Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Imagine yourself as a nine-year-old girl discovering that your father, a butcher by profession, is dismembering a corpse in the basement of your house.  And realizing that this isn’t the first time he’s done this.  What would you do?

This is Daisy Bellon’s story.  She’s the only child of a severely depressed mother and a father whom she has come to understand is a serial killer.  Now he demands that she “go fishing” with him, which she recognizes as a euphemism for disposing of the body of the woman he killed the previous night.  “You’re an accomplice, guilty as me,” he informs her, and she knows what he means.  She must never tell anyone their secret.

Then two things happen almost simultaneously.  The first is the appearance of Marina, the woman her father killed the night before.  Her ghost is not visible to anyone except Daisy, but the two are able to talk.  Marina tells the young girl that she would like to leave but can’t, and the two become bound together for years.

The second event is the collision between Daisy and Caleb Garcia, a boy three years older than she is.  They bump into each other, literally, in the livestock market in Hellene, Nebraska, Daisy’s favorite place, and the next day Caleb and his family move into the house next door to hers.  Theirs is a perfect friendship until the age difference between them becomes insurmountable.

Although Daisy cannot know it then, Marina and Caleb will prove to be the two most important people in her life.

One positive thing her father gave her was a respect for animals, particularly cows.  They live in pastures, graze on fresh grass, and upon their death they bring nourishment to people, he explains to Daisy.  That’s more that can be said for humans, “because we leave nothing behind.”  Perhaps that explains his disregard for human life.

The novel is told in alternating flashbacks.  It opens with Daisy deciding to return to her hometown after seventeen years of avoiding it, going back in time to her childhood, and jumping ahead to her adult life.  Her life is filled with difficulty, of which her father’s serial killings are only a part, but Daisy has incredible strength, even if she is not always able to recognize it in herself.

The Butcher and the Liar is a brilliant tour de force, telling Daisy’s story in such a way that you’re always rooting for her, even if/when she does the wrong or hurtful thing.  S. L. Woeppel takes what could be a simple horror story and makes it a compelling coming of age story instead, featuring realistic people who have to deal with their complicated lives as best they can.

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.

In July I wrote about the passing of Martin Cruz Smith, an author I have been reading for years.  In that Appreciation I noted that his last novel, the final one in the Arkady Renko series, was published just three days before Mr. Smith’s death.  Thus writing this blog is bittersweet.

Hotel Ukraine could have been taken out of today’s headlines.  It opens with the Russian bombing of Kyiv and a crowd of Russians demonstrating in Pushkinskaya Square.  Arkady is there because he knows his adopted son Zhenya will be part of the group protesting the beginning of the war or, as the Russians are insisting on calling it, the “special military operation.”  Calling it a war is forbidden.

The following day Arkady is called to police headquarters where he learns of the murder of Alexei Kazasky, a minister of defense.  He will be the lead investigator for the MVD, the Russian Police Force, and to his dismay but not to his surprise, he will be paired with the Russian Security Service in the person of Marina Makarova.  The two have a long history, starting with an investigation into Chechen organized crime, morphing into an intimate relationship, and ending on an unhappy note.  That is in the distant past, however, although Renko wonders what that means for their present partnership.

The investigation begins with Marina telling Arkady that they’ve arrested a suspect for the murder, a diplomat at the Ukranian Embassy; since Ukraine broke off diplomatic relations a few hours earlier, Yuri Blokhin no longer has immunity from arrest.  Marina interrogates Blokhin for hours without getting past his denials, but she’s determined to break him.

She tells Renko that she had three operatives following Blokhin the night before, but the detective is suspicious.  He tells Marina he wants to interrogate the operatives separately to be certain that he can give his supervisor the complete testimony, and Marina can’t think of a logical way to stop him.  When Renko questions the men, each one tells him a slightly different story with varying details–different car models are mentioned, different drinks itemized, their descriptions of how Blokhin looked at the end of the evening don’t match.  Marina has no option but to free him.

Receiving a copy of Kazasky’s itinerary for the days preceding his murder, the only item that stands out is a visit to the 1812 Judo Club, owned by Lev Volkov.  The club’s name is an obvious reference to the Russian victory over Napoleon in that year, a date that every Russian knows.  The club is, in reality, a private army run by Volkov, with a membership of several thousand.  The members receive high pay from the government as well as medals for Orders of Courage and Services to the Motherland.  The comrades are involved not only in countries that were former Soviet bloc members but in a number of African nations as well, namely Mali and the Central African Republic.

Lev Volkov is an influential man, and now Arkady has two powerful opponents to deal with as he attempts to discover the truth about Alexei Kazasky’s death.

Martin Cruz Smith’s final novel is a brilliant coda to the Arkady Renko 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 novels.

A single woman in the early 1900s in New York City, Margot Baxter Harriman is the head of B&H Foods.  She inherited this position on the death of her father, and although she has been at the company her entire working life there are those who question her right as a woman to be its president.  Still, as the third generation of Harrimans involved in the food business, Margot has been educated in the field since childhood and is confident that she belongs at the head of the table.

When Margot enters the company’s building after hours to pick up a report the company’s accountant left for her, it’s totally silent.  Of course there’s no one here, she thinks, that’s why it’s so quiet, but it’s still unnerving when compared to the usual clamor of people and machines she’s accustomed to.  Taking her master key from her pocket, she slides it into the accountant’s office and only then realizes that the door was already unlocked.  Sitting at the desk with her head at a strange angle is Giana Gilroy, the highly respected assistant to Margot’s father before her retirement.  But now Mrs. Gilroy is dead, and a note addressed to Margot is in her hand.

Margot says nothing about the note to the police, who have ruled that Mrs. Gilroy died of natural causes.  The note is almost inexplicable to her, as it says that Mrs. Gilroy and the late Mr. Harriman were “involved in a situation” at the company and that people got sick, some dying.  Margot knows that there are food companies that use fillers and cheap additions to prolong the life of their products, even though these practices are unlawful under the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, but she never knew or even suspected B&H of such activities.  Could she have been so naive, so trusting of her father, when it now appears he may have been involved in illegal practices?

Determined to find the truth and not knowing whom to trust in the company, Margot hires the firm of Mancini & Associates to investigate if there is any truth to what is inferred in the note.  Margot and Rhett Mancini decide that the best way to look into the situation is to have someone join the company as a worker, and when Margot asks whom Rhett is thinking of, the latter replies, “Why, me of course.”

Their first joint venture is checking out Mrs. Gilroy’s home before her cousin, Letitia Jacobs, gets the house ready to be sold.  The two women enter the house and begin their search; the late homeowner’s bedroom yields a book with notations in code and a key that looks like one for a safe deposit box in a New York City bank.  They are interrupted by another intruder, and as Rhett reaches into her pocket for her brass knuckles, Margot heaves a ceramic pitcher across the room and the man falls to the floor.  Thus the partnership begins.

A Murderous Business is a winning combination of an exciting plot, realistic characters, queer romance, and a fascinating look into Manhattan in the early part of the 20th century.  Cathy Pegau has written what is subtitled “A Harriman & Mancini Mystery,” so this is obviously the first in the series.  I look forward with much anticipation 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 novels.

Now that the summer is almost over and my course is going to start on September 8, it’s time to let you know what I’ll be teaching this fall at the Brandeis Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (BOLLI).  It’s titled WHODUNIT?:  MURDER IS EVERYWHERE.

The class will be reading eight novels that I chose both to highlight countries on several continents and to explore the differences between the various types of protagonists.  These books showcase police detectives, private investigators, and amateurs who find themselves involved in crimes.  We’ll discuss how the differences in their roles play a part in the investigations.  Do police officials make better crime solvers because of the weight of their governments behind them, or are private individuals (licensed or amateur) more efficient because they are not bound by laws and official statutes and thus have more freedom to investigate?

We start with The Dry (Jane Harper), which features an Australian police officer returning to his home town in the Outback to attend a funeral and then becomes involved investigating the murders of a family that he knew from childhood.  In Finding Nouf (Zoe Ferraris), we go Saudi Arabia to follow a desert guide looking for a missing woman.  Next it’s Tokyo; in Newcomer (Keigo Higashino) we learn how an experienced police officer has his own unique methods of solving a crime.  In  Whip Hand (Dick Francis) we’ll read how an English champion jockey becomes a private investigator after suffering a life-altering injury.  We will come face to face with anti-Muslim and anti-foreigner hatred in Québec in A Deadly Divide (Ausma Kehanat Khan).  In The Mist (Ragnar Jónasson), a policewoman tries to break through the anti-female feelings of her fellow officers by looking into a missing person case in an isolated Icelandic village.  The Kind Worth Killing (Peter Swanson) starts with two strangers on a plane from London to Boston plotting the murder of the man’s wife.  And we’ll complete our course with Norwegian by Night (Derek B. Miller) which tells the story of an elderly man who moves from the United States to Oslo to live with his granddaughter and her husband and finds himself protecting a young boy from foreign killers.

I hope I’ve piqued your interest and that you’ll read along with my class as we come to the painful truth that yes, MURDER IS EVERYWHERE.

Marilyn

Annie Blunt is a successful author of children’s books, but now her life is in tatters.  Her husband John was killed in a hit-and-run accident and her famous cartoon character, Pierce the Penguin, inadvertently led to the death of a young boy who was trying to replicate the penguin’s flight by taping cardboard wings to his arms and leaping to his death from an apartment balcony.

She is so distressed that she tells her editor that she must get away from New York City with her young son Charlie.  He says he’ll find a place for her and he does, a house in the small town of Lucknow in upstate New York.  When she and Charlie see it, it’s love at first sight.  Annie hopes that this summer home, even if temporary, will help her son deal with the death of his father and control the episodes of sleepwalking that started after John’s death.

Right from the beginning of their stay, however, there are some strange happenings.  When Annie sees an elderly woman on a front porch across the road, she starts to walk over to introduce herself.  But the woman gets out of her chair, turns her back on Annie, and goes into her own house and slams the door.

The woman’s husband Daniel comes over to Annie to explain his wife’s behavior.  He tells her that one day, more than twenty years earlier, his wife had entered the house Annie is renting and began screaming and couldn’t or wouldn’t stop.  The doctors told her husband she had a psychotic break, and although medication is controlling her symptoms, she has never been the same since.

Trying to turn the conversation to a more pleasant topic, Annie tells Daniel that she misses the New York City noises but loved hearing the train whistle in the middle of the previous night.  Daniel tells her there hasn’t been a train going through the town for several years, that she must have heard something else.  Not wanting to get confrontational with her neighbor, she says “maybe so,” because she doesn’t think it’s worth an argument.  But Annie knows what she heard.

Then there’s the mysterious shed in the backyard.  Its door is sealed with a padlock, but by climbing on top of a pile of wood Charlie can see inside.  There are boxes inside that he would like to investigate, but first he has to find a way inside.  Then he has a dream in which his father tells him to look inside a basement drawer for the key to the shed.  When he wakes up he goes down to the basement and finds the key exactly where it was in his dream.  He goes outside, puts the key in the padlock, and the door opens.

Whistle is told in two voices–Annie’s and Harry Cook’s, the police chief of Lucknow.  Although Harry has lived his entire life in the town, things are happening now that he can’t explain.  First two men in the town go missing, and one is found dead with all the bones in his body gone.  Then the town vagrant disappears, leaving no trace.  And why does a backyard barbecue explode, leaving traces of the man at the grill strewn across his lawn?

Linwood Barclay, a master of suspense, has written another outstanding thriller.  Although I’m generally not a fan of the supernatural, this novel is so realistic and the characters so well drawn that I read it believing every word!

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 saying “bad things come in threes” is coming true for Liam Hirsch.   Just a few months earlier Liam had everything he dreamed of–a loving wife, a successful business, good health.  Then it all fell apart.

First he discovers that his wife Celeste is unfaithful, having an affair with their contractor.  Then TransScend, the artificial intelligence company that he founded, has some strange budgetary problems.  Most frightening of all, he receives a diagnosis of ALS that explains the muscle twitches in his legs, shoulders, and tongue.

Liam is torn between telling his family about his disease or keeping the news to himself until he can decide what to do.  Living in Washington state, he has the option of the Death with Dignity Act, but he’s not quite ready for that.

Liam has found out about his wife’s affair by hiring private investigator Andrea DeWalt after becoming suspicious of Celeste’s behavior.  He loves his wife and recognizes that he probably has been paying more attention to TransScend than to his family, but the betrayal still hurts deeply.  And then there’s the emotional bond he’s experiencing with Andrea, something that’s growing deeper each time they meet.

Making a mockery of the bad things being limited to threes, Rudy Ziegler reenters Liam’s life.  Two brilliant students, Liam and Rudy were in graduate school together, working on joint projects and planning their futures.  Then Rudy accused Liam of stealing his ideas, culminating in multiple lawsuits, all of which Rudy lost.

Now Liam wants to try to reconcile with Rudy, not by admitting he may have used some of the latter’s ideas without giving him credit but by offering him a ten percent interest in TransScend, but Rudy laughs at that.  It’s fifty-one per cent or nothing, he tells Liam.  As Liam stalks out of Rudy’s condo, Rudy calls after him, perhaps noting the way Liam’s body is twitching,”don’t underestimate karma.”

The reader will find it painful following Liam as he navigates the treacherous paths of his failing marriage, the major problems within his company, his ever-weakening body, and his interactions with Rudy.  He is a sympathetic protagonist, overwhelmed by these issues and not knowing where to turn.

The problems he faces are ones we can all recognize.  The characters in The Deepest Fake are beautifully drawn, and their thoughts and feelings make them, in this AI inspired mystery, recognizably human.

Daniel Kalla is an emergency room physician and the author of fifteen books.  With The Deepest Fake, he has written an impressive thriller.  You can read more about him 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.

John Wilkins and his wife May are most definitely a mismatched couple.  Given his background dealing with a controlling mother and her background as the daughter of an alcoholic ex-convict father, they didn’t have a healthy framework to guide their marriage.

The two met at a dance and started dating.  John is a very good tennis player, May doesn’t like the game; May likes to play bridge, John thinks it’s a waste of time.  May is socially ambitious, John is not.  In this way they slowly drift apart.  As he put it, “What can you say about a marriage?  You peel off the years…like the skin of a onion, and there’s nothing inside.”  Still, he doesn’t think he is really unhappy until he meets Sheila.

John is immediately attracted to Sheila, a librarian at the local library, where he takes takes books out for May but tells Sheila they’re for his invalid sister.  He pretends to have gotten complimentary tickets to a local theater production and invites Sheila to go with him, which she does.  As is usual with John’s luck, always bad, he runs into his mother’s friend at the play, and of course she’s aware that the woman he’s with is not his wife.  He’s certain that she can’t wait to give the news to his mother.

Then, after a disastrous day with Sheila at the tennis club, she tells him she knows he’s married.  Somehow he convinces himself that if he were single things would be different, then he and Sheila could become a couple.  At that point he starts thinking about murder, although he tells himself it’s nothing he would ever do.

The novel is divided into two parts.  In Part One, John is giving his statement to Dr. Max Andreadis, a consulting psychiatrist, and he tells the doctor the story of his marriage and his infatuation with Sheila.  In Part Two, a young couple comes across Sheila’s body, and John is put on trial.  We see the inner workings of John’s mind, or at least as much of it as he himself is aware of.  One of the issues in his life is recurring blackouts, after which he has no memory of what has occurred during those times.  That, of course, makes any legal defense very difficult.

The Colour of Murder was written in 1957 and won that year’s Gold Dagger Award, given by the British Crime Writers Association.  It was republished in 2018.  The novel is a deep look into John Wilkins’ life, or at least the part he tells both the psychiatrist and himself.  The characters–including John, May, John’s mother, and Sheila–all have hidden parts of their lives that don’t allow them to fully function as adults.  Reading it, one is struck by the emptiness and futility of their lives and their inability to address what is holding them back and to start anew.

JULIAN SYMONS (1912-1994) was a notable writer of British crime fiction from the 1940s and ’50s until his death, publishing more than thirty novels. He served as President of the prestigious Detection Club, won two Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, and is well known as the author of Bloody Murder, a classic history of crime fiction.  You  can read more about him at several sites on the web.

This column, Past Masters and Mistresses, is very difficult to write for obvious reasons.  When someone appears here, it’s a final farewell.  There will be no more books by that author.

Martin Cruz Smith died on July 11, leaving behind a rich legacy of unforgettable characters and a penetrating and clear-eyed look into Russian history.

I discovered Mr. Smith in 1972 when I came across Canto for a Gypsy in my local library.  I loved it,  but  sadly for me, Canto was the second and last book in that brief series, and I don’t think I read any more of his books until Gorky Park was published in 1982.  Then I was not the only reader to follow him voraciously, waiting eagerly for Arkady Renko’s next adventure.  Time magazine called this novel “the first thriller of the ’80s,” and it won the Gold Dagger award from the British Crime Writers’ Association.  Nine other Renko novels followed, and the last, Hotel Ukraine, was published just three days before Mr. Smith’s death.

Renko was an incorruptible hero in a very corrupt Russian society.  Years after the book was published, when Mr. Smith applied for a visa to visit the Soviet Union it was denied.  Obviously those in charge had read the novel.  In later years, however, he was able to travel to Russia multiple times to do additional research.

One can actually follow the history of the Soviet Union/Russia through Mr. Smith’s novels.  He described the collapse of the Soviet Union (Red Square), the toll of the Chechen War (Stalin’s Ghost), and finally concluded with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Hotel Ukraine).

Martin Cruz Smith has left readers a wonderful legacy of novels to be read and reread, combining the importance of history with outstanding prose.  He will be missed.

Readers will have to wait until nearly the end of the book to discover the meaning of the title, but that won’t be a problem since they won’t be able to put the novel down without finishing it.  The White Crow is an outstanding mystery, told in three distinct voices.

Philomena McCarthy is an officer in the London Metropolitan Police Department with a unique backstory.  Her father and his brothers are the notorious McCarthy Gang, the four men having a criminal history that goes back decades.  Despite this family past, and despite the efforts of those higher up in the Department to keep her off the force, Philomena is now in her fourth year as a police officer and is hoping to become a detective.

On patrol one night, she sees a small foot peeking out from some hedges and finds a young girl in muddy pajamas hiding there.  The child tells Philomena that her name is Daisy Kemp-Lowe and that she’s outside because she couldn’t wake her mother.

Disregarding the orders from headquarters, Philomena enters the girl’s house.  Further ignoring the instructions from her radio, she walks into the kitchen and sees a woman, whom she assumes is Daisy’s mother, sitting in a chair with a plastic bag over her head.  Her face is blue and her body cold.

At the same time, Detective Chief Inspector Brendan Keegan is investigating a related crime, although he’s not aware of the little girl Philomena found.  Responding to a security alarm, he discovers a man in a jewelry store tied up, his mouth taped and his wrists and ankles bound to a chair.  A bicycle chain is wrapped around his waist, securing what appears to be a tilt switch attached to a bomb.

When Keegan removes the tape from the man’s mouth, the victim gives his name as Russell Kemp-Lowe, which is the same last name as the girl Philomena discovered hiding outside her home.  He tells the detective that intruders entered his house, forcing him at gunpoint to come to his store, leaving his wife and young daughter at home, with the criminals promising that no harm would come to them if he cooperated.  It turns out that the bomb tied to him is a fake, but before the inspector can get any more information, Kemp-Lowe falls to the floor unconscious.

There are no family members available to take care of Daisy in the aftermath of her mother’s death and her father’s hospitalization.  Throwing a tantrum, the little girl refuses to go with the assigned social worker, and thus Philomena agrees to take her home until a more permanent arrangement is made.

The novel’s third narrator is Edward McCarthy, Philomena’s father.  Now calling himself a property developer, the gang leader has created the Hope Island development, a combination of residential and commercial towers he plans to build.  The concept sounds good on paper, but the combination of COVID and high interest rates has created a major problem for him.  Now his bank wants immediate repayment of his overdue loans or a majority interest in Hope Island; McCarthy doesn’t have the money the bank is demanding, nor does he wants the bank as a partner.

Michael Robotham ties all these disparate strands together with his usual excellent writing.  All the characters are realistic and believable, and the plot of The White Crow will keep readers turning the book’s pages as fast as they can.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Have you ever noticed how the same person can appear so different to various people?  You may have a friend whom you think is a terrific conversationalist, while others think that person monopolizes every interaction.  Or you may consider someone a gossip and busybody while another friend sees their comments as helpful and insightful.

After Katie Cole’s arrest for murder, five men who knew her give their perspectives of the young woman.  Interestingly and tellingly, each has a different nickname for the young woman, perhaps showing the reader how they view her.

Katie is working at March House, a members-only club in Mayfair.  Its owner, Lucien Wrightman, hosts parties there for some of the most influential men in London; women are not allowed on its sacred premises.  One evening Wrightman and three of his guests are murdered during a small gathering he’s hosting; Katie is the only waitress.

Tarun, who reluctantly becomes her barrister when she’s tried for murder, calls her Katherine.  That’s not surprising, as he didn’t know her before he was hired.  When a CCTV camera captures her leaving the club, then attempting to leave London at the Paddington station, she tells the arresting officers, “They deserved it.”  It’s no wonder that Tarun feels “only dread” about representing her.

John is her father, and he calls her “Kit-Kat,” and he believes with all his heart that she’s innocent of the murder charges.  Her mother, however, is not so sure.

Max, one of the journalists covering the sensational story, refers to her as “Killer Kate” in his own mind.  The story of the deaths of four prominent men is tailor-made to keep his articles on the front page.  Wrightman was “richer than God” and the owner of the March House; Dominic Ainsworth was an inept politician who somehow managed to be named to a prominent role at the Exchequer; Aleksandr Popov was a Russian billionaire with many, many suspect interests; and Harris Lowe was heir to a diamond fortune and a real estate magnate.

Gabriel was her classmate and calls her “K. C.”  He is shy, somewhat nerdy, not very popular, and when K. C. takes an interest in him and introduces him to an internet website called the Rabbit Hole, it changes the way he sees the world.

Conrad calls her “Wildcat” and views her as “a bomb going off in my life.”  Despite being engaged, he spends the night with her and starts living two lives, one with his fiancée and one with Wildcat.  He is wracked with guilt, wrecking his life, but he’s unable to stop.

We hear from “Katie,” as she calls herself, only in the novel’s first chapter and in the last.  Thus it’s up to the reader to decide which of the men comes closest to understanding her and what the last words of the book, which are a repeat of her damning words at the trial, really mean.

Nicci Cloke has written a fascinating mystery in which all the characters are beautifully and clearly written so that the reader is able to understand their motivations and relationships to Katie.  Each man views Katie through his own lens, and that lens, of course, depends on his own life and his relationship with her.

You can learn more about the author on various sites on the web.

It’s July 1992 in Northern Ireland, and The Troubles continue.  The Good Friday Agreement is six years away, and riots persist.

For Sean Duffy, a Detective Inspector in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, his job doesn’t hold quite the terror that it had previously.  He is now in the last stages of his career, working the minimum of six days a month to get his full benefits and pension until he retires in two years.  His girlfriend and their daughter are safely across the water in Scotland, and although he still checks under his BMW for a mercury tilt switch bomb before starting his car, he’s feeling good about his life.

He’s just a few hours away from boarding the ferry to Scotland when his chief inspector turns up at Sean’s house.  It appears that Sean is the only detective available at this late hour to investigate a car highjacking that turned into a murder earlier that evening.  Although he pretends reluctance, Duffy is actually not unhappy to have a murder to investigate after months of doing boring paperwork at his part-time job.

The victim of the carjacking was shot at close range by a double-barreled shotgun.  There’s no identification on the body, but it appears obvious that the man was well-to-do.  His neighbor tells Duffy that the stolen car is a gold Jaguar, the man’s jacket is a custom made one by a Dublin firm, and his wallet contains Irish pounds and French franc notes.  But there is no ID, no driver’s license, no credit cards.

A further search shows no record of a passport or driver’s license issued to anyone at the man’s address, but Duffy recognizes what he believes are two original Picassos hanging above the fireplace in the living room.  The next day he brings a friend of his, an expert forger, to the victim’s house.  His friend tells him that the aquatints are, in fact, the work of the famous artist and are worth about 10,000 pounds each.  Now it’s obvious to Sean that this is more than a simple carjacking gone wrong.

Who is this mysterious victim, and what was he doing in Northern Ireland?

Adrian’s McKinty’s Sean Duffy series is an outstanding one.  Sean is a fascinating, multi-faceted character, a Roman Catholic who is a detective in the Constabulary (a Protestant police force loyal to the Crown), a man who goes to poetry readings, and who is not afraid of administering tough physical punishment when he believes it is necessary.

The books all take place during the upheavals when the Unionists, predominantly Protestant, and the Nationalists, predominantly Catholic, waged battles to decide whether the six counties of Northern Ireland would remain as part of the British Empire or join the separate Republic of Ireland.  Each novel is beautifully written and heartbreaking as well.

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 Shiloah Roy’s seventeenth birthday, and her father is giving her the big party he wants her to have despite her wishes for something smaller for her friends only.  But a man in his position, Jesse Roy reasons, needs to show off not simply his only child but also his own incredible wealth.  Thus the party for more than a hundred guests, featuring fireworks and a catered dinner, is in full swing when a fireball, not part of the massive fireworks display Roy ordered, lands in the middle of his ranch.

The following morning Sheriff Porter Beck receives a visit from Special Agent Ed Maddox, Office of Special Investigations.  He won’t tell Beck why he’s come to the high desert plains of Nevada but insists that the sheriff come with him to the Double J Ranch, site of the mysterious fireball.  There Maddox interviews Jesse, who is looking for an answer to explain what happened the previous evening when a government aircraft landed on and killed his most expensive steer.  Maddox isn’t able to explain exactly how the aircraft came to destroy the bull, but he doesn’t balk at agreeing to reimburse Jesse $100,000 for the dead animal.                     .

When Beck and Maddox leave the ranch, a livestock trailer enters, and Jesse and his foreman watch as the heifers are unloaded.  As soon as the trailer is empty, they lift up its floorboards to show hundreds of guns–semiautomatic rifles, pistols, and revolvers.  The weapons are headed to Mexico, and this is obviously not the first time such a trip has been made.

After Beck and Maddox return to the former’s home, the agent reluctantly explains that one of the government’s planes was highjacked the previous night and rerouted to kill Roy’s bull.  Maddox asks Beck to keep his eyes open.  What Beck doesn’t tell the agent is that he and Jesse go back a long way.  They were childhood friends, but over the years the two men have gone their separate ways.

The following day Beck and his father, the former sheriff of Lincoln County, drive to Snow Canyon to see Brin Cummings, Beck’s adopted sister.  She is the firearms expert on a movie shooting there, and Beck fills her in on the previous day’s happenings at the Double J.  Brin tells her brother that she knows Shiloah Roy, since the teenager is a volunteer at the Lincoln County Youth Center, where she herself is a part-time counselor.

Almost as an aside Brin mentions that Shiloah is very friendly with one of the young women at the Center, a “member” as the incarcerated teenagers are called.  She describes Mercy Vaughn as possibly “the smartest kid I’ve ever met.”  When Beck meets her, he’s inclined to agree, and he and Mercy begin working together to understand how the government plane had been taken over the night before and deliberately crashed into Roy’s ranch.

Beck is also facing two local issues–fires breaking out all over the county due to the hot, dry weather and two deaths from drug overdoses.  It’s a lot for the sheriff’s small department to deal with, and Beck will need the help of Brin, Mercy, and his staff to find the solutions to all of these issues.

Bruce Borgos has written a novel that expertly combines realistic characters, a swiftly moving plot, and a dramatic landscape that all work to make Shades of Mercy a fascinating read.  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.

Although released in English in 2024, Point Zero was written in Japanese and published in Japan in 1959.  It was kind of a conundrum for me–was it actually a Golden Oldie or a current release–but I decided to review it in the former category, as it is a mystery over sixty-five years old.

Although it takes place more than a decade after World War II ends, Seicho Matsumoto’s novel seems to reflect an even earlier time.  That’s probably because it begins with an arranged marriage between 26-year-old Teiko Itane and Kenichi Uhara, a man a decade older than his bride.  Although Teiko is described as a professional, the reader will have no sense of what her work consists of and why she stops working the day she got married.

Kenichi is a manager at an advertising agency.  At the time of their marriage, Kenichi is working twenty days a month in Kanazawa City, several hundred miles from Tokyo where Teiko lives.  He works in the capital ten days each month, however, and he tells his wife he plans to move there as soon as possible.

Their honeymoon is a delight, and all is well when they return to Tokyo.  Teiko accompanies her husband the following day to the train station so he can return to work in Kanazawa City and makes him promise that the next time he takes this train she will be with him.  Then he boards, and that “was the last time Teiko ever saw her husband.”

The day before her husband is due to return to the capital, Teiko decides to start rearranging their apartment.  She opens several of the cartons of books he left, finding a number of law books, and she wonders why an advertising salesman would be interested in them.  Had he hoped at some point to be a lawyer or judge?  She will ask him when he returns, she thinks.

Then, as she’s closing one of the volumes, two photos fall out.  There are no people in the photos, just two houses.  One is of a very luxurious Western-style home, something one would find in an upscale residential section of Tokyo; the other is a Japanese-style farmhouse that appears to be set in the countryside.  Why did her husband take these particular pictures?  What do these houses mean to him?  And why are there no people in the photos?  These would be other questions to ask him.

When Kenichi still hasn’t returned to Toyko two days after the date he was due, Teiko begins her search for him.  She questions his brother and the staff at the agency where he works, but no one has heard from him.  They don’t appear to be especially worried, however, telling her that he’s obviously been delayed and will certainly come home soon.  But he doesn’t.

Point Zero offers readers a fascinating look into Japanese society in the middle of the twentieth century following its defeat in World War II.  The introduction of American culture, from dress to music, has a major impact, and the importance of pan-pan girls, or young women who adopt Hollywood ways and seek romantic relationships with their foreign conquerors, is a major part of this story.

The late Seicho Matsumoto is credited with popularizing detective fiction in Japan.  He won multiple prizes for his work, which include novels, short stories, and non-fiction historical studies, and several of his mysteries were made into films.  You can read more about him at various sites on the web.

Imagine if you had the power to drain someone’s life force and pass it on to another, more deserving, person.  Would you use it?  And under what circumstances?

Thea and her best friend Ruth are having breakfast in the London flat they share.  As Thea reaches across the table for the box of Cheerios, she accidentally touches Ruth’s hand and receives an electric shock that tells her that Ruth will die that night at 11:44.

The two women go out to a club that evening, and every time Thea bumps into someone on the dance floor, she sees the date and time of their death.  She and Ruth go outside for some air, and suddenly two men near them get into a fight.  One man falls directly into Ruth, and all at once she’s on the ground, not moving.  First Thea touches the man and then Ruth, and a minute later Ruth has revived and the man is dead.  Ruth, of course, knows nothing of this exchange and would have been horrified if she knew.

Then Thea sees Sam, an attorney she met during a summer placement.  He’s a successful attorney, something Thea always dreamed of being, but she failed the bar exam and is working in a low level human resources department for Zara, Ruth’s former lover.  Thea and Sam spend an evening together, and he gives her details about a case he’s working on, one in which Karly, a young unwed mother, is being physically abused by her lover Brendan.

Thea goes to Brendan’s office, they fight, and she, while defending herself, siphons his life force into her body.  A police officer appears and arrests her, charging her with Brendan’s death; Sam enters her cell and gets the charges against her dismissed.  He realizes there’s something out of the ordinary going on, and Thea, somewhat reluctantly, tells him about her supernatural power.  Far from being appalled, he approves of what she did. Not only that, but he has his own idea of what she should do next.

Thus begins the collaboration between Thea and Sam.  He has become outraged at the power of the ultra-wealthy people in society, and he believes that his knowledge of these people, arrogant and disrespectful of anyone lower on the societal or economic scale, means they are unworthy to continue living.  Combining these thoughts with Thea’s recently discovered power is the way, he thinks, to make society a more equitable place.

Although An Ethical Guide to Murder is obviously a fantasy, it brings up a number of thought-provoking questions.  Have some people forfeited their right to live due to their unethical or unlawful behavior?  Who gets to decide who lives and who dies?  Does one evil act mean that person is irredeemably lost, or can someone turn their life around and do something to make up for the previous act?  And how “good” must the person be who decides who will live and who will die?

Jenny Morris has written a mystery that asks a number of fascinating questions, questions that may have different answers depending on who answers them.  Thea is a captivating protagonist, a young woman with an unanswered question of her own that influences every thought she has.  Her response to that question may be different from yours, but is it wrong?

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

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 1925 in New York City, and the Jazz Age is in full swing.  Prohibition has been the law of the land for five years, but you’d never know it at the Nightingale Cafe, a speakeasy where crowds drink illegal cocktails and listen to Beatrice Bluebird sing.

Vivian Kelly works at the Cafe as a waitress, but she is on the dance floor as much as possible.  When she and Bea interrupt a fight between Spence, one of the club’s newest employees, and an unknown gangster, it proves to be the beginning of the problems that the Nightingale is facing.

Vivian and her sister Florence are orphans.  Their mother died when they were toddlers, and their father deserted his children soon after his wife’s death.  The girls grew up in an orphanage, learning the sewing skills that allowed them to earn a living, meager though it was.  Now Florence is married and the mother of an infant daughter, and perhaps because of that she has taken what may turn out to be a life-changing step.

A few months earlier Vivian and Florence had visited their mother’s grave on Hart Island and discovered that someone had placed a headstone on it.  Believing they were alone in the world, the sisters couldn’t imagine who would have done that, and through negotiations with people in the city administration Vivian manages to discover the address of the unknown benefactor, but not their name.

Nonetheless, Florence sends a letter to that address, explaining who she is and why she is writing.  Now, after months of not receiving an answer, one arrives.  The letter invites the sisters to visit the writer, Ruth Quinn, and so they do, although they can’t imagine the connection between Ruth and their late mother.

Ruth admits to paying for their mother’s headstone and explains that she is their aunt, their father’s sister.  She gives them some information about their parents’ marriage and tells them that their father died several years ago.  Although Ruth is welcoming at first, during the conversation her behavior changes, and she seems eager to to have the sisters leave.

Meantime, back at the Nightingale, trouble is definitely brewing.  Silent, the nickname given to one of the bouncers, is murdered, and a mysterious man returns for a second night.  He’s looking for a man named Hugh Brown and threatens Vivian and Honor Huxley, the Cafe’s owner, that he’ll return in two days and expects to find Brown there or else.

Katharine Schellman has written the fourth novel about Vivian Kelly, but sadly she has announced it will be the last in the series.  I’m really sorry that there won’t be more adventures with Vivian as the protagonist and the fascinating cast of characters around her:  Honor Huxley, owner of the Nightingale; Florence, Vivian’s older sister; Danny, Florence’s husband; Leo Green, low-level gangster and Vivian’s friend.  But I plan to keep my eyes peeled for what I hope will be a new series by the author.

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.