Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Summer Randall is the golden girl in the small town of Greenville, Maine.  Smart, beautiful, athletic, she appears to have it all.  So why is she running through the woods for her life in the middle of the night?

The following morning, that area is set off by yellow police crime tape.  Maine State homicide detectives Brock Justice and his partner Chloe Wright are called to the scene because what at first glance looked like a horrific car accident is clearly, on closer analysis, a brutal murder.  There’s a small cut on Summer’s side that was there before the accident, the on-scene medical examiner tells the detectives.

No sooner do Brock and Chloe arrive at the scene than Evan Mathers appears.  Several months earlier Brock had testified against Evan, then a Maine State Detective, in a wrongful shooting case.  Evan was cleared of the charge, and Brock was demoted and transferred to the northern part of the state. 

However, Brock is not able to leave the court case behind him.  He’s certain that Evan killed the victim deliberately, but he now discovers that Evan resigned from the State Police and is a member of the local force where Summer lived.

The case turns into a media circus when the victim is identified as the daughter of a U. S. Congresswoman, a woman who is always searching for problems with the police.  One of the suspects in the case is Ronnie Libby, Summer’s ex-boyfriend.  He was arrested the previous year for assaulting the young woman while on drugs.  Summer’s father Taylor threatened Ronnie and thus lost his job as a reserve officer on the town police force, and Ronnie went into a voluntary drug rehabilitation program.

Brittney LaRoux was Summer’s best friend, and she tells Brock that she is blaming herself for her friend’s death.  The two were supposed to go on a training run the previous afternoon, but Brittney had canceled at the last minute.  “And I think she might be dead because of me.”

Chloe attends Summer’s autopsy, and it’s discovered that the young woman was several weeks pregnant.  Did Summer and Ronnie get together again, and is Ronnie the baby’s father?  Or was she involved with someone else?

Brock tells Chloe that the pregnancy must remain a secret, including from Summer’s parents.  When Chloe objects, saying “That’s cold, even for you,” Brock reminds her that the fact that the victim died of a stab wound, not as originally thought by being hit by a car, became public knowledge even though it was supposed to be kept under wraps.  He doesn’t want the same thing to happen with the latest information, and his partner reluctantly agrees.

Bruce Robert Coffin has written another riveting police procedural.  His characters, with their strengths and foibles, make them true-to-life and relatable.  Plus, the twist at the end is totally satisfying.

You can read more about the author, a retired Portland, Maine police detective, 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.

Keigo Higashino, the Japanese author whose books were read around the globe, died on July 23 at age 68.

Mr. Higashino, one of my favorite authors, wrote over 100 novels in the genres of mystery, science fiction, and parody.  His works appeared in over 40 countries and were translated into English, French, Chinese, and Korean, among other languages.

His most famous creation is Detective Galileo, featured in The Devotion of Suspect X, a physicist whose name is actually Manabu Yukawa and who helps police solve murder cases.  The Devotion of Suspect X was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 best mysteries of all time.  However, my favorite character is Detective Kaga of the Tokyo police force, a man my husband refers to as the Japanese Columbo.  

Portraying the human condition was at the heart of his writing, he noted.  On a television program in 1999, Mr. Higashino said, “Whenever I write a novel, what I really want to portray is human nature.”

Mr. Higashino admitted that he was not an avid reader as a child.  When he won the Naoki Prize in 2006, he commented, “What I always think about is wanting to write novels that even my book-hating self from back then would enjoy reading.”

I have reviewed seven of his books on this blog, the most recent being Guilt on March 20th.  His final novel,  Eternal Memory, will be published this month.  I think that’s a fitting title to Mr. Higashino’s legacy.

It’s quite a comedown from starring in films in Hollywood to making whiskey commercials in Mumbai, but the latter is where George Abercrombie is now.  Although he still has dreams of obtaining funding for his film Fragments of a Forgotten Soul, that doesn’t seem to be happening, so he is reduced to shilling for Glen Doone, an Indian whiskey that to George’s mind is virtually undrinkable.

Returning after an evening of too much to drink to the penthouse apartment where he and his wife Sweety live, George falls asleep on the living room couch.  Although his head still feels like it’s being hit by a hammer when he wakes the next morning, he goes in search of Sweety, India’s sweetheart of the cinema.  He moves from room to room, including a couple he’s never entered before, until he makes his way to their bedroom.  There is his wife, or rather her corpse.

George and Sweety’s lives should have been made easier by the servants they employ, but that is not the case as they have their own secrets.  Gemma is Sweety’s secretary, an American woman who is in India escaping from her unhappy past into a dangerous present.  She is having an affair with Ash, the Honourable Minister for Civic Affairs, who is married and a father.

Still unaware of Sweety’s death the morning after it occurs, Gemma receives a sexually explicit video on her phone of herself and Ash in a hotel room.  Immediately after viewing the clip she gets a phone call telling her to get Sweety’s laptop and password.  Ignoring her protests that she doesn’t have either, the caller informs her that unless she gets them within the next three hours and delivers them to the location she’s told, the video will be sent to Indian news channels and social media.

Amir, George’s personal assistant, is working hundreds of miles away from his family in order to earn a living and send money back to them.  He sells Fat Moeez, a powerful criminal, whiskey that he says is from George’s personal collection, but it isn’t.  The gangster, furious at discovering the deception, orders him to steal money and jewelry from Sweety, which he does, but escaping from the gangster’s clutches isn’t that easy.  Amir attempts to flee Mumbai, but is captured by Gullu, one of Moeez’s henchman. Gullu tells Amir, “Fat Moeez would like a word with you.”

The Pinnacle is a fascinating look into life in Mumbai, a city of nearly 28 million, in which the millionaires/billionaires live on Malabar Hill, where security guards stop cars at The Pinnacle’s entrance to make certain the occupants are expected by the tenants, and there are separate elevators for the residents and their employees.  The higher one’s floor, the more prestigious the location.  In this stratified building, George and Sweety live on the 68th floor of the 70 floor edifice.  Almost top tier but not quite.

Abir Mukherjee’s latest mystery delves deeply into the city’s life as seen through the eyes of both Americans and Indians.  The characters are constantly surprising you with both their thoughts and their actions, and The Pinnacle joins the list of outstanding novels by the author.

You can read more about Abir Mukherjee at this website.

London Falling is the first non-fiction book I’ve reviewed in my more than 15 years of blogging.  Patrick Radden Keefe’s book absolutely proves the familiar saying “truth is stranger than fiction.”

Rachelle and Matthew Brettler are the parents of two sons, Joe and Zac.  The family lives a comfortable upper-middle-class life in London, with Matthew working in the financial sector and Rachelle a free-lance writer for various publications.

All appears to be going well until Zac hit his teenage years.  A precocious child, he had a phenomenal memory that amazed his parents and extended family, knowing the cost of items ranging from autos to phones and delighting in rattling the prices off to anyone who would listen.  He also had an amazing ability to mimic foreign accents.

Issues began when Zac was rejected for admission into the elite private school where his older brother Joe was enrolled.  Although Rachelle tried to explain to the school authorities how disheartening it was for Zac not to be allowed to attend the school, the administrators would not be swayed, and Zac went to a different private school.

Mill Hill had become a favorite school for the children of the Russian oligarchs who had relocated to London, and “Zac was intrigued by these kids–not just by their riches but by their swagger.”  It seemed to him that they lived a much more exciting life than he did, with their money and the protected lives they enjoyed due to their fathers’ wealth.  Then, at age twelve, Zac became a boarder at the school, thus having the opportunity to become even more friendly with the Russian students than before.

He began staying out late at night, dressing more as an adult than a student, becoming surly and oppositional with his parents and his brother.  His ideas changed also, telling a friend that democracy was overrated, that all that mattered were money and power.  On the week that Zac turned eighteen and became a legal adult, he and a friend incorporated a company called Omega Stratton, the latter part of the name apparently in homage to a crooked brokerage house featured in the film The Wolf of Wall Street.

Zac told his father that he was doing very well financially, showing Matthew his account with a balance of 850,000 pounds.  He explained that he was in the oil and gas business and was also doing real estate deals and importing foreign cars.  Matthew and Rachelle found themselves with ever-more questions about their son and his life, and then he disappeared.

London Falling is a fascinating story about how a family’s life is upended.  Readers may wonder about the way the Brettlers handled everything–Zac’s new lifestyle, their decision not to go to the police immediately after he failed to return home one night, their deciding not to make his disappearance public.  Would a different choice have led to a different outcome?

Patrick Radden Keefe’s book is brilliant and impressive, due both to the amount of research that went into London Falling as well as making the Brettlers come alive through their conversations and decisions.

You can read more about the author at this website.

The protagonist of Killer Vibes is Peter Key, an almost-thirty-year-old bisexual, homeless, jobless man whose main occupation is selling/smoking weed.  He’s either a total waste of space or a fascinating character, depending on your point of view.

Here’s the novel’s opening sentence:  “Considering how badly I needed a place to stay, my uncle couldn’t have died at a better time.”  Peter is currently crashing at a friend’s brother’s house, living in the garage.  When the brother arrives home earlier than expected and sees his sister involved with Pete and another man in a threesome on his bed, he’s given less than nine hours to vacate the premises as well as having to turn over all the cash he’s earned by selling weed, his only source of income.  Otherwise,  Peter is told, “…they’ll find you in twenty pieces on I-35.”

Just an hour before his time in the garage is up, the doorbell rings.  Peter wants to ignore it, but the visitor goes to the garage door and sees Peter through a crack.  He introduces himself as Arthur Brennance, an attorney, and informs Peter that his Uncle Forrest had died several weeks earlier.  As Peter hadn’t seen his uncle in eleven years, it would be fair to say that he’s not devastated by this news, but he is totally surprised to discover that he’s the sole beneficiary of Forrest’s estate, his house in the Hyde Park section of Austin, Texas.

Brennance explains that a conservative estimate of the home’s worth is one-point-one million dollars.  The house is in very bad shape, he goes on to tell Peter, but the land is what makes the estate so valuable.  He has a Realtor ready to buy the house as is, but Peter wants to go to Austin to see the place for himself.  After all, he thinks, it’s got to be better than the garage.

However, the attorney continues, the estate comes with a five hundred thousand dollar line of credit that his uncle took out a week before he died.  When Peter asks if he can simply return the loan to the bank, Brennance tells him it’s more complicated than that, that Forrest immediately converted the loan into cash and no one knows where the cash is.

When Peter enters the house, he discovers it’s a hoarder’s paradise.  Clothing, playing cards, lamps, tables, toys, and bedding fill every room, but he’s so exhausted he goes to the bedroom and falls asleep instantly.  The next morning he meets his neighbor, Eric, a Realtor, and coincidentally (perhaps?) when the two men walk to a nearby coffee shop, the young woman behind the counter hands Peter a business card with the name and number of a property management company.  It appears to Peter that his new inheritance is of interest to a number of people.

Then something even stranger happens.  The following night a man appears on the house’s porch, and his opening comment to Peter is “You need to sell this house….You still have a chance to get out of this alive.”

Killer Vibes’ cover announces it as “The First Peter Key Mystery,” and that is definitely good news.  The book is a wonderful read, filled with fascinating characters both good and evil, a one-of-a-kind protagonist, and a plot with an excellent twist at the end.  To quote from Google Books, “JACK FRIDAY is the pen name of the author of several queer supernatural thrillers. He lives in Texas, where he does as little as possible.”

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.

Meet Roger Smith.  He’s a sixty-five-year-old widower who has spent his life working in the United States Printing Office, a man with a grown daughter and two grandchildren, who still lives in the house he and his late wife bought decades earlier.

Lying in bed in the middle of the night, he’s unable to sleep because of the red wine he drank at dinner even though he knew it would give him heartburn.  But something good comes from Roger’s insomnia.  If he had been sleeping, he never would have heard the very low beep-beep-beep of the home’s alarm system.

The system is a sophisticated one, with two motion detectors and video cameras at the front and back doors.  Although Roger doesn’t arm it when he’s home, the front and back door alarms are always working, and that’s what he’s hearing at 2 a.m.

Roger reaches under his bed for the aluminum bat that his late wife had insisted on buying and that he’s never used.  He moves behind his open bedroom door, preparing to call 911 until he realizes that his cell phone is in the living room.  Before he can think about his next step, the intruder walks into the bedroom and shoots where he thinks his victim will certainly be at this time of night, in bed.  But since Roger is actually behind the room’s door with a baseball bat in his hand, he has now become the dangerous opponent; he gives a mighty sweep of the bat and the man falls facedown on the floor.

As the lyrics to the song goes, “I’m an ordinary man.”  In fact, although Roger Smith is ordinary in many ways, he has an extraordinary ability, one that he started using decades ago when he was faced with insurmountable bills from his late wife’s illness.  He can create undetectable imitation passports, passports that are used by people wanted by the police and who need to leave the country in a hurry.

That’s where his relationship with John McKenna began and that’s whom he calls now.  He tells McKenna what transpired in the last ten minutes, and when McKenna asks him who the man is, Roger says he doesn’t know, has never seen him before.  He’s going to call the police as soon as he hangs up with John but asks John to get a lawyer over to his house immediately.  McKenna is the kind of man who always has a lawyer on standby.  Then Roger sits down to wait.

The surprises in this novel keep coming.  Just as the reader thinks he’s got the plot figured out, they discover another twist.  In addition, the characters are perfectly drawn.  There’s Roger, a seemingly meek man who discovers that he has, in fact, a spine of steel; he will not give in to the others who are sent to kill him but will turn the tables on them.  There’s McKenna, a wanna-be gangster who finds himself over his head with Roger’s problems.  Finally there’s Grace Lillinthal, a Washington, D. C. detective who is certain there’s more behind the home invasion than Roger is willing to admit.

Mike Lawson has written an outstanding mystery, with terrific characters and a storyline that provides one startling event after another.  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.

We are back in Bitterfrost, Michigan, where it is (almost) always winter.  Criminal attorney Devyn Payne has returned to her hometown after living and working in the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck.  Even she’s not certain why she left a lucrative law practice to “switch sides” and become a member of Genevieve Harris’ prosecution team, but something has called her back to Bitterfrost.

Shortly after she arrives, a tragic accident/homicide takes place.  An SUV is submerged in the Jako River, appearing to have left the icy road and gone into the water.  In the car were Catriona Dulancy, her husband Sammy Hardt, and their eight-month old twin sons.  Catriona and Sammy survive, their sons do not.

The only witness to the SUV going into the water is Bill Hooper, who rushes into the river to help the man bring the woman to shore.  Hooper is a former Michigan state trooper, semi-forced from his job after losing an eye in an explosion.  Devastated by the loss of his job, the death of his young daughter, and the end of his marriage, he has been wandering around the state, ending up in Bitterfrost by accident.  His plan is to leave the town as soon as possible, but that’s not the way events unfold.

The Paynes and Dulancys have a long, unhappy history in Bitterfrost.  The Paynes are the “aristocracy” of the town, while the Dulancys are the criminals.  Devyn coaches the girls’ hockey team, having been a star player herself when she was younger, at the rink that bears her family’s name.  This year one of her outstanding players is Kelly Dulancy, Catriona’s niece.

Genevieve Harris is convinced that Catriona deliberately drove into the Jako in an attempt to kill Liam and Logan.  Devyn is not so sure, although Catriona’s family history makes that a believable option.  Then the prosecution brings a well-regarded behavioral psychologist to interview Catriona, a man who specializes in homicide-related investigations.

Genevieve and Devyn are watching the interview, the latter thinking that Dr. Jarman is conducting an inquisition more than an interview.  Devyn believes that the psychologist made up his mind from the moment he walked into the room that Catriona is guilty of deliberately killing the infants and that all his questions and comments are designed to get her to confess.  That finally happens, seven hours into the questioning, when Catriona cries, “My God.  What have I done?”  But Devyn isn’t convinced of her guilt.

River Deep is a complex mystery featuring numerous characters with histories going back generations that intertwine with the other characters.  In a small town such as Bitterfrost, memories are long and grudges even longer.

Bryan Gruley has written an outstanding second novel in the Bitterfrost series.  His characters are believable, both the good and bad ones, and the plot will carry readers to the very last page.

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.

As both author and narrator of this book, Teresa Dovalpage returns to Havana, the city of her birth, in The Novel Detective to try to unravel a mystery concerning two deaths at her former school.  Although decades have passed, Teresa has never forgotten the horror of the day when Yoyi, another girl at the school, and Felipe, the Spanish teacher, were found dead.  The authorities called both deaths suicides, but Teresa is not alone in wondering if that was the truth.

Teresa is a novelist in New Mexico, and her friend Estrella is a DJ at a Spanish-language radio station in Miami.  Unexpectedly Estrella calls Teresa, offering her the opportunity to return to Havana and look into the deaths that occurred when both girls were students at the José Antonio Echeverria Middle School–that of Yoyi, the most beautiful girl in their class, and Felipe, the teacher who was the object of students’ and other teachers’ crushes.  Estrella tells Teresa that the police version of the deaths is that Felipe threw himself out of a window when he learned that his affair with Yoyi was going public. If convicted, he would be facing jail for the crime of having sexual relations with a minor.  Then Yoyi took poison because she couldn’t live without him.  “So very Romeo and Juliet!” Teresa says. 

Estrella promises to pay for their airfare and expenses while in Cuba, and Teresa, who always has had questions about what actually happened, agrees to the trip.  And, she thinks, it may be helpful for the novel she’s always wanted to write about the two deaths.

Estrella says that she has been in touch with Rogelio, a policeman who may be able to assist them with their surreptitious investigation.  He is not the officer who originally investigated the deaths, as that officer left Cuba on the Mariel boatlift as Teresa did, so perhaps he is coming to the case with an open mind.  At least that is what Teresa is hoping.

The novel takes place both in 2020, just before Covid made travel difficult if not impossible, and 1980, just before Teresa and her mother leave Cuba.  She has never returned to the island, and she is naturally curious about the changes that have taken place since she left.

Some things in Havana have changed while some things  haven’t.  The two women are met at the airport by Osiris, the owner of the casa particular where the women are scheduled to stay, and are taken there by the driver of an almendrón, one of the American automobiles that have been in the country since the 1950s and are featured in many photos.

The Spanish words that appear in the novel are translated seamlessly by the author without interrupting the flow of the story.  In addition, her descriptions of the city, both the changes that have taken place since Teresa and her mother left and the things that have remained the same, make the city and its inhabitants come alive for the reader.

Teresa Dovalpage has written a fascinating and impressive mystery about a country that has played an important part in American history.  Her characters are vibrant and alive, and the determination of both Teresa and Estrella to solve the mystery surrounding the deaths of Yoyi and Felipe ring true.

You can read more about the author at this website.