Kaminsky, author of more that 60 mysteries, and currently Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America;
Louisville’s own Sue Grafton, author of the bestselling Kinsey Millhone mystery series;
Kentucky native James W. Hall, author of the long-running series of Thorn suspense novels set in Key West, Florida;
past Grand Master of Mystery and Edgar Award winner Ira Levin, best known, of course, for Rosemary’s Baby;
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wednesday may 30
How about a little suspense?
I’m looking back at a whole stash of good, nailbiting suspense novels and nice, twisty mysteries that I’ve read in the past few years, and I think my next several posts are going to be about those genres.
Maybe it’s the hot sunshine we’ve been having lately that has put me in a noir mood—I once read a definition that said a true noir movie had to have a shot somewhere in it of broken light slanting in through venetian blinds.
I don’t think my first title quite fits that definition, since it takes place in Glasgow. But it sure fills the bill for gripping suspense.
It’s Denise Mina’s award-winning 1999 debut, Garnethill.
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wednesday may 23
Are you a cruciverbalist at heart? Do you have a secret ritual regarding the daily crossword puzzles in the newspaper? Myself, I like to fold the paper in a certain way, then do the cryptogram first, the 'basic' crossword, and then the 'advanced' crossword, in that order. And, I use ink - erasers are for the timid. Sudoku? Sorry, I am clueless.
There are of course millions of crossword puzzle junkies in the world at large, and several have been profiled in a surprisingly fascinating documentary, Wordplay, which comes with the tagline, "50 million people do it every week".
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tuesday may 08
In 1962, when author Sebastian Junger was almost one year old, his parents hired two carpenters to build a studio addition behind their house in Belmont, Massachusetts.
One of those carpenters was Albert DeSalvo.
Bessie Goldberg was found strangled at her home in Belmont on March 11, 1963. The killing fit the pattern of the Boston Strangler, who had been terrorizing the women of that city since the previous summer. Roy Smith, a black man cleaning the Goldberg home that day, was convicted of the crime and sent to jail.
The killings continued.
Albert DeSalvo was also working that day—at the Junger home a little over a mile away. He later confessed that he was the Boston Strangler and admitted killing 13 women, but insisted Bessie Goldberg was not one of them. Sebastian Junger, bestselling author of The Perfect Storm and Fire, writes about this encounter--and a possible case of legal injustice--in
A Death in Belmont.
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wednesday may 02
Michael Dibdin died on March 30. He was best known for his mystery series featuring Venetian Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen. The final novel in the series, End Games, will be published in the fall.
As much as the character of Zen defines the novels—morose, psychologically complex, and world-weary—so does the character of Italy, where Dibdin lived for several years.
Each of the novels is set in a different part of the country, and the style of each novel seems to reflect the cultural differences among Italy’s regions. But all are richly cynical, darkly funny, intricate in plot, and acute in their understanding of modern Italian politics, religion, and everyday life.
My personal favorite among Dibdin’s novels is set in England, though. It’s one of his stand-alone works, the 1991 suspense/satire of Thatcher’s England, Dirty Tricks.
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tuesday may 01
When it comes to concocting mysteries about fast horses and fast tracks, Dick Francis is the undisputed king. Although I can't track down the source, it seems that I recently read something about his unfortunate demise. You can imagine my suprise when, on a beautiful day during Keeneland's spring meet, I saw Mr. Francis himself autographing copies of his most recent book! That was a mystery I just had to solve.
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thursday april 19
Call it ‘literary crack cocaine’ like the blurb on the volume's cover from Kirkus reviews or on a less exotic plane; call it psychological coconut sorbet for the soul. Christopher Pike’s Falling possesses a title that’s simple, benign, and unassuming but don’t be fooled. Beware. It is anything but. Start down this pike and fall you will.
Matt Connor is an average American male. He has a wonderful girlfriend, Amy, who keeps him at arms length constantly over the course of a year. Thinking all is roses between them, Matt is shocked to discover his beloved with her ex-boyfriend David. He’s even more perplexed when he finds that she is with child, David’s child, and does not wish to reconcile with him. Utterly incensed and hopelessly obsessed, Matt devises a plan to make Amy pay and pay she does, in droves.
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friday april 13
Featuring high-society voyagers, luxury ocean liners, and plenty of time to kill on the high seas, author Conrad Allen has created a recipe for an intriguing series of mystery novels. Beginning in 1999 with Murder on the Lusitania, he introduces detective George Porter Dillman, a passenger on the maiden voyage of the grand new ship on the Cunard Line. Money, jewels, and murder are on the ship's log, as is Miss Genevieve Masefield, a lovely private detective in her own right.
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saturday march 24
What would you do if your parents ran a background check on every person you dated? What would you do if your 14-year-old sister practiced "recreational surveillance"? What would you do if your Uncle Ray had lost weekends? By this point you'd probably be tired of your family and the family business. Isabel "Izzy" Spellman certainly is. She decides to quit the family business (a PI firm that she joined when she was 12 years old), but her parents won't let her until she solves a very cold case. The ways that Izzy gets back at her parents (who else would enlist their sister to film a fake drug deal to get back at their parents?) and how the entire Spellman clan relates to each other are hysterical and ultimately (in their own weird way) demonstrate the powerful bond of family. Trust me, the Spellmans are not your typical family!
The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz is the funniest and craziest book that I've read in a long, long time. The book is author Lisa Lutz's debut, but you would never be able to tell that from the way she expertly weaves the story and keeps the momentum going. From the first chapter to the last page, you will be laughing. I highly reccomend this novel to anyone who likes to read. Stephanie Plum fans will especially enjoy this one. This is the first in a planned series of novels featuring the Spellman family.
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monday march 19
The Vernal Equinox comes every year in the Northern Hemisphere around March 20. Spring arrives! Day and night, for one 24-hour period, are equal.
I find that springtime light brings a lifting of moods and a deep contentment that never fails to brighten my spirits. I have dug up a variety of books from a variety of subject areas, all about spring:
Chasing Spring: an American Journey Through a Changing Season Bruce Stutz writes about following spring from the Gulf of Mexico to the Alaskan arctic, experiencing renewal and joy at the beauty of the awakening season.
Boys of Spring: Timeless Portraits from the Grapefruit League, 1947-2005 Ozzie Sweet is a renowned photographer, and this book of baseball photographs will get you in the mood for a game.
Everything for Spring: A Complete Activity Book for Teachers of Young Children: Activities for March, April, and May Spring fever is especially rampant in classrooms. These activities will help keep our youngest students busy.
The beautiful symphonic works of Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring and The Tender Land cannot fail to move you; available on CD or cassette.
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friday march 16
I'm a huge Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel: The Series fan. Those two series are really what sparked my interest in vampire fiction. Some of the best books in vampire fiction is Tanya Huff's Toronto-based "Blood Books" series featuring PI Vicky Nelson and her friend/lover Henry Fitzroy (who just happens to be the 450 year old son of Henry the VIII). Vicky also gets the assist from her ex-boyfriend Mike Celluci in her chasing down cases. She's a fabulously flawed heroine who really deserves your time!
The "Blood Books" were originally published in the early '90s as single titles, but have recently been reissued in three omibus editions. Each edition contains two of the stories.
thursday march 15
Break out that ugly green turtleneck you've been dying to wear and get ready to celebrate--St. Patrick's Day is almost here! Cincinnati's Annual St. Patrick's Day Parade is this Saturday. Corned beef, cabbage, and Guinness can be had at Newport's or Mason's Claddagh Irish Pub. If you're looking for a quieter way to commemorate the holiday, check out some of these novels set in Ireland.
In recent years, mystery writers have found Ireland a fertile ground for murder and mayhem. Lake of Sorrows, Erin Hart's sequel to Haunted Ground, is a prime example. In it, pathologist Nora Gavin is sent to the bogs of Central Ireland to investigate two recently discovered corpses, one ancient, the other recent. Other good mysteries set in Ireland include Ken Bruen's Priest, Carol Anne O'Marie's Murder at the Monk's Table, and Dicey Deere's The Irish Village Murder (all three are the latest titles in series).
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wednesday march 14
I think Robert B. Parker started it--correct me if I'm wrong. I'm talking about the mystery genre tradition of the smart-talking p.i. with the silent and supremely lethal sidekick. Spenser has Hawk. Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar has Win. (Well, Win's not quite so monosyllabic, but he's even scarier.) And Robert Crais's Elvis Cole has Pike.
It's a useful mystery convention. Hero and super sidekick together can plausibly handle a lot more trouble than the hero could alone. Just as important, the author can go to any lengths to take care of the bad guys by the last page, but no matter how violent things get, he never has to let his hero go too far over the edge or permanently drop that oh-so-enjoyably sarcastic tone that helps makes these winning series crackle.
Messing with a great formula can be risky. But in Robert Crais's latest, The Watchman, we get the story from Pike's point of view.
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tuesday march 13
Lately I've been listening to Elizabeth George's What Came Before He Shot Her. This dark, dense novel explores the ghettos of London and offers another perspective on the events leading up to the ending of the last Lyley mystery, With No One as Witness.
I really enjoyed her Inspector Lynley mysteries, but that's not really a recommendation for this title, since the plot is only tangentially related to the Lynley series. In fact, many reader-reviewers have panned it based mainly on this fact. The book focuses on the rather grim life of three siblings in North Kensington, fifteen year old Ness, eleven year old Joel, and seven year old Toby.
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wednesday march 07
I don't profess to be the world's best gardener, but I do love flowers, so I was very excited the other day when I noticed my spring bulbs peeking through the dirt. Soon my yard will be awash in brightly-colored crocus, hyacinths, daffodils and tulips. If spring can't come fast enough for you, you might want to indulge yourself with a few of these garden-themed mysteries.
- Bleeding Hearts by Susan Wittig Albert--In Pecan Springs, Texas, herbalist and tea shop owner China Bayles investigates the murder of Tim Duffy, the high school football coach.
- Death in the Orchid Garden by Ann Ripley--On location in Hawaii to film an episode of her popular gardening show, Louise Eldridge probes the beating death of a well-known botanist.
- Bindweed by Janis Harrison--When her mentally handicapped assistant, Toby, is killed by a deliberately-planted nest of killer bees, River City, Missouri florist Bretta Solomon vows to find Toby's murderer.
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wednesday february 28
I recommended Eric Dezenhall to a fan of Carl Hiaasen and Donald Westlake a few weeks ago. If you like the Florida school of over-the-top satiric suspense, move up the coastline a little to meet New Jersey crisis management consultant (a.k.a. spin doctor) Jonah Eastman.
Eastman was introduced in Money Wanders. A Washington political pollster whose career was in trouble, Jonah found a new client at the funeral of his grandfather, a New Jersey mobster. Another mob boss was having image problems—Mario Vanni wanted to get a legitimate gambling license and leave a clean business to his grandkids. But how to rehabilitate the public image of the state’s biggest gangster? A little polling revealed the answer—make him look tough on drugs and neighborhood crime.
Dezenhall gleefully satirized pollsters, p.r. flacks, and public enemies in that humorous crime novel, the first in a series. Now there’s a new Jonah Eastman adventure, Spinning Dixie.
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wednesday february 21
I mentioned the trend for suspense standalones in a recent post. This one doesn’t quite stand alone (it’s loosely related to another of the author’s works), but it’s a real stunner, another example from a few years ago of a popular mystery writer pulling out all the stops for pulse-pounding suspense.
Laurie R. King is known for two very different mystery series, her Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series that, beginning with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, carried on the classic canon; and her contemporary series featuring lesbian San Francisco cop Kate Martinelli, which began with A Grave Talent.
But she did something more different still in Keeping Watch, a tense and complex psychological suspense novel that broke a lot of genre rules.
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monday february 12
Shahtani Tropical Breeze. Thistleglen Margot. Freestyle Ocean Breeze. Sound like nice places to visit, right? If you were in New York City last year at this time, you would have been able to visit all of them at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The 2007 show starts today and concludes tomorrow (live coverage both days from 8-11 pm on the USA Network). In all, 165 breeds in seven groups (working, terrier, toy, non-sporting, sporting, hound, and herding) compete against each other to be crowned Best in Show. Last year's winner was Rufus, the colored bull terrier (otherwise known as Rocky Top's Sundance Kid--I swear I'm not making these names up). Tune in to see the popular (beagles) compete against the unknown (Spinone Italianos) and the just plain weird-looking (pulis). While you're in the mood, you might want to peruse these dog-themed mysteries as well:
- A Deeper Sleep by Dana Stabenow--Alaskan PI Kate Shugak and her faithful half-wolf, half-Siberian husky, Mutt, try to gather evidence against a man who has killed three of his wives.
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friday february 09
There's an underrated American author of suspense fiction you may not be familiar with. P. T. Deutermann, a retired Captain in the U.S. Navy, began writing novels of naval suspense in 1992, eight years after Tom Clancy stunned the publishing world and launched the technothriller era with the surprise bestseller, The Hunt for Red October.
Scorpion in the Sea: The Goldsborough Incident, concerns the unvalued captain of an obsolete U.S. Navy destroyer who engages a Libyan submarine in a deadly duel off the Florida coast.
The Edge of Honor, a novel of the Navy during the Vietnam War, followed. In
Official Privilege, the mummified corpse of a black officer is found on a mothballed warship, and the subsequent investigation points to a high-level cover-up. These were suspenseful tales of naval action and mystery, offering authentic technical detail. But then Deutermann changed direction.
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thursday february 01
The Mystery Writers of America recently announced their 2007 Edgar Award nominees. There are twelve categories, including Best Novel and Best Fact Crime. This year, Stephen King will receive the Grand Master Award (past recipients include Mary Higgins Clark and P.D. James). I was happy to see many of my favorite mysteries from the past year receiving nominations, including Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects, a novel that I recently blogged about, which received a nomination for Best First Novel By An American Author. Some of my other favorite nominees:
- A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read--Syracuse journalist Maddie Dare delves into a 20-year-old unsolved double murder in which her cousin is the prime suspect.
- The King of Lies by John Hart--In rural North Carolina, criminal defense attorney Work Pickens struggles first with his father's disappearance and then, a year later, with the discovery of his murdered body.
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monday january 22
I was reading an article some time ago in one of those magazines librarians read (Library Journal, Publishers weekly--sorry I can't remember which one!) and was somewhat interested to read about cross-pollination that was occurring between romance and other genres. I thought it was a good thing at the time, and thought it might be interesting to come across one of these titles, though I wasn't intrigued enough to seek one out.
Now I'm not so sure. I'll admit, I was frantically grabbing audiobooks in the last few minutes of my lunch break, and therefore missed the rather telling CD cover of Cover of Night by Linda Howard. So I was a little surprised by the sudden "blossoming of affections" that happened during the bloody beginnings of the siege (by criminals working for the mafia) of a small mountain town. I was also very surprised at the end when the male lead's close-quarters and semi-premeditated killing of at least one of the criminals was so blithely accepted by the heroine, despite her having young twins. Altogether, I found the premise of the plot more amusing than suspenseful, and the "happy ending" chillingly odd, which I'm pretty sure is not what the author intended. I'm sure there are other novels that blend the genres with ease. This was just the wrong one to encounter first and unawares.
friday january 19
Stephen King called it a "relentlessly creepy family saga" and an "admirably nasty piece of work." He was referring to Sharp Objects, the debut novel for Entertainment Weekly's chief TV critic, Gillian Flynn. In a candid essay about her work, Flynn admits to being fascinated by aggression in women and wanting to write a "dark, dark book...about the violence of women."
She has succeeded. Her protagonist, Camille Preaker, is a hard-drinking journalist who works at a second-rate Chicago paper. She is also a reformed cutter; at age 13, she began carving words into her skin: "queasy", "vanish", "weary". Camille has a very distant relationship with her mother and little liking for her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri. When two preteen girls are murdered in Wind Gap, her editor sends her back home to write a piece on the killings. In the course of Camille's investigation, she learns something that didn't make it into the papers: both girls had their teeth removed.
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thursday january 18
The British writer Ariana Franklin was in Cincinnati on Tuesday as part of a pre-pub swing through the Midwest in support of her new novel, Mistress of the Art of Death.
I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend a dinner hosted by her agent at Tellers that night. It was a very pleasant evening—Ariana was charming and graciously answered questions about her books, her interest in the Middle Ages, and her husband (film critic Barry Norman). And of course, it was lots of fun to chat about book-related stuff with all the Joseph Beth folks and the Enquirer’s Sara Pearce.
Coincidentally, City of Shadows, Ariana’s previous book, made it to Librarian’s Choice, our annual list of staff favorites. I haven’t read this “stunning novel of historical suspense” (in the words of our Fiction staff), but it’s on my nightstand at home so I’ll probably get to it soon. And yet…
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tuesday january 16
Clearly, I'm not the first to have discovered what a good novelist John Gregory Dunne was. He's one more writer whose books I hadn't thought of reading, though, because I'd categorized him as a thriller writer, and I don't think of myself as a thriller reader.
Then I picked up Nothing Lost, which was published in 2004, a year after Dunne's sudden death. The book is certainly a page-turner. An African-American man has been tortured and murdered in an imaginary U.S. state that seems to hover between South Dakota and Nebraska. While various politicians, including the president of the United States and a right-wing congresswoman (who prefers to be called "congressman") use the apparently racially motivated murder to advance their careers, two unpleasant drifters are arrested. The evidence is scanty, and the witness not very credible.
You'll probably spot the clue as a clue when it first appears but not realize how it's a clue. This will be to your credit, because it's really disgusting.
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thursday january 11
When I had my first child almost two years ago, a good friend threw me a shower and made a beautiful quilt for our nursery. Another friend wove a baby blanket. This past Halloween, my mother sewed a dog costume for my daughter to wear (complete with brown spots and floppy ears and tail, very cute!) Even if you're severely deficient in this area (like me!), you still might enjoy reading some arts-and-crafts-themed mysteries. Here are some of my favorites:
- In Knit One, Kill Two by Maggie Sefton, full-time CPA and part-time knitter Kelly Flynn investigates the burglary death of her favorite aunt in Colorado.
- Earlene Fowler's Fool's Puzzle is set in San Celina, California, where young widow Benni Harper has recently moved to take a job as curator of their folk-art museum. While trying to put together a quilt show, she discovers the body of a local potter in the museum's studio.
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tuesday january 09
It's now officially time for the post-holiday slump. Gazing off into space with a little case of the sniffles. Wrapped in an afghan and looking for another series of cozy mysteries to see me safely through January. Enter Aunt Dimity.
I'm a bit picky about my cozies. No matter how much the heart may lust for treacle, my Gen-X sense of irony can be overwhelmed by too much cutesy stuff. I am working my way toward the sweeter cozy mysteries only with halting, uncertain steps. (For instance, although I love cute cat pictures, it will be a little while before I'm ready to read the Cat Detective mysteries.) Aunt Dimity was one of those series that I was uncertain of, but my day off loomed and I needed a book to read.
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wednesday january 03
It used to be that you could hardly get a novel published in the crime and mystery genre unless you were willing to commit to a series, but lately, long-established mystery authors are going the other way, hitting the blockbuster charts with stand-alone suspense titles (think Harlan Coben, for example).
Greg Rucka, the author of the Atticus Kodiak mysteries and, more recently, of several superhero graphic novels and a superspy thriller series, did a (yes) super stand-alone suspenser a few years back. I wish he’d do another.
That one was A Fistful of Rain. Its heroine was no Wonder Woman, but she was a knockout of a character.
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tuesday december 05
Buying presents. Trimming the tree. Baking cookies. Visiting relatives. The holiday season can be exhausting and stressful--so make yourself some hot cocoa and park yourself in front of the fire with some of these holiday-themed mysteries (just try not to laugh at the titles).
- Sugar Cookie Murder--Joanne Fluke--Minnesota bakery owner Hannah Swensen investigates the murder of a former Las Vegas dancer.
- Santa Cruise--Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark--Setting sail from Miami on an after-Christmas cruise, private detective Regan Reilly teams up with amateur sleuths Alvirah and Willy Meehan to track down a pair of escaped convicts.
- Jingle Bell Bark--Laurien Berenson--The suspicious death of her son's bus driver brings out the inner snoop in Greenwich, Connecticut dog trainer Melanie Travis.
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monday december 04
When did Jack the Ripper commit his crimes? 1608? 1749? 1888? 1922? Why do we all sort of know who he was? Until I started looking him (or them) up, I hadn't a clue. In fact, the killer (or killers) commited the crimes in 1888-1981, almost sort of within living memory of those people in the 118-year-old age range who remember their babyhoods well.
After reading Patricia Cornwell's Case Closed, I had no doubt in my mind that artist Walter Sickert was the guilty one. And then I read that Sickert is not in fact even one of the more seriously considered suspects by Ripperites. Wikipedia says Sickert was in France during the time of a lot of the murders.
A Wikipedia writer ominously comments that it is actually hard to tell which murder victims are Jack the Ripper's work, since there were many brutal and horrific murders of women during this period of time.
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friday november 10
I love lighthouses. This past weekend I stood in awe of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse at night, resplendent in the light of the full moon and sending out its reassuring beam across nearly 20 miles of ocean.
Dawson Carr's 2002 chronicle Cape Hatteras Lighthouse: Sentinel of the Shoals tells the history of the beautiful lighthouse, including the monumental 1999 3-week move of the structure to a safer spot further from the edge of the ocean. It was moved inland from the encroaching surf by lifting the entire building and hydraulically pushing it forward very slowly along a track to its new location 2900 feet away.
An interesting book about lighthouses that were not as lucky as Hatteras is Lost Lighthouses, full of true stories such as my favorite about Deer Island Lighthouse in the harbor near Boston, where one of the keepers had a cat who would dive from the platform, catch a fish, and climb back up the ladder with it.
For anyone who loves lighthouses and loves cats, it doesn't get any better than that!
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wednesday october 18
Sandy posted a couple of weeks ago about some of the books she was looking forward to this fall. Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn was one of them. I don’t know where Sandy was on the holds list compared to me, but I just took the novel home last night and read it in one big, delicious gulp.
Atkinson’s last novel, Case Histories, introduced private detective Jackson Brodie, who was investigating three cold cases. It was a mystery, but not exactly—a lovely and melancholy look at the indelible effects of violence on anyone whose life it has touched, including the detective.
This one looks even more like a mystery, but somehow it’s “not exactly,” too. Rather than leave you haunted by sorrow, though, this one will leave you smiling at its perfect unexpectedness—what is this author doing, and how is she managing to make it so wonderfully different?
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tuesday october 17
After reading George D. Shuman's 18 Seconds, I was reminded of this famous quote from M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense. 18 Seconds is the story of Sherry Moore, a blind psychic blessed (and cursed) with the ability to see the last 18 seconds of a person's life. When Sherry touches a dead person's body, she relives their last seconds before dying. This makes her an invaluable asset to the detectives of Wildwood, New Jersey, who are hunting a serial killer preying on young women. The killings are eerily similar to a series of unsolved homicides from the 1970's. When the killer learns about Sherry's "unusual ability", a cunning game of cat-and-mouse begins.
Intrigued? Read on for a list of more thrillers featuring people with "unusual abilities."