Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Newly trained in spycraft and now part of Great Britain’s Special Investigations Unit, Evelyne Redfern is sent on her first assignment.  She’s disappointed in the seemingly prosaic nature of it, to perform a security test at Blackthorne Park and discover how several of the specialized materials used there have gone missing, but of course she’s determined to succeed at this task.

She’s not the only agent in the Unit who is disappointed.  David Poole would rather be working in the field, but he’s told he will have to remain in London and act as Evelyne’s handler, or supervisor, for her first job.

Putting additional pressure on the pair is the fact that Prime Minister Winston Churchill is scheduled to arrive at Blackthorne Park later in the week to see a series of demonstrations of the weapons produced there.  Time, therefore, is of the essence in discovering who is responsible for the missing materials.

At ten o’clock on the evening of her arrival in the town of Benstead, Evelyne surreptitiously enters the grounds of the Park.  She has just picked the lock on the front door and entered the house when she hears a gunshot.  She rushes to the room where she believes the sound came from, the room according to the blueprint she was given before she left London is Sir Nigel’s office.  There she discovers the body of the scientist, in a pool of blood.

Given that Sir Nigel’s corpse was found at his desk with his gun in his right hand, suicide seems obvious.  Evelyne, however, feels that something is not right about the scene, and when the coroner arrives he confirms her suspicion.

Although the cause of the death was the gunshot wound, the doctor points out a faint red pinprick on Sir Nigel’s neck to Evelyne and David.  Dr. Morrison believes that someone stood behind him, used a hypodermic needle with a sedative on him, and then put the gun in the scientist’s hand and pulled the trigger.

Evelyne and David learn Sir Nigel was not an easy man to work for, and there is a great deal of tension among the several members of the Park.  His behavior had become increasingly difficult over the past few months, whether due to the missing materials or something else the investigators must discover.  The stress levels are high at the mansion, and the upcoming visit of the prime minister is doing nothing to help.

One of the many delightful things about this novel is its excellent sense of time and place.  The time is November 1940, the very beginning of World War II, and the place is one of the many stately homes/mansions in various English counties that were requisitioned by the government to aid the war effort.  The reader is immediately drawn into the world of food and clothing rationing, disrupted careers, and the various emotions of a group of people living and working together not by choice.

Julia Kelly has written an outstanding mystery again.  The characters are beautifully drawn, and the plot is suspenseful and believable.  Betrayal at Blackthorne Park ends with the promise of a third adventure for Evelyne and David, a promise this reader hopes the author will keep.

You can read more about Julia Kelly at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

The streets of Los Angeles are grittier and meaner than ever before, and even the fabulously wealthy aren’t immune.

Police Detective Margaret Nolan and her partner Al Crawford are called to investigate the case of a man’s body found in a BMW Series 8 in an unsavory part of town.  The driver’s window is down, leading the police to believe that he knew his killer and had lowered the window to talk to them.

No identification is found on the corpse, but he’s identified by the car’s license plate.  He was Bruce Messane, co-founder  of  Peppy Pets, an organic pet food company that boasts that their products are good enough for humans to eat.                        

Messane and the Peppy Pets chief financial officer, Cynthia Jackson, had scheduled a meeting with the president of Wilder Foods for today.  Their company is on the verge of being acquired by the Wilder group, an international conglomerate, but its president informs Jackson that Messane needs to be there in person to sign the papers.  No Messane, no deal.

So after Bruce’s non-appearance at the meeting and because he doesn’t answer his phone, Jackson rushes out of her office to track him down.  She doesn’t know about his murder yet, but she soon will.

The morning following Messane’s death, the wife of the company’s co-founder, veterinarian Rome Bechtold, is abducted.  Now there are two crimes connected to the company, although it’s hard for Detective Nolan to see how they’re related.

Peppy Pets, after a brief period of financial problems, is doing very well, according to Jackson, and that turnaround was due to Messane.  In addition, with the impending takeover by Wilder, Messane, Jackson, and another employee at Peppy Pets were expecting a substantial financial windfall.  So, Nolan wonders, what is the motive for the company president’s death?

Then, despite the kidnappers’ warning not to involve the police, Bechtold reluctantly notifies them, and soon his house is swarming with LAPD officers.  Desperate for a few minutes to himself, Bechtold gets permission from one of the policewomen to take his dog for a walk around the block, but before he realizes what’s happening, the veterinarian is hustled into a passing car and injected with a drug that will put him out of commission while they take him away from his home and the authorities.

Unknown to the president of Wilder Foods, its outside counsel is also having problems.  Monserrat De Leon is becoming disenchanted with her advisory role to the company and is particularly unhappy with its president.  Her job at a prestigious law firm is no longer to her liking, and Wilder’s offer to become general counsel for his firm is less than appealing.  She definitely doesn’t need the money, as her father is a multimillionaire, but she does enjoy the work and the prestige of being the legal counsel for important corporations.   Then she receives two strange messages, one from her  erratic sister and one from her imperious father, and Monserrat needs to decide where her loyalties lay.

P. J. Tracy has written another exciting entry in the Margaret Nolan series, one that looks not only into the crimes committed but into the minds and actions of the people involved.  Margaret Nolan is a very appealing and realistic character, and Ms. Tracy helps bring Los Angeles and its many disparate parts to life.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

What a great title.  What a great mystery.  I imagine that many of us, myself included, have gone on mystery or ghost tours.  A quick Google search brought up mystery tours in England, Ireland, France, and of course in various locations in the United States, including two near me–in Boston and Salem, Massachusetts.

Now Michelle Chouinard has set a mystery in a small company that hosts such tours in San Francisco.  Since the city has been host to a number of killers over the years, the company’s owner, Capri Sanzio, has plenty of material to choose from.  Now, however, murder strikes closer to home.

Capri’s grandfather, William Sanzio, was convicted of murdering three women.  Because of the manner of their deaths–first being hit over the head with a blunt object, then knifed to death, finally having their throats slit open–William Sanzio was given the nickname Overkill Bill.  Capri’s father has always refused to discuss his father, and nothing Capri has ever said has changed his mind.

Now two horrific events have brought the decades-old case into the news again.  First, a wealthy San Francisco matron, Katherine Harper, is found dead outside the Legion of Honor, the site of two murders in the twentieth century, and the method of this murder is identical to those committed by Overkill Bill.  And the following day Capri receives a phone call from her former father-in-law Philip; his wife Sylvia, mother of Capri’s ex-husband, is missing.

Capri and Philip search The Chateau, as Sylvia and Philip’s mansion is called, but they cannot find anything to explain Sylvia’s disappearance.  She had returned home from a trip the evening before, irritated about something that she refused to share with her husband, and her car, house keys, and cell phone are in the house.

The police are called, and homicide Inspector Dan Petito shows Philip and Capri a photo of a woman whose body was found earlier in the day outside the Presidio, formerly a military base and now a national park.  It’s Sylvia, killed in the same manner as Katherine Harper and the three victims of Overkill Bill.

It’s obvious that there is a copycat killer on the loose since the crimes attributed to Capri’s grandfather were committed decades earlier and he died in prison.  After all this time, who would have chosen to murder in this way. and why these two women?

Capri is determined to help the police with their investigation, although they definitely do not want her assistance.  In fact, Capri and her daughter Morgan are suspects in the latest murders, as both had argued with Sylvia the night before her death over her decision to stop paying Morgan’s graduate school tuition.  That gives Capri a strong reason to look into the recent deaths, hopefully solve the murders, and at the same time find evidence that would exonerate her late grandfather as a murderer.

The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco is a clever, original mystery with an appealing heroine who is determined to get to the bottom of the two current cases.  Michelle Chouinard has written a novel well worth reading.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

The British comedian Eric Idle says it best:  “A lot has been said about politics; some of it complimentary, but most of it accurate.”

That statement could have been describing the politicians and their staffs in Matthew Fitzsimmons’ standalone mystery, The Slate.  In it, corrupt deals are formulated, promises are made and broken, and people and their reputations are tossed aside with uncaring regularity.

Agatha Cardiff was once Representative Paul Paxton’s go-to person.  There was no job too big or too small for her to deal with, and sadly there was no job too dirty for her to take on.

When Agatha’s phone rings at midnight and it’s her boss on the line, she knows there’s a job to be done and it won’t be pleasant.  Paxton wants her to go to the Grey Horse Inn in a neighboring town where there’s been an “incident” involving another congressman, Harrison Clark.

Clark and a member of Paxton’s staff, Charlotte Haines, had been together in a room at the Inn, and now Charlotte lay dead in the bathroom with four vials of white power on the toilet seat.  It isn’t necessary for Paxton to explain to Agatha what happened in Clark’s room:  “Clean up his mess” is enough.

Twenty years have passed since that night, and they have not been kind to Agatha.  She’s no longer Paxton’s right-hand person, trusted with doing whatever he wants.  Two of the three people involved in what happened that evening have prospered, but she hasn’t.

Harrison Clark is now President of the United States, Paul Paxton has become even closer to him, but Agatha’s trajectory has been in the opposite direction.  She’s still in Washington, cobbling together jobs, barely making ends meet, and trying to avoid people who knew her in the day when she too was a power to be reckoned with.

Now two events, seemingly unconnected, will bring her back to the halls of power.  Her tenant, Shelby Franklin, is late with her rent check again, and Cardiff has lost patience.  Shelby promises that this is the last time, that it won’t happen again, that she will pay Agatha in two days, but Agatha doesn’t believe her.  Sure enough, when Monday comes, the check isn’t there and, more worryingly, neither is Shelby.

Felix Gallardo is a rising star on the president’s staff.  He’s usually the first, okay, maybe the second person to know what’s going on with President Clark, but now he’s totally stupefied.  One of the Supreme Count judges is retiring due to ill health, and the president has short-listed three men to take his place.

Felix is called to Paxton’s office by his chief of staff Tina Liu and told that the congressman wants to be considered for the justice’s seat.  Felix is stunned, saying that Paxton’s not qualified for the position, but Liu ignores that.  She hands Felix an envelope, saying it’s for the president’s eyes only, and Felix leaves her office, totally off-kilter.

Matthew Fitzsimmons has skillfully woven together the stories of Agatha, Shelby, and Felix into a compelling and taut mystery.  These three characters, as well as all the others in the novel, are completely believable, and the plot is all too familiar with anyone reading the newspapers or watching television.  The Slate is a masterful novel.

You can read more about Matthew Fitzsimmons at this site.

Imagine a mystery whose protagonist gets her greatest enjoyment from diagramming sentences.  You can’t, can you?  I would have agreed with you until I read Wordhunter by Stella Sands.  It’s a brilliant, original, captivating plot, with a brilliant, original, captivating protagonist; my apologies for repeating myself, something Maggie Moore would never have done.

Maggie is a grad student studying forensics at a small university in the town of Rosedale, Florida.  She’s enrolled in The Language of Film seminar with Professor Ditmire, among her other courses.  He tells her he’s received a phone call from a police detective in a nearby town where a woman has been receiving threatening notes from a cyberstalker, and the detective is hoping someone getting a degree in forensics will see a clue in the notes that will help catch the writer.

This is how Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was captured after terrorizing the nation for 20 years, killing three people and wounding 23 others.  FBI experts, analyzing the notes, theorized that the killer had Chicago roots based on the language of his writing, and that eventually led to his arrest.

Maggie meets Detective Silas Jackson, who gives her the emails the cyberstalker sent to the woman who was murdered shortly after Maggie was hired.  He also gives her four other emails sent by different suspects.  After examining them for linguistic tells, Maggie picks one because of the writer’s style and word usage, saying his writing shows he was from Louisiana.

She advises Jackson to check him out.  Although the detective is obviously having a hard time believing this is a valid way to find the criminal, he does what she suggests and, in fact, the writer of that email proves to be the woman’s killer.

Then a call comes from Jackson’s boss, Chief Murray.  The daughter of the mayor of a nearby town has been kidnapped, but this time Maggie says “I’m sorry.  But I can’t help you,” and flees the police station.

Subsequently Maggie changes her mind, deciding to help Murray after very reluctantly sharing her backstory with Jackson.  She confides that she’s been traumatized since her best friend Lucy disappeared nearly a decade earlier.  Maggie has tried everything possible to find her but without success.  Now the search for fourteen-year-old Heidi Hemphill is on, bringing with it a decade of memories.

In addition, Maggie’s relationship with Ditmire is getting shaky.  She wants to get her master’s degree and go to work, but he’s insisting that she go for her doctorate.  He begins badmouthing her favorite professor and doesn’t take it well when Maggie proves to know more about a particular topic than he does.  His temper appears to be  getting worse, but Maggie keeps this to herself.  All she wants to do is graduate and get out of Rosedale.

Maggie Moore is an atypical heroine–tattooed, pierced, cigarette and pot smoking, alone in the world.  But her stubbornness or determination, call it what you will, is strong enough to keep her focused on the search for the missing teenager, all the while still searching for her childhood friend and now trying to keep her distance from Ditmire.

Stella Sands has written a compelling mystery about a feisty and gifted young woman, one who has come a long way on her own and wants nothing more than to continue on that road.  Ms. Sands is the author of six true-crime books; Wordhunter is her first novel.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

When Frances, Emily, and Rose decide to visit Madame Peony Lane’s fortune teller’s tent, it seems like a lark.  The woman is so cheesy, so stereotypical with her tasteless silk turban and phony raspy voice, that no one could take her predictions seriously.  No one, that is, except Frances Adams.

Frances is overwhelmed by the fortune she’s told, namely, that “all signs point to your murder.”  It’s certainly not a pleasant forecast, and the impact it has on the teenager is hard to overstate.  She spends her entire life looking for and finding scary meanings in the most ordinary things, and when she dies, years later, the prediction appears to have come true.

Half a century after that fateful day, her great-niece Annie Adams receives a letter from Walter Gordon, a solicitor in the small town where Frances spent her entire life.  He informs her that she will be the sole beneficiary of Frances’ estate and assets after the latter’s death and that she needs to meet with her elderly great-aunt as soon as possible.  Annie is stunned by the news of her eventual inheritance, especially since she has never met Frances, and she travels to the Dorset village to discuss the will and its implications.

Once there, she’s introduced to Gordon and the other interested parties–Elva, Frances’ niece by marriage; Saxon, Elva’s son; and Oliver, the solicitor’s son.  Although the original missive from Gordon said he and Annie would be meeting Frances at his office, he now says Frances has changed her mind and wants the group, minus Saxon, who will join them later, to meet at Gravesend Hall, the Adamses’ ancestral home.  When the four of them arrive, they find Great-Aunt Frances’ corpse on the library floor.

Using the familiar trope of an unexpected inheritance, a small town, and a group of people related to or close to the deceased, Kristen Ferrin has created a wonderfully original mystery.  As Frances’ entire life has revolved around the fortune teller’s cryptic words, there is a great deal for the police to discover and for Annie to try to understand.  What was meant by the psychic’s pronouncements that “Your future contains dry bones…Beware the bird…for it will betray you…there’s no coming back…daughters are the key to justice”?

As Annie extends her stay in the village and becomes more familiar with its inhabitants, she becomes aware that people are hiding a great many secrets, some of which go back in time to the day at the fair when Frances heard the prediction that will rule her life.

Kristen Ferrin has written an engaging, unique mystery with a cast of characters reminiscent of those featured in novels of the Golden Age but with a modern twist and a resourceful heroine.  It’s a book that is a delight from start to finish.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels

One might be forgiven for thinking that being an antiques dealer is not a dangerous profession.  After all, the objects that the dealer handles are generally 100 years old or even older, and thus the original purchasers are long gone, along with their feelings of possession and ownership.  But all too often an aura surrounds the item that can last to the present day, bringing forth feelings of envy, desire, and covetousness among those who want it.

American Kate Hamilton and her British husband Tom Mallory are on their honeymoon in Devon.  Tom is a detective inspector in the Suffolk Constabulary, and their choice of a honeymoon location is serving a double purpose.  In addition to exploring the beautiful landscape of mountains, moors, and rivers with his bride, he is also mulling over a change in careers, leaving the police force and joining a firm of private investigators.  Kate is an antiques dealer, and now the interests of both coincide, as Tom has been hired to document the provenance of a nineteenth-century dress that may have a connection to a case that’s never been solved.

The dress will be on display shortly at the Museum of Devon Life as part of a fund-raising drive.  When Kate and Tom arrive at the museum, they are met by its director, Hugo Hawksworthy, who is more than happy to show them around.  Hawksworthy introduces the couple to Julia Kelly, the museum’s conservator, who is working on the dress that was worn by Nancy Thorne, a local woman whose sister was a well-regarded seamstress.  It’s obvious that the dress is beautifully made, but its front is marred by a huge bloodstain, which is part of the Thorne mystery.  Nancy and her sister lived together until the night Nancy went out and returned wearing this dress, claiming total amnesia of what had happened to her while she was away from their home.

Kate and Tom are invited to the museum’s gala, along with a crowd of Devon’s citizens, and they meet two of its most important ones.  First is Gideon Littlejohn, the man who donated the dress to the museum, an eccentric who dresses and lives as if he were in Victorian times.  The second is Teddy Pearce, a local member of Parliament and a former juvenile delinquent.  As all are listening to Hawksworthy impressing the audience with the importance of the museum’s place in the community, a shot is heard.  No one is injured, but Pearce says he was the target.  Was he?

The morning after the event, Kate and Tom go as planned to the Old Merchant’s House, home to Littlejohn, to learn more about the dress and other antiques he’s purchased.  As they knock, they hear a bloodcurdling scream, and entering the house they find Littlejohn’s housekeeper, Beryl Grey, with her hands covered in blood.  “It’s Mr. Littlejohn,” she tells them.  “He’s dead.”

A Collection of Lies is the fifth mystery in the Kate Hamilton series, and it’s an excellent one.  Kate and Tom are a delightful couple–smart, interesting, and enjoying the beginning of their new life together.  Plus the descriptions of Devon, its beautiful scenery and ancient historical sites, will have readers making plans to visit it on their next vacation.

You can read more about Connie Berry at this site.

In 1947 New York City, Lillian Pentecost owns a private investigation agency along with her assistant Willowjean Parker.  The two have solved a series of baffling crimes and have a good reputation.  However, when Forest Whitsun enters their office, his story is definitely something the two women haven’t heard before.

Whitsun is a high-powered criminal defense attorney who used to work for a “white shoe” law firm that specialized in successful, professional clients.  After Whitsun saved a falsely accused low-level criminal from a life sentence in prison, the two partners of the Boekbinder and Gimbal law firm strongly suggested that his talents would be put to better use outside their firm.

Now Forest is defending people his former firm wouldn’t have as clients, and his success has made him a household name.  However, he himself is now the client, and what brings him to Pentecost and Parker is a most unusual story.

Perseverance Bodine, better known as Vera, was a long-time secretary at Whitsun’s former firm before she retired.  She was known for her phenomenal memory; it was said that she never, ever forgot anything, be it a person in a photograph she had seen twenty years earlier or an obscure legal reference that the firm’s attorneys couldn’t recall.

Once she retired, Whitsun kept in touch with her sporadically.  Eventually Vera no longer wanted to leave her apartment, so he started bringing her groceries and other necessities.

On his last visit he was horrified to see her apartment–newspapers stacked higher than her head, dirty clothes and congealing food on dishes everywhere.  Vera didn’t want his help cleaning up, obviously was distressed, and after some prodding she confided the reason for her agoraphobia and hoarding.

During the war she had been approached by the FBI in their hunt for Nazis in the New York area.  With her incredible memory she was able to help them, using documents and photographs, to identify a number of spies and bring them to justice.  All this, however, brought with it a great deal of psychological pressure that manifested itself in her mental issues.  She eventually stopped allowing Whitsun to enter her apartment, making him leave the items he brought for her outside her door.

The last two times he stopped by, Vera didn’t answer the door or her phone.  He’s certain, given her phobias, that she didn’t leave her home, and she had no relatives he could contact.  Given his long friendship with Vera, he wants Lillian and Willowjean to investigate.

Forest’s case is not the only item on the agency’s agenda.  Responding to what appeared to be a sexual attack under the Coney Island boardwalk, Willowjean is attacked by the couple, and her purse containing her professional license and her Colt is missing.  She’s embarrassed that she fell for the twosome’s phony ploy, resolving to find the man and woman and retrieve what belongs to her without Lillian’s assistance.

Lillian is dealing with a secret of her own, something from her past that is being held over her by Jessup Quincannon, a bizarre multimillionaire with a penchant for collecting items relating to murders.

Pentecost and Parker make a perfect investigating pair, reminiscent of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.  Stephen Spotswood’s series, of which this mystery is the fourth volume, has a clever plot and intriguing protagonists, and I recommend putting Pentecost and Parker on your autumn reading list.

You can read more about the author at this website.

If you are ever asked whether you can learn anything from mystery novels, just say absolutely and direct them to Katie Tietjen’s excellent debut novel Death in the Details.

The novel is based in part on the true story of Frances Glessner Lee’s life and how she created “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death,” miniature recreations of crime scenes to help homicide detectives in their pursuits of criminals.  Those “nutshells” are still in use today.  Glessner Lee went on to help create the science of forensic medicine in the United States, helped establish the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard, and became the first female police captain in the country.

Death in the Details is as fascinating as Glessner Lee’s own life was.  The novel takes place in 1946 in the small town of Elderberry, Vermont, where Mabel “Maple” Bishop had moved shortly after her marriage to Bill Bishop and where he started his medical practice after the retirement of the town’s previous physician, his close friend and mentor Dr. Murphy.

Bill volunteered for army service, even though he was over draft age.  He was killed in the war, and now Maple is completely alone.  She’s also close to destitute, because although her late husband had a busy practice, the townspeople tended to pay their bills “in kind” rather than cash—chickens, home baked bread, and casseroles regularly appeared on their doorstep in place of the money they didn’t have.

Although Maple is a law school graduate, no one is willing to hire a “woman lawyer.”  She doesn’t think she has any other marketable skills until she realizes that in fact she does—she makes miniature dollhouses filled with tiny people, minute furniture, and decorated walls.

Ben Crenshaw, owner of Elderberry’s hardware store, comes up with an idea that he hopes will benefit them both.  He suggests that she build and sell her dollhouses in the shop’s front window, thus bringing additional customers into the store to purchase them and hopefully to buy his wares as well.

Her first customer is Angela Wallace, who tells Maple that she’d like to purchase a dollhouse decorated like the house in which she and her sister lived as children.  Her unpleasant husband reluctantly agrees to the sale, giving Maple a down payment and saying it must be completed by the next day for her to get the balance.

When Maple arrives at the farmhouse the following morning, no one answers the front door.  Thinking that the couple might be in their barn, she pushes the wheelbarrow containing the dollhouse there and sees Elijah Wallace hanging from the barn’s hay hoist.  She rushes into the house and calls the police.  When they arrive, her observations and thoughts about Wallace’s death are brusquely dismissed.  “What’s to investigate?” Sheriff Scott asks.  In his mind, Maple’s concerns are baseless and that it’s a case of suicide.

Maple’s fight to convince the sheriff that her “nutshell” can be valuable in the investigation, her sometime alliance with the young deputy sheriff, and her determination to keep working on the case although she’s repeatedly warned off by Detective Scott make this mystery a fascinating one.

With a heroine combining a strong resolve not to give up until the truth comes out and a group of townspeople who may or may not be helping her, Death in the Details is an outstanding debut novel.  You can read more about Katie Tietjen at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

The summer is almost over, and that means it’s time for another term at BOLLI (Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute).  This will be my fifteenth semester leading a course featuring mystery novels.  Each course goes under the title WHODUNIT?, and then the specific title of the term’s course follows.  For Fall 2024 it’s WHODUNIT?:  MURDER IN ETHNIC COMMUNITIES.

We will read eight mysteries during the ten-week course, with time during the first and the last meetings to think about mysteries in general, what draws readers to them, and what types of protagonists we prefer.  I’ve included amateur sleuths, private investigators, and police detectives in this semester’s mix, and although all the novels take place in the United States, the communities are all different.

This is the list of the mysteries we’ll be reading:  The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman (an Orthodox Jewish community in Los Angeles); Invisible City by Julia Dahl (an Orthodox Jewish community in New York City); The Bishop’s Wife by Mette Ivie Harrison (a Mormon community in Utah); No Witness but the Moon by Suzanne Chazin (a Hispanic community bordering New York City); Among the Wicked by Linda Castillo (an Amish community in upstate New York); Dance Hall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman (two Native American reservations in New Mexico); August Snow by Stephen Mack Jones (a Black/Hispanic neighborhood in Detroit); and Family Business by S. J. Rozan (a Chinese-American community in New York City).

Although no two of the novels’ sites are the same, ranging from the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and New York City to the small towns of Utah and New York, there are many commonalities between these groups.  In our class discussions we’ll find and discuss both the differences between these places and their similarities.

I hope you’ll join us as we criss-cross the country and learn more about the people and locations that make up these ethnic communities.

Marilyn

Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumberland and City Police has returned to her home town.   She’s there to investigate a serious situation at Rosebank, what the Scots call a care home, a placement for adolescents with nowhere else to go.  The body of one of Rosebank’s new hires, Josh Woodburn, has been found in the woods near the home, and one of the young women who is living there, Chloe Spence, is missing.

Chloe’s father abandoned the family several years ago and now is living the expat life in Dubai, her mother is a patient in a psychiatric ward, and her paternal grandparents tried to have her live with them for a while but it didn’t work out.  At Salvation Academy, the school she’s attending, Chloe is recognized as a bright student but someone who isn’t interested in following the rules, alienating both teachers and her more obedient fellow students.  The school’s founder and sponsor, Helen Miles, is a strict believer in conformity and definitely doesn’t appreciate students who deviate from that path.

Two of the members of Vera’s team, veteran Joe Ashworth and newcomer Rosie Bell, go to Josh’s home to tell his parents of his death.  At first his father Chris is unbelieving, saying that Josh didn’t work at Rosebank, that he was a student living with friends near the university, but when he and his wife Anna are taken to identify the body, there’s no doubt that this is their son.  They can’t understand why he didn’t tell them what he was doing.

Vera visits Chloe’s grandparents, Gordon and Pam Spence, and finds Chloe’s father John there, home for a visit from abroad.  John is unapologetic about his absence from his daughter’s life, but Gordon is more emotional, obviously feeling that he and his wife let their granddaughter down.

When Vera says she was told that there is a special place that Chloe loved, Gordon knows immediately what she is referring to.  It’s a cottage that’s been in the family for several generations, and he offers to take Vera there in hopes that is where his granddaughter is hiding.

The hunt for Chloe culminates in the Witch Hunt, an event in town that has been going on for generations.  A village woman is dressed as a witch and goes up the mountain, and the children of the town must find her.  If the witch touches a child, they’re out of the game; if they see her before she sees them, they shout “witch, witch, I see you” and the game ends.  To Joe it sounds macabre and almost evil, especially when the police are looking for a missing teenager, but the powers-that-be insist that the tradition must be kept.  But it’s almost the cause of another murder.

The Dark Wives is an outstanding mystery.  Vera is, as always, a brilliant detective, not very concerned about ruffling feathers as she investigates.  Still, we can see in her interactions with Rosie that she has softened her behavior since the recent death of her young colleague Holly, feeling guilty that she didn’t do enough to protect her.  And perhaps because this case involves a missing teenager, and brings back memories of Vera’s own unhappy childhood, readers will see a gentler side of the detective inspector than was evident before.

You can read more about Ann Cleeves at this website.

It’s New Year’s Eve in Paris, but there’s nothing much to celebrate.  The year is 1940, and France has been occupied by the Germans for six months.

Henri Lefort, a detective on the Paris police force, is naturally very aware of the changes.  Not only the changes that are apparent to the city’s civilians–lack of food, Nazi police patrolling the city, citizens who are at home or work one day and not the next–but more subtle ones.

The French police are not the independent body they once were; now they are subordinate to the Germans.  The French no longer control the investigations, and the Germans are telling them what investigations to pursue or ignore.

Guy Remillon is one of the French who is cooperating with the invaders.  His job is to look into claims received from anonymous letter writers, called corbeaux in slang.  These letters may be written to report someone who appears to have more food than their rations would seem to allow them, people accused of hiding or aiding Jews, people who by their non-French nationalities are suspicious, or simple personal disagreements.  The slightest suspicion can lead to death at the hands of the Nazi police.

In this case, however, it is the investigator who is killed.  Remillon is filled with a sense of self-importance, that feeling strengthened both by his gun and the official credentials he carries.  He is approaching the building he’s looking for when the front door opens and a man steps out and confronts him.  Each asks the other what he is doing there, and before he can conclude his questioning, Remillon is shot dead.

The apartment building where the murder took place is where Lefort lives.  When he starts canvassing his building, Lefort uncovers several surprises.  First he meets Natalia, the young woman who tells him she’s the new custodian, replacing her uncle who returned to Greece immediately after the German invasion of France.  Then he goes to the apartment of Claire Raphael, who is “entertaining” a high-ranking German official.  Claire says she saw a man running from the building but can’t give Lefort any kind of worthwhile description.

Last he visits the apartment of the building’s most annoying occupant, Gerald Darroze.  Darroze claims he didn’t see anything but is quick to complain about other people in the building for allegedly making too much noise too late and buying food on the black market.  His lack of feeling for his fellow citizens and his statement that at least the SS “uphold law and order around here” definitely arouse Lefort’s suspicions.  In addition, when the new custodian tells him that Darroze threw out some garbage that made a loud noise when he deposited it in the trash, Lefort decides that he needs to scrutinize this neighbor more closely.

Mark Pryor has written another thrilling novel about wartime Paris.  Henri Lefort is a fascinating protagonist, a man with strong moral values that he fears may be eroding under the present conditions.  He is also hiding a secret that would mean the end of his career, if not his life.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

Would you hire a defense attorney who had a medical diagnosis of pathological liar?  One who pled guilty to battery on a police officer?  One who had been disbarred for a period of five years?  If those things don’t dissuade you, Leo Banaloff is your man.

As The Best Lies opens, Leo is being interrogated at his local police station for the murder of Cyrus Balik.  To say that things look bleak for Leo is an understatement.

Although the police concede that Cyrus was “the worst of the worst,” a human trafficker, a drug dealer, a murderer, and that no one is mourning his death, someone still has to be held accountable.  Leo’s blood was found on the victim’s shirt, identified because his DNA was on file due to an arrest while he was in college, and his fingerprints were found on the knife protruding from Cyrus’ neck. 

It would seem to be an open-shut-case, but the investigation is ongoing.  That may be because, as the authorities have learned, nothing is as it seems with Leo.

Bonnie Tressler is his first client after he’s reinstated to the bar.  She ran away from home when she was 14 and was picked up by Cyrus Balik.  He got her addicted to drugs, raped her repeatedly, and when the son whom he fathered by Bonnie was four, he took the child away and Bonnie never saw the boy again.

It’s 20 years later, and Bonnie is in a much better place now and wants to help get Cyrus off the streets.  She tells Leo that she’s ready to go ahead with this “…because he could be doing it to other women right now.  He probably is.”

Bonnie and Leo go to the Deemer Park police and tell the story to Sergeant Mary Cagnola and her brother, Special FBI Agent Christopher Roberti.  They believe Bonnie and Leo but aren’t sure of how to confront Cyrus; three weeks later, while they’re still working on a plan, the local police find Bonnie’s body in an abandoned house.

The brother and sister are mystified about how Cyrus learned that Bonnie had come to them and told her story, knowing how tightly they had guarded her identity.  When Mary states that the gangster seems to be aware of everything going on around him and that he’s really good at covering his tracks, Chris responds, “Then we gotta be better.”

The Best Lies moves in a non-linear format, opening in January 2024 and going back and forth over a 30 year time period.  That, and the complexity of the plot, requires close attention from the reader, but it is well worth it.  The characters are brilliant, and the plot moves in so many different directions that to describe it as serpentine is an understatement.  David Ellis has written an outstanding mystery.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

Serpent-handling churches?  Yes, they do exist, but finding out where they are located is difficult because in some states the practice is prohibited.  However, churches in West Virginia are not breaking any laws by allowing clergy and parishioners to handle cottonmouths, rattlers, and other poisonous reptiles during their services due to the state’s constitution that forbids any interference with religious practices.

The New Hope Pentecostal Church in Vintera, West Virginia, is home to Pastor Micah Granieri and his congregation.  They believe completely in the passage in the New Testament that says that true believers will not be harmed when handling serpents or by drinking diluted strychnine, the latter also a part of the services.  

Essa Montgomery grew up in the church, a church that takes the verse from the New Testament literally: “They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them….” Mark 16:18.  But serpents killed her mother and then her father, pastor of the church, and she hasn’t entered New Hope since.

Essa works at the Vintra Wildlife Investigation Laboratory and has for the past four years, since she was sixteen.  The facility is run by Dr. Wick Kester, who was lured out of retirement by the opportunity to run his own lab.  At the end of her workday, as she approaches her car in the dark parking lot, she’s met by two of the town’s police officers.

They tell her that earlier that morning a major fire swept through the church, heavily damaging it and killing two teenagers inside.  And because of a previous argument that Essa’s brother Clyde had with the pastor, the police believe he is the arsonist.

Now she must speak to Pastor Micah, to convince him that her brother is innocent and that the preacher needs to tell that to the police.  With great reluctance, because she has ignored the man ever since he took over the church’s pulpit, she allows him into her house and explains what she wants.  He says he’ll do it, but “I only need one favor in return.  Can you guess what it is?”

Essa isn’t the only woman whose life now revolves around the church fire.  Clyde’s pregnant girlfriend Juliet is of course distraught at the thought that her fiancé might be charged with arson and homicide, and Merritt Callahan is hoping that this story is the big break that will take her from the small local television channel she’s working for and into a major market.

Erica Wright has written a fascinating mystery that combines an amazing sense of place, unique characters, and a murderer’s twisted logic.  She is an essayist and poet and currently teaches at Bellevue University in Nebraska.  You can read more about her at this website.

The major employer in  Springdale, Arkansas is the Denmer Foods chicken plant.  In it, hundreds of employees labor for ten hours a day, five days a week, under abysmal conditions.  Employees need the permission of the line boss to use the bathroom, which he may or may not give; they do the same repetitive motions on the line all day long, resulting in swollen and aching fingers and joints; they work in the 40 degree temperature necessary to prevent the growth of bacteria.

Gabriela Menchaca and Edwin Saucero are two of the line workers, immigrants from Mexico who arrived in the States as children, without documentation.  Now adults, they have been working at the plant for seven years, living in an old trailer that had belonged to Gabriela’s parents before they returned to Mexico, having given up on the American dream.

The pair met in high school where Gabriela was an outstanding student and Edwin was just about getting by, but they have been working hard and saving their salaries for the future.  Or so Gabriella thinks, until the day their landlord comes to collect the three months rent they owe, and she realizes that her trust in Edwin has been misplaced.

Across town are Luke and Mimi Jackson, living a life as different from Gabby and Edwin’s as it’s possible to imagine.  Their custom built, five thousand square foot house sits on acres of land as befits Luke’s position as the presumptive plant manager.  On the surface the two families’ circumstances have nothing in common, but in both cases there are money problems, deceit, and a desire for more than they have.

What brings the Menchaca/Saucero/Jackson families into the same orbit is six-month-old Tuck Jackson.  He is Mimi and Luke’s long-awaited son, but his arrival has brought problems to the surface for his parents.  Mimi is a stay-at-home mother, and she’s a bundle of anxiety and fears.  Her husband is barely around, hardly cognizant of his son, and actually isn’t sure of the child’s birthday.

Then there is a series of events that include Tuck’s parents accidentally grabbing the other’s bag during their hurried morning routines, Mimi rushing into the plant to exchange her husband’s briefcase for her backpack, and Edwin having been fired by Luke moments before.

As he leaves the plant, Edwin sees a sobbing baby left in the Jacksons’ car for the minute it takes Mimi to get in and out of her husband’s office.  In a move that he cannot explain even to himself, Edwin gets into the car and drives away with Tuck.

Thus are four lives changed forever.

Eli Cranor has written a thriller that is truly spellbinding.  His characters are real, and he makes even the most unpleasant and unlikeable human and understandable.  In addition, his searing portrayal of the divide between the lives of the factory workers and those of their bosses will make readers flinch at the inequities of life in our country.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.