Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Have you ever wanted to be “a fly on the wall” and eavesdrop on the conversations of someone you admire?  If so, Marie Benedict’s The Queens of Crime is perfect for you.

The novel opens in 1931, the year The Detection Club was founded in London.  Dorothy L. Sayers, author of the mysteries featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, was the impetus behind the Club, which she decided was needed to bring mysteries and crime novels out of the genre category reviewers put them in and treat them as literature.

G. K. Chesterton of Father Brown fame was installed as president, and he shared with Dorothy a feeling that some members voiced that having an “abundance of women” in its membership might be seen negatively by the more serious reviewers they are trying to reach.  The only two women who are deemed to be appropriate to be members are Dorothy and Agatha Christie.

Needless to say, this roused Dorothy’s ire and now Agatha’s as she learns of it.  Dorothy develops a plan to invite three other female mystery authors to join the two of them and fight for their inclusion in the Detection Club.  Thus there are now five women who are working together:  Dorothy and Agatha; Baroness Emma Orczy, Hungarian-born noblewoman and author of the Scarlet Pimpernel novels; Ngaio Marsh, who hails from New Zealand and writes about Inspector Roderick Allyn; and Margery Allingham, author of the Albert Campion novels.

Telling the three women that individually they cannot breach the walls of the Club or the literary journals they would like to review their novels, Dorothy suggests “banding together in a club of our own making and infiltrating the ranks of the Detection Club as a group.”  Not surprisingly, they all think it’s an excellent idea.

Then all five women authors are admitted to the Detection Club, but they cannot help being aware of the reluctance of some of the male members to their inclusion.  Then Dorothy broaches another idea.  There is an unsolved case, the recent disappearance of a young English woman on an overnight trip to France with a friend.  If the five women can discover what happened to the missing woman, the male authors will have to accept them on equal terms.

May Daniels entered a washroom while she and Celia McCarthy were waiting for the ferry to bring them home, and although Celia waited  for several minutes, she never saw her friend leave the bathroom.  May simply vanished into thin air from a small room with no windows and only one door.  Now, after several months, her body has been found, but neither the Sûreté nor Scotland Yard has any suspects.  This is a perfect opportunity, the five queens agree, to show the men of the Detection Club their worth and importance in the literary world–they will solve the crime.

Marie Benedict has written another outstanding work of historical fiction, following in the footsteps of Her Hidden Genius (scientist Rosalind Franklin), The Other Einstein (Mileva Einstein, Albert’s first wife), and The Only Woman in the Room (Hedy Lamarr).  Ms. Benedict clearly shows the different personalities of the five women authors and brings readers into the literary world of England in the period between the world wars.

You can read more about Marie Benedict 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 novel.

Walking along a street in Bern, Switzerland, Police Inspector Renzo Donatelli is startled when a teenaged boy crashes into him, nearly knocking him over.  Almost before Renzo realizes what happened, the teenager jumps up and runs away.  Although Donatelli chases him, the boy is faster than the inspector, and after a few blocks he is out of sight.

Since the boy’s flight seems to Renzo to be connected to his awareness of the inspector’s gun visible under his jacket, Renzo calls headquarters to see if there’s been a crime reported in the area.  When he hears that there was an incident in the Münster, the Gothic cathedral that is over six centuries old, that’s where he heads.

Inside the building he’s told that someone knocked a workman off a scaffold, but both the cathedral’s sexton and a woman working inside the Münster’s gift shop seem more concerned about damage to the stained glass window than to the worker who fell to the ground and injured his wrist.

Simultaneously, Giuliana Linder, a homicide detective with the Bern cantonal police, is interviewing a brother and sister who tell her that their stepmother has murdered their father.  Tamara and Sebastian say that their father had dementia and they wanted him to be placed in an appropriate setting, but that their stepmother, Ruth Seiler, told them that their father had been adamant about staying in the home he and his wife shared.

This led to increased animosity between the children and their father’s wife, culminating for the children in the discovery that their father died of an insulin overdose their stepmother admitted administering to control his diabetes.  But Ruth is consistent in saying that her late husband had forbidden her to tell his children about his dementia and that he hadn’t wanted to go into a nursing facility in order to leave all his money to his wife and children.  Tamara and Sebastian tell Giuliana that they’re not interested in his money, that they have enough, but that Ruth was willing to kill her husband for her share of the inheritance.

According to Swiss law, a man’s wife, not their children, has the right to decide about her husband’s medical care.  Knowing that what Tamara and Sebastian wanted for their father went against his wishes and those of his wife, why hadn’t Werner Allemann made a will to make his desires clear and save his wife from his children’s animosity?  Or had he made a will, only to have Ruth destroy it upon his death because it didn’t agree with the story she was telling?

When Renzo goes to the hospital the following day to interview Denis Kellenberger, he learns the story of the injured man’s life and his long history with the Münster.  Denis tells Renzo about being unjustly accused of not checking the doors of the cathedral when he was a child; that was his job, and the unlocked door led to the mother of his best friend climbing the stairs and jumping to her death.  Zora, he says, told me she hated me and “called me a murderer in front of everyone,” blaming him for her mother’s suicide.  Could the teenager who attacked Denis be Zora’s younger brother, whom Denis hasn’t seen in years?

Kim Hays has written another fascinating mystery about life in the “federal city” of Switzerland.  Both Giuliana and Renzo are realistic, believable characters, and the romantic spark between them and what that entails for their personal lives adds tension to the story.

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 novel.

Serendipitous.  That’s the only word that comes to mind to describe how I came upon this novel, published in 2007, that I am certain I had never seen before.

I had gone into our family room to chose a particular book I had in mind; when I reached for it, Mistress of the Art of Death came out with it.  I have no memory of ever purchasing this book before it tumbled out of the bookshelf, but somehow it was in my hand.  The author, as well as this book, was unfamiliar to me, but as long as I had it I decided to start reading to see what it was about.

In 1171, a group of English pilgrims is returning from Canterbury, where they prayed at the site of the martyred St. Thomas à Becket, and three visitors from Italy are among them:  Mansur, an Arabian Saracen; Simon of Naples, a Jew; and Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, a foundling raised by a Jewish physician father and his wife.

The trio has been sent to England, Cambridge in particular, to look into the death of one boy and the abduction of three other children.  The townspeople, led by Roger of Acton, are blaming this on the Jews of Cambridge and demanding their expulsion from the town.  King Henry II (of “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” fame) doesn’t want “his Jews” to depart, since he depends on their taxes and financial acumen to augment his coffers.

Thus he asks the king of Italy to send “a person versed in the causes of death,” and that is how Adelia comes to Britain.  She, like her adoptive father, is a physician trained in Salerno and knowledgeable in finding the reasons for death.  However, since there are no female doctors in England, Adelia must present herself as the assistant to Simon, who is pretending to be a doctor.

The Jews of Cambridge have been secured for a year in an old castle belonging to Henry, and thus they are unable to work and contribute to his treasury.  In addition, their danger increases daily as it’s now Easter, always a fraught time for the Jews as the calumny of their being responsible for Christ’s crucifixion is always as its height at this time of year.

Adelia, not one to suffer fools gladly, is displeased by having to hide her expertise and skills, but, as the English say, “needs must.”  She has to be careful to pretend to be no more than an assistant to Simon or else the trio may be expelled from England or worse, be imprisoned like the town’s Jews.  With the help of Glytha, a townswoman acting as their housekeeper, and Ulf, her grandson, Adelia must discover who has taken the kidnapped children and why.

Mistress of the Art of Death is a brilliant mystery.  The characters are realistic, the plot mesmerizing, and the time period, between the Second and Third Crusades, is fascinating.  Ms. Franklin has done a masterful job in bringing a time period nearly one thousand years in the past to vivid life.

You can read more about the author at various sites on the web.

Have you ever started reading a mystery and halfway through were so agitated that you thought about not finishing it?  That’s what happened to me when I started Havoc, but I’m so glad I did.

Havoc is told in the voice of  81-year-old Maggie Burkhardt.  She’s an American widow who lost her only child and who has left the United States for good, just why we don’t know.  She’s cut her ties with everyone in her hometown of Milwaukee, and she ignores the tweets and calls from her sister and friends until they’ve finally given up.

At first she went to Europe, staying in hotels in various countries, until she was forced to flee; again, we don’t know exactly why.  Now she’s in Egypt, that country being one of the few that will accept travelers in the midst of the COVID pandemic.  She’s happy at the Royal Karnak Palace Hotel in Luxor, making friends and enjoying herself.

But, as Maggie admits, she has an uncontrollable compulsion.  In her mind, she’s doing a good deed, wanting to make people happy.  She sees herself as giving people a second chance, whether or not they want or need it, and is almost uncaring about the havoc she causes, so convinced is she that’s doing people a favor.  As she describes what she does, “I don’t make fate.  I only twist it.”

Then Tess and eight-year-old Otto arrive at the hotel where Maggie is staying.  Attempting to befriend them and learn more about them, Maggie takes the mother and son to tour one of the area’s famous tombs, planning to ask questions about their background and the reason they’re in Egypt.  Once inside, Maggie is delighted with her maneuver that leaves their guide outside and puts her in charge of the visit.

But when Otto tells Maggie that he saw her coming out of a guest’s room a day earlier with a yellow scarf and knows that she planted it in another room with the intention of breaking up what she views as an unhappy marriage, she knows she’s facing a dangerous opponent.

The boy wants a room with a video console and some gifts for his mother, he writes in a note he leaves for Maggie.  She knows she’s being blackmailed, but she doesn’t know this is just the beginning.  For the first time since she’s begun twisting fate, she has an opponent who is as determined as she is and will use any trick at his disposal to win.

As Maggie and Otto continue to undermine each other, we can see Maggie beginning to crumble.  As her mind deteriorates, so does her body, despite the exercises she does each morning and the multitude of pills she takes.  But as the opposition between the two intensifies, her body begins displaying ever more gruesome blotches and bruises that even her medications can’t stop from appearing.  The distortions of her mind are now visible on her skin.

Maggie and Otto are perfectly realistic characters.  Although we are seeing things through Maggie’s thoughts and actions, we also can understand Otto via his mother.  Both Maggie and Otto are sociopaths, a condition characterized by a disregard for social norms and the feelings of others.  Maggie covers her disregard for others by perverting her actions in her mind as things she is doing for their benefit; Otto isn’t sophisticated enough to do that…yet.

Christopher Bollen has written an outstanding thriller featuring frighteningly realistic characters that will make you suspicious of everyone around you.  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.

“Sometimes your closest friend is your greatest enemy.”  Evan Smoak, aka Orphan X, doesn’t have many friends.  In fact, he has only two, and one has betrayed him.

Tommy Stojack is an armorer, a man who makes and repairs weapons.  He and Orphan X met years ago in Las Vegas at a SHOT convention, the world’s largest exhibit of firearms and tactical products.  They bonded over protecting one of the guests, and since then X has been purchasing his weapons from Tommy and having them repaired by him when necessary.

Evan is at Tommy’s house for a different reason now.  Tommy had sold weapons to an assassin called Wolf, and she used them to kill a man and attempted to kill his teenaged daughter before Evan killed her.  Evan confronts Tommy about selling the ammo, but Stojack refuses to back down.  “Ignore it,” he tells Evan, meaning what Wolf did.  “It’s not yours.”

In working with Wolf, Tommy has broken two of Evan’s Ten Commandments:  Never kill a kid and Never let an innocent die.  Evan can’t ignore it, despite Tommy’s injunction, and now he decides that Tommy must die.  The two men part with a hug and an unspoken understanding that very soon one of them will be killed at the hands of the other.  But they must do one more job together before the end.

When Evan arrives at Tommy’s house in Nevada, Tommy has just finished a difficult conversation with Del Hickenlooper, Jr., the son of a combat buddy of Tommy’s when both men were in Yemen.  When Hickenlooper, Sr. lay dying, he asked Tommy to look after his sons.  Now Del Jr., known as Hick, is the only surviving son, and he’s in immediate need of the help that only his late father’s friend can give.

Hick is living in a ramshackle house with five friends, none of whom is employed or doing anything worthwhile.  They call themselves The Cavalry Liberty Guards, a militia that views its mission as protecting white, Christian America from foreigners, especially those of color.  That mindset is what sets Hick’s phone call to Tommy in motion.

Although there’s plenty of action and demonstrations of X’s myriad’s abilities, Nemesis is a thoughtful novel, going more deeply into the protagonist’s background and emotions than the previous books in the series.  Not only is Evan dealing with, as he sees it, Tommy’s stubbornness in not accepting his part in Wolf’s actions, but Tommy telling Evan that now one of them must die obviously brings an end to the friendship the two men have shared over decades.  Evan is also having difficulties with Josephine, a young woman who washed out of the Orphan program but still has the skills that Evan needs.

Gregg Hurwitz has written an important novel in the Orphan X series.  Evan is becoming a man who is increasingly able to look into himself more profoundly than ever, deciding what makes him the person he is, what parts of himself he needs to keep, what he can discard.  It’s not an easy challenge for him, and it has taken him a long time to get there.

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 novel.

It’s been thirteen years since Jimmy Baker’s career went from outstanding minor league hockey player to driver of a Zamboni machine.  Quick to anger, almost uncontrollably so at times, Jimmy had deliberately crashed into Corey Richards, a member of the opposing team.  That left Richards in a wheelchair, where he remains to this day, and it ended Jimmy’s career that same night.

Jimmy hasn’t laced up his skates since then.  Instead he’s resigned to driving Zelda, as he calls the Zamboni, and takes great pride in keeping the ice in the best condition possible for the IceKings.  The machine, and the ice rink, is owned by the Payne family, the richest one in Bitterfrost, Michigan, the family now consisting of Eleanor, the family matriarch; son Evan, the manager of the rink; and Devyn, an attorney and fanatic amateur hockey player herself.

When the novel opens Jimmy wakes, trying to remember just what happened the night before.  He knows he was in the Lost Loon Tavern, but what occurred between the time he left there and woke in his bed is a mystery.  However, given the fact that he’s still wearing his team jacket and his face has dried blood on it, it can’t be anything good.

In addition to Jimmy’s fall from grace, Bitterfrost has more unpleasant history.  There is a long-simmering feud between the Paynes and the Dulaneys.  Butch Delaney and his two younger brothers are always spoiling for a fight, and their prime targets are Jimmy and Devyn.  Then there’s the trial that had Devyn defending an accused murderer, getting him off, only to find out that he was guilty not only of that crime but others as well.  Although she was only doing her job, her relations with Bitterfrost Detective Garth Klimmek, who was in charge of the bungled police investigation, is still tense.

The Michigan State Police receive a call of an abandoned vehicle just inside the borders of Bitterfrost, and when they investigate they find what appears to be blood inside the auto.  They call Klimmek to advise him of the accident, and moments later a policeman enters Klimmek’s office to tell him that a body has been found, not at the scene but not too far away.  The detective begins a search of the surrounding area that takes him to Jimmy’s house where he notices what appear to be drops of blood on the front porch.  He interviews Jimmy, noticing the man’s bruised and swollen face, and after the interview is over Jimmy calls Devyn to represent him.

Devyn is also representing Jordan Fawcett, a woman with a long record of drinking and brawling.  Not for the first time Jordan disregards Devyn’s advice; instead of staying put and appearing in court she leaves town.  That turns out to be a fatal mistake.

Bryan Gruley has written a fascinating novel about life in a small, sport-obsessed town.  Memories are long in Bitterfrost, and grudges and hurts are never forgotten.  Advance publicity announces that this is the first novel in a series featuring Devyn Payne, and I am definitely looking forward to the second one. 

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 novel.

Mystery readers know that it’s never a good idea for friends to get together for a reunion years after they’ve gone their separate ways.  No matter how strong the bonds were years earlier, too much has happened since then for the get-together to be successful.

A case in point is when six college friends meet sixteen years after graduation.  Well, it was graduation for five of the six, but that information comes later.

Alfred Smettle is now the owner of the Hitchcock Hotel, a rather grotesque mansion in the same New Hampshire town where the group attended Reville College.  He’s invited the five college friends he was closest to for a weekend at the Hotel as his guests.  During their times at Reville, all six were interested in cinema, none more so than Alfred.

You might almost call him a fanatic about classic films, Alfred Hitchcock’s in particular, and thus when the mansion goes up for sale following the deaths of its owners, he uses all his inheritance to purchase it.  It’s filled with every type of memorabilia relating to the famed director–original movie posters, scripts of his films, a screening room that plays the director’s films twenty-four hours a day, the typewriter Psycho was written on, and the black phone used by Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder.

Now the group from college–Zoe, T. J., Julius, Samira, and Grace–arrives, bringing their issues and problems with them.  Zoe was a renowned chef until her drinking got out of control; T. J. works as security for a Washington politician, but now he is being threatened and stalked; Julius is the heir to a family fortune who has never felt his own worth; Samira is dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and the possible dissolution of her marriage; and Grace is carrying on an affair that’s purely sexual on her part but much more meaningful to the man involved.  Why has Alfred brought them together after all these years?

The six had met in the cinema course led by Professor Jerome Scott.  They all enjoyed the class but none with the fervor of Albert.  Yet it is this course, and this professor, that proved to be Albert’s downfall and years later the reason for the reunion at the Hitchcock Hotel.

Smettle has given his entire staff the weekend off except for his housekeeper Danny, who will cook for the group during their stay.  Now it’s the six of them plus Danny in the house, and all the tensions from their college years reemerge.

Stephanie Wrobel has cleverly intertwined the familiar trope of a group of people secluded from the rest of the world with one man’s obsession with recreating the make-believe world of his cinematic hero.  Her characters and their problems are real, as is the protagonist’s delusion that bringing the group together will right the wrong done to him years earlier.  You can read more about Stephanie Wrobel at this website.

The latest entry in the Molly Murphy series, Silent as the Grave, gives its readers not only an excellent mystery but a close look into the beginning of the motion picture industry in New York City.  The book is set in 1909, and we enter the Biograph Studio of D. W. Griffith along with Molly to learn how magical the making of movies is to those outside the new industry.

Before she married Detective Daniel Sullivan of the New York City Police Department (of which my own father was a captain many years after this novel takes place), Molly ran her own investigative agency.  Now the mother of two young children she no longer has that business, but crime still seems to follow her.

When her friend Ryan O’Hare comes to the States for a visit, Molly learns that the celebrated playwright is interested in the new medium of silent movies.  He has written a screenplay for Griffith, and the movie is being filmed not far from the Sullivans’ home.  Since it’s school vacation week, Molly takes her daughter Bridie to the Biograph location to view the production, and Bridie, to her unutterable delight, is given a small part in the film.

The studio is financed by identical twin brothers, Harry and Arthur Martin.  Harry has just become engaged to Fanny Prince, whose late husband was an inventor involved with his father in the creation of the first motion picture camera.  Sadly, both men died in accidents, but Fanny is still interested in films.

Accidents have plagued Biograph since production began, and Molly is witness to one as she watches a scene being filmed–a huge lamp falls into the water tank, narrowly missing the future star Mary Pickford.  There always seems to be a rational explanation of the causes, but Griffith is furious.  “I’ve had enough of accidents in this studio,” he bellows to the crew.  “I’ll fire the next person who doesn’t do his job properly.”  Nevertheless, the incidents continue, including one that comes close to taking Bridie’s life.

Equally as interesting as the plot is the way the authors, who are mother and daughter, seamlessly weave the history of the beginning of motion pictures into the story.  I learned several details about this history in the book including that at the very beginning, there was no script for the actors to follow; the names of the cast and crew, as well as the screenwriter, didn’t appear in any credits; even though the films were “silents,” actors had to face the camera so the audience could read their lips as well as read the dialogue and narrative text on what were called “inter-titles” or cards with the words that the actors were saying on them; Thomas Edison and Griffith were locked in a series of bitter off-and-on battles over the new industry’s technology.  The idea of Technicolor films with voices that could be heard by theater audiences was barely a dream.

Molly is a wonderful character, as is the supporting cast of her husband Daniel, their three children, and her close friends Gus and Sid.   And the casual disregard of women in the new industry and the lack of recognition of their abilities strike an all-too-familiar chord even today.

You can read more about Rhys Bowen and Clare Broyles at their respective websites:   https://rhysbowen.com/ and https://www.clarebroyles.com/.

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.

Wow, I said aloud when I finished reading The Queen of Fives.  This fascinating mystery provides a close look into an incredible confidence scam in the closing years of 19th-century England.

The Fives refers to the rules of such a scheme.  When the rules are followed and conducted by a skilled operator, the results are foregone.  Rule I – The Mark (or quarry); Rule II – The Intrusion (the con artist enters the mark’s world); Rule III – The Ballyhoo (the opportunity to make a fortune or something else the mark desires is presented); Rule IV – The Knot (the web encloses the quarry); Rule V – All In (the trap is sprung and succeeds).

As long as there have been unscrupulous people, and there always have been such, and as long as there are people either too gullible or too greedy for their own good, and they always have existed as well, there have been con games.

As we are all aware, they currently flourish via email, texts, social media, and telephone–remember the Nigerian prince scam of several decades ago or the more current “I’d like to be your friend” on Facebook?

When we look back at them in the cold light of day, we wonder who could possibly be taken in by such trickery?  The answer is–it could be you (or me).

In a humble house in the run-down section of London called Spitafields, a skilled group of people have made their living for years tricking others out of their savings.  But now times are hard, and the group, led by its leader Quinn LcBlanc and her assistant Mr. Silk, are preparing for their most daring game ever.  They are teetering on the verge of insolvency, and they need to reel in a mark with very deep pockets.

What better candidate than His Grace the Duke of Kendal?  

There are three members of the House of Kendal–the Duke himself, just turning thirty; his sister Victoria; and their stepmother, the Dowager Dutchess.  The  Kendal parents are both deceased, but their late father’s second wife has long been a loving figure to her two stepchildren.  However, now there is tension in the family that didn’t exist previously, and the servants are kept busy running up and down the mansion’s stairs delivering notes from one family member to another rather than the various members simply knocking on the others’ doors as they had done in the past.

Into this small circle Quinn enters in the persona of Quinta White, a young woman presenting herself as a wealthy heiress with the backing of another con artist, Mrs. Airlie, as her chaperone.  Quinn’s first step is to gain admission to Buckingham Palace and to use the opportunity to meet the Duke.  The first and the second rules succeed, but the others may prove more difficult.

There are surprises and betrayals in store for both Quinn and the Duke, with twists and turns that necessitate both parties maneuvering to keep control of their secrets and goals.  Equally important, how much can each trust the other?

Alex Hay has written a masterful mystery.  Both Quinn and the Duke, as well as the many other characters in the book, are wonderfully portrayed, and the customs, venues, and soirees of 1895 London are made vivid.  The Queen of Fives is a novel to be savored.

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.

I was hooked from the first pages of Last Act of All in which a woman who has confessed to killing her former husband is about to released from prison.  Her sentence was for nine months, as she was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder, and there is sympathy for her since the members of the jury and the judge know Neville Fielding for the evil man he was.  Helena Fielding refuses to explain her actions despite the pleas of her barrister; he assures her that an explanation of the truth would almost certainly result in no prison time at all, but she remains adamant.

The novel takes place in the present and in flashbacks.  Helena and Neville meet as young actors, each recognizing the other’s talent and charisma.  In addition to those qualities, however, they also bring memories of their unhappy childhoods–Helena, brought up by a controlling and strict father after her mother’s death when she was twelve; Neville, who had changed his name from Norman Smith to sound more aristocratic, was an abandoned child who spent his childhood in an orphanage.  Both want to expunge their pasts and start anew, but of course it’s never that easy.

Although they both have early success, it is Neville who is determined to climb to the top of the entertainment ladder; somehow Helena is pushed to the back of the stage.  Then he leaves the theater for television and soon becomes “Badman” Harry Bradman, the protagonist everyone loves to hate, and the series becomes the most popular one in Britain.  With each season Neville becomes more like Harry, nasty and controlling to Helena while showing only his charming persona to most of the outside world.

Neville’s latest obsession, aside from his non-stop affairs, is to live in the remote town of Radnesfield, “a mean huddle of Fifties council houses” in the house that he buys without Helena’s input.  When she sees it she calls it an “unspeakable monstrosity,” but her husband, not surprisingly, disregards her feelings.  He is delighted with it, its disreputable state somehow just what he wants.  He manages to bring all his bad qualities to the town, making enemies of nearly all the men while sleeping with their wives, until finally Helena has enough and leaves him, returning to London.  They divorce shortly after.

The trope of a small town with an unpopular outsider who manages to enrage nearly the entire population is a familiar one, but this mystery succeeds in creating an original narrative filled with believable characters.  Even Neville, whom readers will agree receives his just desserts, provokes a sliver of sympathy.  And Helena’s false confession is totally believable given the circumstances surrounding her.

Aline Templeton wrote this outstanding mystery in 1996, and I’m sorry it took me so long to discover it.  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 Detective Casey Duncan and her husband Sheriff Eric Dalton founded Haven’s Rock as a place of sanctuary deep in the Yukon forest, they hoped to improve upon Rockton, the place where they met years earlier.  Rockton had also been envisioned as a place of safety for those wanting to leave their horrific pasts behind, but over the years things there had changed, and it was no longer fulfilling that need.

Thus Casey and Eric, with the financial help of an heiress who supports their project, established Haven’s Rock.  Now a town of sixty-seven adults and two children, Haven’s Rock is even more remote than Rockton, and it has the additional benefit of virtually unlimited financial resources.  But it still has dangers from its residents, carefully vetted as they are.

Casey and Eric are awakened shortly after midnight by Sebastian, a member of the community.  He tells them that Kendra, another resident, was attacked and dragged into the forest but managed to escape her assailant.  Kendra tells Casey that she had two drinks at the Roc, the town’s only restaurant, one over her usual limit, and that on her way home she felt dizzy and tipsy. She was trying to put her key in her front door when she was hit twice from behind and dragged through the snow into the woods.  Sebastian heard her screams, found her, and carried her back to the settlement.

The consensus is that Kendra’s drink was drugged, and it is pure luck that she was rescued.  Now Casey and Eric must find the assailant before he/she strikes again.  Finding the person who put something in Kendra’s drink is made more difficult by the fact that she was sitting with two other women at the Roc, and their drinks had been left on the bar’s counter for a minute or two before being taken to their table.  Was Kendra the intended recipient of the doctored drink, or was it really meant for one of the other women?

Then there’s a second assault, this one deadly.  Another woman is taken into the forest, stripped naked, and staked in the snow, and the presumption is that her attacker watched her suffer and die.  In this small community, how could such a person have escaped the vigilance of the committee screening prospective entrants as well as the people living in Haven’s Rock?

An additional complicating factor is Casey’s pregnancy.  She and Eric are delighted about having a child, but at the moment it’s complicating her ability to investigate the crimes.  Much as she doesn’t want to admit it, now that she’s in her eighth month she’s more tired than usual and her mobility is definitely compromised.  Her husband is watchful, perhaps more than she would like, because they are hundreds of miles away from the nearest hospital.  April, Casey’s sister, is Haven’s Rock physician, but April is a neurosurgeon, not an obstetrician.

Cold As Hell is the third volume in the Rockton series.  It continues the stories of multiple characters in the village, but such is Ms. Armstrong’s talent that even those readers who have not read the earlier two novels will have no trouble following the plot.  The characters are realistic, Casey and Eric are a delightful and strong couple, and the plot is scarily believable.

You can read more about the author at this website.

This month marks fifteen years since I started my weekly mystery blog.  I’ve reviewed over 700 books and have written pieces about current releases, Past Masters, Golden Oldies, and my opinions of various aspects of mysteries under the title About Marilyn, which you are reading right now.  I’ve enjoyed every minute of writing.

One of the things I like to do is to let readers know about another interest of mine.  I’ve been attending wonderful classes on topics including music, art, and history for more than twenty years at BOLLI (Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) and have been teaching courses on mystery fiction there for more than a dozen years on topics including “Murder in Massachusetts,” “Murder She Wrote,” and “Historical Mysteries.”

My spring semester course, which starts next month, is entitled WHODUNIT?:  A STUDY IN SIDEKICKS.  Anyone who has read the Sherlock Holmes stories certainly understands the importance of sidekicks.  But what exactly is their role?  Since not every thriller or detective novel has a sidekick, why do some authors incorporate them into the plot and others don’t?

Is the sidekick there to provide assistance to the detective, to give the reader a look into the investigative process, to add humor to the narrative, and/or to have someone in the novel who is willing to do what the protagonist can’t or won’t do?  Finally, what is the importance of the sidekick in each mystery that we’ll be reading, and how would be story be different without him/her?

Here is the booklist for this term:  The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I Know a Secret by Tess Gerritsen, The Wanted by Robert Crais, A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane, Daughter of the Morning Star by Craig Johnson, Smoke and Ashes by Abir Mukherjee, Heart of the Nile by Will Thomas, and Ghost Hero by S. J. Rozan.  We’ll start in the Victorian period and end in today’s era, and we’ll be moving from England to India to the United States.

I invite you to read along with us and think about the questions I posed above.  I promise you truly excellent reading.

Best,

Marilyn

Mercury Carter is an independent mail carrier, like a delivery man from UPS or Amazon except that he works for himself.  It doesn’t sound as if that’s something that would put him in danger until he has to make a delivery to attorney Rachel Stanfield.  Merc’s motto is Rules are Rules, and thus begins the novel that changes lives.

Rachel and her husband Glenn are in the midst of an argument, although neither is quite certain what they’re fighting about, when their back door opens and four masked men enter their house.  A moment later the couple is sitting on their couch, with their hands zip tied behind their backs, guns pointing at them.

Glenn doesn’t know what the men are there for, but Rachel does.  The leader of the group, Finn, waylaid her two days earlier, demanding that she give him a document he wants.  She explains that she can’t do that legally, that it hasn’t been filed and thus she can’t release it, but Finn doesn’t care about the legalities.

Now in her home he tells her,”You have sixty seconds to produce the document or we’re going to remove your husband’s fingers,” pointing to a man holding a pair of pruning shears.  Even after Rachel gives Finn the document, he wants more.  He wants the address of a woman named Stella Wolford, but Rachel denies knowing anything about her or where she can be found.

Glenn offers the leader of the group money, millions he says, and Rachel looks at her husband in disbelief.  Finn is interested, and it’s obvious that his new plan is to get Glenn’s banking information and then kill the couple.  He herds them to the basement, and at that moment the doorbell rings.

It’s Merc Carter, with his delivery for Rachel, and he is politely insistent that it must be delivered into her hands only.  Finn is annoyed, saying Rachel isn’t home and he doesn’t know when she’ll return, but Merc doesn’t relent.  He agrees to wait in his car, but Finn is not pleased with that.  He tells Stone, one of his gang, to “go ahead and handle it,” and he attempts to do as he’s told and heads outside.

As Stone tries to force the mail carrier to leave his car, he receives a face full of Mace from Carter.  The next thing he knows, he’s zip tied and gagged.  He’s still able to answer Merc’s questions by nodding, and Merc learns that there are three other gang members in the house, that Rachel is still alive, and that her husband is with her.  Now the mailman is prepared.

Carter had been a member of the Postal Inspection Service, and its members carry guns and have the power to arrest suspects.  After a number of years in the PIS, two traumatic events changed the course of his life.  Now Merc is forced to use the skills he learned in the Service, skills he thought he’d never need again.

The MailMan is an exciting, outstanding novel which I hope is the first in a series.  Its plot will keep you turning pages, and all its characters are utterly believable, from Rachel and Glenn and Glenn’s daughter Abby to the unsavory Finn and the mystery man he’s working for.

You can read more about Andrew Welsh-Huggins at this website.

Desmond Aloysius Limerick (Dez to his friends) is back.  He’s a “gatekeeper,” which means he has the ability to enter any locked/secured facility, a skill he learned in the British military.  Even though he’s now retired, his gatekeeping skills are still coming in handy, along with the many other abilities he possesses.

As Chain Reaction opens, Dez and Mr. Jamison, the latter a member of the British espionage establishment, are in Spain to purchase, for an unbelievably large sum, a formula for synthetic opioids that has no addictive qualities, developed by a Spanish chemist.  Within seconds of their entering the chemist’s lab Dez realizes that it’s all a sham.  The professor is no more Spanish than Dez is, and the formula he shows Dez and Jamison is that of the atomic structure of caffeine.

Then a group of gangsters tries to enter the lab, but thanks to Dez’s skills they don’t have a chance.  He has boobytrapped the door leading to the lab, messing with the electronic locking device on the door and using liquid nitrogen that he puts together, wounding the men as they attempt to force their way in.

The alleged professor and his assistant lead Limerick and Jamison out of the building, leaving behind the wounded gang members of the cartel who were there to stop the sale they believed would end their lucrative drug trade.  And when Dez and Jamison turn around, the two con artists have disappeared.

The time and place shift, and it’s eighteen months later in New York City.  A day earlier Dez had received a text supposedly from his friend and former bandmate Kansas Jack, asking if he can substitute for an ailing guitar player the following evening at a performance in Manhattan.  Dez is delighted to accept and takes the next flight to New York City.  The room reserved for him is at one of the hotels inside the brand-new Liberty Convention Center in Newark, New Jersey.

Before meeting Kansas Jack, Dez walks around the Center and becomes aware of several pairs of military men trying to fit into the crowds of tourists in the hotel’s lobby.  They’re dressed in civilian clothes, but to a former military man such as Dez it’s obvious what they are.  As he’s deciding what to make of this, a young woman comes over to his table.  It’s Catalina Valdivia, known professionally as Cat, the “professor’s assistant” from Madrid.

As they reconnect in a martini bar in the Center, Limerick tells Cat his suspicions about the men he’s seen walking around.  Are they robbers, Cat asks?  Could they be terrorists?  Less than a minute later they hear the first of three almost simultaneous explosions; the thousands of people inside the Center are at risk.  Dez immediately works out a plan to thwart the terrorists or robbers, whomever they are, and the loss of innocent lives is averted.  The ones who planted the bombs are not so lucky, however.

Dez then meets with his friend Kansas Jack and learns that the text asking him to come to New York did not come from him.  Obviously someone wants him in Manhattan, and Dez believes he knows who.  Now Dez, Cat, and FBI hostage negotiator Stella Ansara are working together to get the hostages safely out of the Liberty Hotel, uncover those behind the takeover, and learn the reason that Limerick was lured to the city.

Chain Reaction successfully continues the spellbinding adventures of Dez Limerick.  As in the two previous novels, Gatekeeper and Deadlock, Dez is a compelling character, and his abilities and charisma will keep you reading until the final page.  James Byrne has done it again.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Five college friends.  A weekend at the cliffside vacation home belonging to one of them.  Spouses and significant others are invited.  A secret that has haunted some of them over the years.  What could go wrong?

The timeline of The Weekend Guests is from 2001 to 2019.  The story is told by various characters, most, but not all, of whom are present on this weekend.  The first voice is Brandon’s, the reluctant owner of the spectacular home that is the site of the reunion.  He and his wife, Aline, are the hosts, he unenthusiastically, she with unbridled delight.  Aline, with her extraordinary beauty, unlimited money, and compelling personality, has brought the group together for the first time in many years.  And she has a reason.

She, Rob, and Michael were students together in Edinburgh, and Sienna, a visiting American, was part of that group for several months.  Brandon, another American, came into the group a bit later.  And there are two other women–Nikki, Michael’s wife, and Cass, Rob’s latest and temporary significant other–who are there for the weekend.  Finally there’s Milly, a student at the London School of Economics and Aline’s temporary nanny; she will be taking care of Aline and Brandon’s two children and Sienna’s two girls.

We start learning about the initial group–Aline, Rob, and Michael–from the journals of Darryl, a graduate student at the university who is struggling both with his dissertation and his life.  Darryl is watching as the three undergrads move into the flat across the hall from him.  The statement he writes, “They will not change my life,” may be one of the most inaccurate statements in literature.

Desperately lonely, Darryl reconsiders his first thought and decides he wants nothing more than to be friends with these students.  He and Rob start a weekly chess game, but as Darryl becomes more erratic in his behavior, Rob pulls away until finally there are no more games or invitations to join any get-togethers.  That loss affects Darryl profoundly, eventually impacting on his unrequited fixation on his dissertation advisor.  He is a lonely, broken soul with a tragic backstory.

There are many strands tying the guests together, most of them twisted.  Aline and Brandon’s marriage is not the perfect one it seems on the surface.  Michael and Nikki are dealing with economic problems and a nursing baby who will not stop crying.  Rob’s latest girlfriend, Cass, is obviously ill-at-ease with his friends, and Sienna, his former lover, adds even more tension to the scene simply by being there.

In addition, the weather plays a major part in the novel, with Aline using all of her guile and powers of persuasion, urging the group to go on dangerous hikes regardless of the rain, thunder, and lightning that is present every day.

The trope of a small group of people together in a remote spot is a familiar one, but Liza North has made it her own with insightful writing, a brilliant plot, and an ending that took me totally by surprise.  This novel will make you think twice before accepting invitations from long-ago friends.

You can read more about the author at this web site.

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.