Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Reviews

Dr. Jenna Ramey is a forensic psychiatrist with the FBI.  She brings years of experience to her job, but she also brings something that no other agent/profiler can match–she has synesthesia, a neurological condition causing her to visualize various colors that she has learned correspond to what people are saying or how they are behaving.

A shooting is taking place in a grocery store filled with senior citizens.  But the caller to the 911 emergency line is a six-year-old girl who came to the store with her grandmother.  Young Molly Keegan is almost unbelievably calm when talking to the emergency dispatcher Yancy Vogul, but everything she tells him can be verified.  She has counted the seven shots and, sure enough, there are seven victims dead when the police and FBI agents arrive on the scene.

Yancy, Jenna’s significant other, is still recovering from the accident that left him with a prosthetic leg.  Unable to work as a field agent for the Bureau, he now is behind the desk of the local police station, grateful that he still has some connection to law enforcement but despondent about not having the career he wanted.  So, although he knows better, he’s become emotionally invested in CiCi Winthrop, a woman who has called 911 several times about her abusive husband but has refused to press charges.  So now Yancy is just going a little out of his way, he tells himself, “just to check.”  What harm could it do?

After a second interview with Molly, Jenna and her colleagues become fearful that the man they are looking for is the serial murderer they are calling the Triple Shooter.  As Jenna tells the other agents, “This isn’t a random shooter.  We’ve seen him before.”  There are differences between this shooting and the previous ones, but Jenna still believes the UNSUB (unknown subject) has committed the previous murders.  He has killed women only before, and this mass shooting included both sexes.  But there’s something about all the crimes that connect them in Jenna’s mind, although she’s not sure what that is.

There are significant pieces in Jenna’s backstory.  Her mother, Claudia, is a serial killer who has escaped from a mental hospital, and no one knows her whereabouts now.  And Jenna’s daughter’s father, Hank, was murdered a year ago, and some members are contesting the will in which he named Ayana in both his insurance policies; Hank’s mother, in particular, is demanding proof that Ayana is actually her granddaughter.

Is Jenna’s condition a neurological aberration or a gift, an additional hidden sense?  Sometimes it seems to Jenna that it’s both, helping her when she’s working a crime scene or interviewing witnesses, interfering with her work when the colors she visualizes don’t seem to make sense.  But overall she confident that synesthesia works well for her, a “sixth sense” that can help her tell truth from fiction.

Color Blind is the second novel in the series featuring Dr. Jenna Ramey.  I’m looking forward to the third one.

You can read more about Colby Marshall at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Harlan Coben has done it again, writing a mystery that will grab you from the first line and not let you go.  “The stranger didn’t shatter Adam’s world all at once”–how’s that for an attention grabber?

Adam Price is a successful lawyer in a wealthy New Jersey suburb, a place where, to quote Garrison Keillor, “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”  Adam is having a drink with friends when a stranger comes up to him and says, “You don’t have to stay with her,” and with those seven words Adam’s life as he has known it comes to an end.

The stranger tells Adam that his wife, the mother of his two sons, faked a pregnant test two years ago.  When Adam protests, the man tells him to check his Visa bill; there he’ll find the “fake a pregnancy” website that Corinne used.  Corinne is away for the day at a teachers’ conference so, after fighting the urge, Adam goes online to check out the stranger’s information.  And, sure enough, he finds the proof that his wife created a fictitious pregnancy and then “had a miscarriage.”  But why would she do that?

Heidi Dann is getting into her car after a luncheon with friends when she hears a whisper in her ear, another life-changing message to an unsuspecting person.  “There’s a website called FindYourSugarBaby.com,” she’s told.  

Dan Molino is at his son’s football game when the stranger says, “You know, don’t you?”  And all the stranger wants is ten thousand dollars not to make public the contents of the manila envelope he hands Dan.

These three strands are all important to this novel, but most of the emphasis is on Adam and what follows the stranger’s whispered remarks to him.  Adam is trying to hold his family together as best he can, but the ties are weakening.  How could anyone could have discovered her deception?  Why won’t Corinne explain the reason she did what she did?  

Harlan Coben is an absolute master of suspense.  The people in his novels are your neighbors, your friends, even you yourself, caught in a maelstrom of terror.  One day you are going about your business, with your life continuing as usual, and the next day everything is turned upside-down.   And whatever steps you take seem useless.

Harlan Coben is the winner of mystery’s trifecta–the Edgar, the Shamus, and the Anthony awards–for his novels, which have sold over sixty million copies.  Let me predict that The Stranger will add many more to that total.

You can read more about Harlan Coben at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Opera, history, and murder meet in this debut novel, and it’s an inspired meeting.  Laura Lebow’s The Figaro Murders brings readers to 18th-century Vienna, home to the acclaimed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his lesser-known librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte.

Lorenzo is Venetian-born but is forced to leave his home due to political intrigues and accusations of immoral behavior.  After traveling to several city-states he lands in Vienna, home of the newly-crowned emperor Joseph II.  There Lorenzo becomes the court librettist; as the novel opens he is completing The Marriage of Figaro, which is due to open in a week.

His official work is interrupted by a commission from his friend Johann Vogel, which he reluctantly accepts.  Johann had accepted a large loan from the housekeeper in Count Gabler’s palais in order to purchase a barber shop.  The housekeeper, Rosa Hahn, now wants repayment, and Johann is taken to debtor’s prison as he does not have the money.

He begs Lorenzo to find out who his birth mother was, finding out as an adult that he was adopted as an infant.  He believes that his biological mother may have been from a wealthy family, that he was kidnapped and given up for adoption, and that perhaps there is some money available to him to enable him to pay his debt.

Lorenzo makes a brief visit to the Gabler palais where he meets young Prince Florian, who is acting as a page to the count.  Lorenzo and Florian have a brief argument, ending with the young man fleeing the palais, and the next day two policemen arrive at Lorenzo’s home to take him into custody for the prince’s murder.

Lorenzo Da Ponte is a historical figure, although much less familiar to modern readers than is Mozart.  Born a Jew, he converted along with his brother and his father to Catholicism when his widowed father decided to marry a Catholic woman.  Lorenzo was thus able to receive a classical education from the clergy, something he would not have been able to do had he remained a Jew.  He later became a priest but led a dissolute life, incurring gambling debts and fathering two children, which led to his being exiled from Venice for fifteen years. 

The Figaro Murders is told through Lorenzo’s eyes.  He is frank about his desire for fame and money, but he is a gifted writer and wants desperately to continue working with the best composers of the era, especially Mozart.  He is easily distracted by the beautiful Countess Elizabeth Gabler but at the same time is committed to his search for his friend’s parentage.  In short, this is the true portrait of a man, with all the flaws and virtues that men possess.

Laura Lebow has written an excellent novel, with fascinating characters and a remarkable sense of history.  I look forward to Lorenzo Da Ponte’s next adventure.

You can find more information about the incredible but true life of Lorenzo Da Ponte at this web site.  You can read more about Laura Lebow at this web site.  

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Like many immigrants, Ranjit Singh came to the United States hoping for a better life.  But, also like many immigrants, he found it harder than expected to achieve that life.  A former Indian army officer and an adherent of the Sikh religion, he arrived in the U.S. with his wife and daughter, but his wife soon took their daughter and returned to India.  

Ranjit is now working as a taxi driver during the day and as a security guard in an import firm at night in order to earn enough money to rent a bigger apartment because his teenage daughter is coming to live with him on a trial basis for a year.

The combination of his two jobs, seemingly separate, lead Ranjit into trouble and danger.  On a routine taxi run he picks up the beautiful Indian actress Shabana Shah and delivers her to the famous Dakota condominium in Manhattan.  As the Dakota’s doorman opens the taxi door, he and Ranjit recognize each other from their days in the army, and Mohan Jumar invites Ranjit to come back to the building after he’s through with his night-time job.  

When Rajit returns to the Dakota, Mohan takes him up to Shabana’s condo, explaining that the movie star is out of town and that he is looking after the apartment for her.  He and Ranjit share a meal from the food in Shabana’s refrigerator and Ranjit leaves, only to be charged the following day with the brutal murder of the actress.  Her bludgeoned body was found on the floor of her apartment by her sister, and the weapon has Ranjit’s fingerprints all over it.  And the doorman Mohan is nowhere to be found.

As I’ve written in previous blogs, one of the joys of reading is discovering new countries, new cultures, new ways of life.  The Sikh religion, a monotheistic religion that is the fifth-largest in the world, was one I knew very little about.  The Last Taxi Ride explains some of their beliefs and quotes prayers that its devotees say when requesting help from their Gurus, the embodiments of Ultimate Reality.  

Sikhism is only five hundred years old, yet it has over thirty million adherents worldwide.  And although Ranjit Singh isn’t always regular in his practices, he believes in his religion and calls upon the Lord for help in difficult situation.  Unlike Western religions, with books such as the Bible or the Quran as its source, Sikh practitioners read about their religion predominantly in poems and hymns, and there are some beautiful examples in the novel.  

A. X. Ahmad’s Ranjit Singh is a fascinating protagonist, a man who has made mistakes in his life but is constantly trying to better himself and help those around him.  The Last Taxi Ride is the second in the series, and I’m on my way now to the nearest bookstore to buy the first one, The Caretaker.  

You can read more about A. X. Ahmad at this web site. 

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.  

Small-town England in the eighteenth century might seem a very different place from twentieth-century America.  But theft, murder, and greed know no boundaries in time or space.

Titus Cragg is a lawyer and the coroner in the town of Preston.  As the novel opens he receives a letter from Phillip Pimbo, a seller of gold and silver in Preston and a respected citizen.  At this time in England, banks in small towns were almost unheard of, and valuables were kept in strongboxes in people’s homes or temporarily given to pawnbrokers who had secure safes until the valuables were needed.  Phillip has boasted to Titus in the past that his strong room was as safe as “the Bastille of Paris lodged inside the Tower of London.”

But Phillip also said that most of the money deposited with him and belonging to the town wasn’t in the strong room at all.  Instead, he has loaned the money out to a source that has promised a huge return.  The town, anxious to secure as much funding as possible in order to celebrate the Preston Guild, a once-every-twenty-year festival, agreed to this, but only Phillip knows to whom the money was loaned.  Now Titus has received a letter from Phillip referring to a “matter of wrong-doing,” and Titus wonders, as he makes his way to the pawnbroker’s office, if the matter pertains to the town’s money left in his care.

When Titus arrives at Phillip’s office to discuss the letter, the man is nowhere to be seen.  A sign on his office door says that he is not to be disturbed, but at Titus’s insistence Phillip’s chief cashier knocks on the door.  

There’s no answer, and the door is locked.  A locksmith is called but is unable to open it, so finally the door is battered down.  And there is Phillip Pimbo’s body, lying across his desk, a blood-caked hole on the top of his bald head.

Titus and everyone else in the office see the case as a case of suicide, although they don’t know of any reason that the respected businessman would kill himself.  But when the town’s doctor, Luke Fidelis, appears, he isn’t so quick to make the same judgment.  If, he asks Titus, Phillip killed himself, where is the wig he always wore?

The interaction between the two main characters, Titus Cragg and Luke Fidelis, adds to the strength of the novel.  Both men are smart and dedicated to finding the truth, but narrator Titus doesn’t delve into matters as deeply as does the more scientific Luke.  There’s the slightest bit of Watson and Holmes here, but Titus is much brighter than Watson, and there’s no hero worship in Titus’s relation to Luke.  There’s just friendship, and that’s perfect.

You can read more about Robin Blake at this web site. 

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.  

The powerful Boston team of Rizzoli and Isles is back, working on a murder that spans two continents.  Jane Rizzoli, police detective, and Maura Isles, medical examiner, are brought into a case that seems bizarre from the beginning, but they have no idea of just how strange it’s going to get.

Die Again opens with a safari in Botswana, consisting of a party of three men and four women plus their tracker and guide.  This section of the novel is told by Millie Jacobson, the girlfriend of Richard Renwick, a well-known British novelist.  It was Richard’s idea to go on a safari, the better to write another of his macho adventure books.

Millie has reluctantly come along, but she’s not enjoying herself; her idea of a vacation runs to hotels and spas, not flimsy tents and outdoor “bathrooms.”  But Richard and the others are enjoying themselves until the morning that the remains of their South African guide are found.  He had been killed and eaten, probably by hyenas.

Back in Boston, Jane and her partner Barry Frost are called to the home of an internationally known hunter and taxidermist, Leon Gott.  Surrounded by the many animals he shot and mounted on his walls, Leon’s body is found hanging upside down, his insides removed.  Not a view for the faint of heart.

When Dr. Maura Isles arrives, one look at the eviscerated body tells her something is seriously wrong besides the obvious fact that Leon is dead.  Searching the garage she finds remains, including two hearts (one human, one animal) and two complete sets of lungs.  Leon had received threats in the past, but those had been verbal, never physical.  His wife and only son were dead, and he wasn’t close to any of his neighbors, so no one seems to have a clue what brought about his brutal death.

In addition to working on Leon’s murder, Jane also is trying to help her mother get through a difficult time.  Several years earlier, Jane’s father left his wife for another woman.  Some time later, Jane’s mother fell in love with another man, and they got engaged.  Now her husband wants to return home and let bygones be bygones.  Jane’s brothers are in favor of this and want their parents to reconcile.  It’s obvious to Jane that her mother is very unhappy with the situation, but she’s having a hard time going against her husband and their sons.

Maura is still reeling from the end of her romance with Daniel Brophy, a Catholic priest.  Even though Maura knew that their relationship couldn’t end well, she continues to mourn the loss of the man she loves.

Tess Gerritsen has written another spellbinding novel.  Readers of previous novels in the series and viewers of the television show, now in its sixth season, will want to read Die Again to see Rizzoli and Isles together once more.

You can read more about Tess Gerritsen at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Ice Shear is M. P. Cooley’s debut novel, and it’s terrific.  June Lyons is a former FBI agent, now a police officer, who has come back to live in the upstate New York town where she was born, Hopewell Falls.  If you change the second syllable of the first word to less, you have a description of this small town; it has fallen on hard times without much hope for the future.

June is living with her young daughter, Lucy, and her father, a retired detective on the Hopewell Falls’ police force.  June’s husband, Kevin, also a former FBI agent, died three years ago, prompting her return home. 

It’s a place where murder is rare, perhaps one per year, but today is the day for the body of Danielle Brouillette, daughter of the town’s representative to the U.S. Congress, to be found on the frozen banks of the Mohawk River.  At first glance it looks as if Danielle might have fallen from the cliffs above the river, but a closer examination shows that she was dead before hitting the ice spike that tore her body apart.

Danielle was a beautiful, bright, and troubled young woman.  Exceedingly headstrong, she was expelled from college in California for unacceptable behavior and substance abuse issues.  She didn’t get in touch with her parents for several months after this, and when she did it was to turn up on their doorstep with her new husband.  Her well-to-do and politically powerful parents refused to accept him, and so the estrangement between Danielle and her parents continued.

Danielle’s husband, Marty Jelickson, is a former member of the outlaw motorcycle gang the Abominations.  Marty’s father, Zeke, is the head of the gang, and Marty’s younger brother Ray is also a member.  Now the Abominations, including Marty’s parents, are headed to Hopewell Falls for Danielle’s funeral, and June is certain there will be a major confrontation between the two sets of parents.

Ms. Cooley draws a wonderful picture of this small New York town, financially devastated by the Great Recession.  The downtown is nearly nonexistent, jobs are few and menial, and young people move out as soon as they can.  So why was Danielle so eager to leave California and return home?

The characters are extremely well-drawn.  June has the problems of most single mothers, not enough time with her child and stress at work.  There’s tension between the police force, the district attorney Jerry Defoe, and the FBI, which has been called to join the investigation since the victim was the daughter of a congresswoman. 

The FBI agent sent to assist the police is Hale Bascom, who was a close friend of June’s and Kevin’s until the latter got cancer; then he disappeared from their lives.  June hasn’t spoken to or seen Hale since before Kevin’s death, and she has bitter feelings toward him now.

Ice Shear marks the beginning, I hope, of a new series.  You can read more about M. P. Cooley at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

There must be something wonderful in the state of Maine to product such amazing mystery authors.  I’ve blogged about books written by Tess Gerritsen, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Paul Doiron, and Gerry Boyle, and now I’m adding D. A. Keeley to my list.

Bitter Crossing introduces Peyton Cote, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, recently back from her posting in Texas to her home state of Maine.  Although there is more action in El Paso than in tiny Garrett, it doesn’t take long after Peyton’s return for things to start happening in this part of Aroostook County, across from New Brunswick, Canada.  She receives a tip that a major shipment of marijuana is being dropped in an open area in the forest, and when she goes there she sees a bundle in the middle of the field.  But when she opens the package, there’s a baby girl inside, barely alive.

Peyton requested the transfer to her hometown mainly for personal reasons.  She wants her seven-year-old son to have more contact with his father, although she has doubts about Jeff’s commitment to Tommy.  Her ex is great at promises to Tommy, promises he rarely keeps.  Jeff would like to reconcile with Peyton, and she’s torn between wanting to have as little as possible to do with him and feeling that their son needs his father in his life.

Life isn’t easy in this northern part of Maine, and times are bad financially.  Years of hard work in the potato fields, once the mainstay of Aroostook County, can be gone in a flash when a blight decimates the harvest.  It’s no wonder that some members of Peyton’s generation look for easier ways to make money, including buying and selling drugs.

Peyton is using Kenny Radke, a former schoolmate, as a snitch.  Under a not-so-subtle threat of reporting to his parole officer that she found drugs in his car, she gets Kenny to tell her about the drug drop.  But now that there were no drugs found in the forest, only the infant whose presence doesn’t come under Border Patrol jurisdiction, an angry Peyton talks to Kenny again.  This time she’s trying to find out where Kenny’s tip came from, and he reluctantly gives her the scant information he has about a tall white guy he played poker with and the names of two locals who were at the game.

Peyton is also trying to help her younger sister, Elise, with her marital issues.  Elise got married young to her college professor, a man who was later convicted of two drug-related felonies.  He’s gone from job to job, with infidelities along the way, and now Elise is keeping her own secret from Peyton. 

Bitter Crossing is a terrific novel, filled both with an exciting plot and believable characters.  Peyton Cote is a strong woman, devoted to her family and her job.  The problem is, sometimes it seems almost impossible to balance the two.  This is a mystery that will keep you reading until the last page.

You can read more about D. A. Kelley at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Linda Wallheim is a typical Mormon wife and mother.  Her husband Kurt is the bishop of a ward, the community’s leader, and Linda is a stay-at-home wife, with the youngest of their five sons about to graduate from high school.  She is a devoted member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, although a questioning one, and events in their small Utah town are going to give her more reasons to question than she ever had before.

An early morning visit by a member of their ward, Jared Helm, and his young daughter Kelly brings the news that Jared’s wife has left their home.  He claims that he doesn’t know where Carrie is, only that she left a note saying that she wasn’t going to return.  Jared has come to see the bishop to get his reassurance that he hasn’t done anything wrong and that the church is behind him.

Then Carrie’s parents, Judy and Aaron Weston, come to the bishop for help.  They are certain, they say, that Jared is behind Carrie’s disappearance and possibly her death.  They tell Linda and Kurt that Carrie was desperately afraid of her husband, that he had threatened and abused her, keeping her away from her parents. 

They have gone to the police but were told that Carrie wasn’t gone long enough to declare her a missing person.  Linda suggests calling a press conference and asking for the public’s help, and the Westons agree to do that.  In the meantime, Linda has formed a strong attachment with five-year-old Kelly, and she is upset and disturbed when Jared’s father moves into Jared’s house and seems reluctant to let Linda spend any time with his granddaughter.

At the same time, the Wallheims’ neighbor, Tobias Torstensen, is very ill but refusing to go to the hospital for treatment despite entreaties from his wife Anna.  Anna is his second wife, the stepmother of his two sons.  And when Tobias dies shortly afterwards, he leaves a number of unanswered questions about his first wife and the plans for his burial.

Mette Ivie Harrison has written a fine novel, interspersing doctrines of the Mormon church with the stories of the Helms and the Torstensens.  Explanations are needed, because much of the novel depends on understanding the rules of the church, many of which are different from other Christian sects. 

As the bishop’s wife Linda Wallheim has no direct power, but she tries to be aware of issues surrounding her.  She is angry at herself for not seeing the trouble between Carrie and Jared Helm, thinking she might have been able to prevent the young wife from running away, and she is concerned about her own intense interest in young Kelly.  Is it because she is worried about the type of father and grandfather the girl has or is it because in Kelly she sees the child she might have had if her only daughter had not been stillborn?

The Bishop’s Wife is a fascinating look into a religion unfamiliar to many of us.  Linda Wallheim’s doubts and concerns are real, as are the sudden, strong feeling she gets about people, either pro or con.  She is sure of herself one minute, doubting herself the next.  She is a very human character.

You can read more about Mette Ivie Harrison at this web site. 

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site. 

I had a habit when I was a child–if a book was too suspenseful, I would turn to the last page to see how it ended.  Reading A String of Beads brought back that memory because I had to stop myself from doing it again.  Thomas Perry knows how to write a novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

Jane Whitefield, born of a white mother and a Seneca Indian father, is now a doctor’s wife, ostensibly living a quiet life as a volunteer teacher of the Seneca language and a fund-raiser for her husband’s hospital in New York State.  But all of her adult life she has had a secret–she helps innocent people who are in danger leave their current lives and begin again with new names, new jobs, new habits.  She’s best described as a guide to a new life.  When she married Dr. Carey McKinnon she promised to give up that part of her life, but she keeps being drawn back into it when she knows someone is in danger.

In A String of Beads, Jane is approached by the eight clan mothers of the various branches of her tribe.  Jane’s activities have been known to the mothers for some time, they tell her, but there hasn’t been a reason until this moment for them to ask for her help.  The string of beads in the title is called by the Senecas ote-ko-a.  The giving of the ote-ko-a symbolizes the mothers’ request for Jane to find one of their tribe members; her acceptance of the beads is her agreement to do so.  

Jimmy Sanders, a childhood friend of Jane’s, is being sought by the police as a suspect in a murder.  All the mothers agree with Jane that Jimmy could never have killed a man, but foolishly he has run away, and they are asking Jane to find him.  She sets out the following morning to retrace the trip that she and Jimmy took when they were teenagers, thinking that in his desire to evade the police he may have have gone back to that familiar trail; in fact she finds him there.

However, the police aren’t the only ones searching for Jimmy, and in fact they aren’t the most dangerous ones.  The man who is the murderer and who set Jimmy up for the crime is anxious for Jimmy to be found and jailed, or else simply killed.  The question before Jane and Jimmy is why has someone gone to so much trouble to incriminate him.   

A String of Beads is the eighth Jane Whitefield novel.  As with all series mysteries, we know that the protagonist will survive, but the author must make us care that she does so.  With Jane, the reader is in awe of her cleverness and determination to protect her charge from whomever is trying to kill him.  In this book, the childhood that Jane and Jimmy shared makes her even more determined to keep him safe and find out who is behind the murder and why Jimmy was chosen to be the “fall guy.”

Thomas Perry will keep you turning the pages ever more quickly with his inspiring heroine and brilliant plot.  This is another terrific mystery from the author.  He never disappoints.

You can read more about Thomas Perry at this web site. 

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site. 

I’m delighted to let you know that there’s a fourth John Madden mystery that has just been published.  Originally billed as a trilogy extending from World War I to World War II, Rennie Airth’s new novel takes place two years after World War II ends.

What becomes a series of seemingly unrelated murders begins, for John, with the death of Oswald Gibson, a meek and unassuming man who is shot while fishing near his home.  Oswald is a man who has spent his life trying not to upset or confront people, according to all those who knew him, including his brother.  He took “turn the other cheek” to the extreme, so why would someone kill him?

The second inexplicable thing about the death is the unfinished letter found in his desk.  It was written to the commissioner of Scotland Yard, saying that Oswald was trying to get in touch with someone who had worked at the Yard a long time ago, someone named John Madden.  Why did Oswald start writing the letter, only to leave it unfinished and unsent?

As John recounts the story of Oswald’s murder to his wife Helen, she says, “It’s obvious there’s been a mistake.  I don’t believe you two ever met.”  John agrees, but he responds, “But if I can’t remember his name, how is it that he knows mine?”

John Madden is certain he never heard of or met Oswald.  Nor did he know the man who turned out to have been the first victim, a Scottish doctor shot in his office several weeks before Oswald’s death.

When we first met John Madden in River of Darkness, it was just after the end of the Great War, in which he had served.  He suffered both physically and emotionally during the war, the latter because of the deaths of his wife and child.  But it is also in that novel that he meets and falls in love with Dr. Helen Blackwell, and together they begin a new chapter in their lives.

There is no war that does not leave its scars on both soldiers and civilians.  What John and the detectives at Scotland Yard are finding is that those scars can be so deep that the passing of years, even decades, doesn’t heal them.  And that’s when murder steps in.

Rennie Airth has created a wonderful protagonist in John Madden, a man of integrity and courage.  His ability is legendary at the Yard and has not diminished with his retirement, and it is with a sense of relief that his former colleagues welcome him into the investigation of these two murders.  John now has reached middle age, but his skills are still as apparent as they were when we first met him nearly three decades earlier.

You can read more about Rennie Airth at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

The new, all-woman Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & DiNuncio is doing well, with an ever-increasing client base.  The two partners, Bennie Rosato and Mary DiNuncio, are excited about the new addition to this list, Bendaflex, but the firm’s associate, Judy Carrier, is less than happy. 

Bendaflex is a firm that manufactures asbestos, and it has just lost a liabilities case involving hundreds of their former workers.  Judy is upset that Bennie has agreed to take on this client, and she’s horrified to learn that she will be the attorney trying the cases, attempting to have Bendaflex pay as little as possible both to the employees who were injured by exposure to the company’s product and to the families of those who died because of it.

In addition, a family medical issue is playing out.  Judy has always been extremely close to her mother’s sister, her Aunt Barb, probably closer than she is to her own mother.  So she is devastated to learn that her aunt has been diagnosed with stage II breast cancer.   Barb has kept her illness from her sister and niece in the hope that chemotherapy would eradicate the cancer cells, but some remain. 

Now she has to tell them that she will undergo a mastectomy in two days.  Barb’s sister Delia, Judy’s mother, wants to stay in Philadelphia to care for her, but Barb has already arranged for a close friend to help her, and she introduces Judy and Delia to Iris Juarez.

Iris entered the United States illegally from Mexico years ago.  The two women met when Iris became the housekeeper when Barb’s husband was ill.  They share a love of gardening, and Barb is confident that having Iris stay with her while she’s recuperating is a win-win for everyone; she will pay Iris, who is in a low-paying job, for her time and she will enjoy having Iris’ company and help. 

Delia is angry that her sister would prefer Iris to her.  Then Iris gets a phone call which obviously upsets her, and she says she needs to leave for work.  Several hours later police arrive at Barb’s house with the devastating news that Iris has been found dead in her car, apparently of a heart attack.

Betrayed covers numerous issues that confront the single, professional woman.  One is the feeling of being torn in so many directions, as Judy wants to spend time with her aunt but feels enormous pressure to be available for her clients.  Second is how to handle the Bendaflex situation, since Bennie is adamant, despite Judy’s protests, about not refusing this work.   Third is Judy’s relationship with Frank, a man she cares for and who loves her.  She is beginning to wonder if their very different outlooks on and approaches to life can ever be reconciled.

Lisa Scottoline has written books about each member of the law firm, and each novel is a portrait of its protagonist.  These women are most definitely not carbon copies of each other; rather, each has a distinctive personality and brings both strengths and weaknesses to the firm and to her own life.  Betrayed is a wonderful addition to Ms. Scottoline’s body of work.

You can read more about Lisa Scottoline at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Portland, Maine police detective Joe Burgess is feeling his age.  It’s not simply the long hours and his belief that the cops can never catch up with the criminals, it’s his new-found family responsibilities and his awareness of the racial and religious tensions that are evident since people from Somalia and the Sudan have moved into the city.

As Joe is sitting in his police car, enjoying a brief moment of quiet, a young boy runs up to the car shouting, “Fire at the mosque and someone’s in there.”  Joe rushes to the building and finds, by breaking into a locked closet, a teenage girl holding an infant.  With the help of a bystander, Joe is able to get the girl and baby out of the building alive, but the baby dies by the time he arrives at the hospital.

When Joe goes to the house of the mosque’s leader, Imam Muhamud Ibrahim, he is surprised by the lack of interest shown by the clergyman and his followers about the fire.  Although Joe understands that the violent political history of Somalia has made these immigrants fearful and distrustful of the police, he is still taken aback by the lack of cooperation he’s receiving.  No one will admit to knowing anything about the girl and the infant.

Maine’s overall population is 95 percent white, 85 percent white in Portland.  The influx of African refugees, mainly from the Sudan and Somalia, has brought racial and cultural tensions to a high point.   As with other earlier immigrant groups, the Sudanese and Somalis have brought tribal ties and tribal conflicts with them, and their manner of dress and worship mark them as culturally different from the majority of Mainers.  None of this is helping Joe or his fellow officers find out who is behind the mosque’s fire. 

The girl in the hospital is not Somali or Sudanese, although it looks as if the baby she was holding was part African.  The girl has not spoken a word since she was rescued from the fire, and it is obvious that she is terrified of something or someone.  That she has reason to be is made clear when an attempt is made to abduct her from her hospital room.

In this, the fourth novel in the Joe Burgess series, Kate Flora has portrayed her protagonist and his colleagues in a state of flux.  Joe is not the only one with family/personal issues that are intruding on his police performance.   Stan Perry is even more argumentative than usual, possibly because his girlfriend has just announced that she is pregnant, unnerving news for a man who has no desire to be a father.   Terry Kyle is trying to balance his work schedule with being the sole caregiver for his children and fearful that any misstep might mean that his mentally ill ex-wife could get custody.

Kate Flora has written a deeply moving mystery of a police force and a city as a whole grappling with newcomers from a very different place.  The characters are extremely well-written, realistic and believable, and the plot rings all too true in today’s complex world.

You can read more about Kate Flora at this web site.

 Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site. 

War has a long reach, way past the time of its supposed end.  This is made abundantly clear in Val McDermid’s latest mystery, The Skeleton Road.

Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie, head of the Historic Cases Unit in Edinburgh, is familiar with the Balkans War as something that happened years ago.  That much is true, since the war ended in 1995, but the memories of those who lived through the murders, rapes, and ethnic cleansings are still vivid.

A surveyor examining the roof of a building scheduled for demolition in Edinburgh finds a human skull hidden in a turret.  It becomes a case for the police when a bullet hole is discovered in the middle of the remains and a case for the HCU (what Americans call cold cases units) because forensic examination dates the skull as having been on the roof for about seven or eight years.

Maggie Blake is a professor of geopolitics at Oxford, an internationally known expert on the Balkans War.   She was teaching in Dubrovnik when she met Colonel Dimitar Petrovic, nicknamed Mitja, of the Croatian Army.  The two became lovers and spent the beginning of the war together in Dubrovnik, he doing intelligence work and she continuing to teach and write, until the situation in the city became so dangerous that he made her leave.  After the war they lived together in Oxford, until one day Mitja left their apartment and never returned.

Then the reader is introduced to two men working at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.  Alan Macanespie and Theo Proctor haven’t been overly diligent in doing their jobs, but their new boss is about to change that.  Wilson Cagney knows that the tribunal is about to wind up its work, and he wants to clear up all the loose ends.

What is apparent to Wilson is that there were too many cases where a suspected war criminal was about to be captured and tried when the suspect was assassinated.  Whether the killer is a mole in the tribunal or someone from the war seeking personal vengeance, Wilson doesn’t care.  He wants the assassin found before the tribunal is history.

Val McDermid weaves these three seemingly disparate stories into a totally cohesive novel.  The country formerly called Yugoslavia had a long and difficult history, with territories from the former Austro-Hungarian empire being joined, forcibly or otherwise, by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.  The country was ruled by the fascists during World War II, then by the communists after the war.  But even seventy years after the end of the Second World War, memories of who was on what side linger, and the Croats and the Serbs remember particularly well.  And all roads seem to lead to the skull in Edinburgh.

The Skeleton Road is a wonderfully engaging read, combining not only an excellent plot but an important history lesson skillfully woven into the story.  The characters and their motivations are real, and the reader will be drawn into this novel from the beginning and will stay involved until the very last page.

You can read more about Val McDermid at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

North of Boston is an excellent title for Elisabeth Elo’s debut mystery novel.  But it could also be called Here, There, and Everywhere because the story ranges from Boston to Florida to Labrador.  It’s a terrific, fast ride that will leave the reader breathless.

Pirio Kasparav has just survived four hours in the freezing waters of Boston harbor after a collision between her friend’s lobster boat and a huge freighter/tanker.  Both she and the lobster boat’s owner, Ned Rizzo, are thrown into the water, but while Pirio survives, Ned’s body is never found, even after hours of searching by the Coast Guard.

Now Pirio has become a sort of instant mini-celebrity due to her survival in water with temperature no human “should” have been able to endure.  She doesn’t have any explanation for why her body didn’t shut down, but the Navy is interested and wants to fly her down to Florida for a series of physical and mental tests.  Pirio thinks she had enough tests as a defiant adolescent to last a lifetime, but a weekend in sunny Florida sounds too good to miss.

In the meantime, there is Ned’s funeral to deal with, along with the alcoholism of Pirio’s best friend Thomasina, the mother of Noah, the ten-year-old child resulting from the brief romance of Thomasina and Ned.  With a history of drugs and alcohol, Thomasina is certainly not the ideal mother, and Pirio is reluctantly forced to pick up the slack when her friend is put in jail overnight, leaving Noah on his own.

After an interview with a commander from the Coast Guard, Pirio believes that the authorities are too willing to call the collision an accident and investigate no further.   Angry and frustrated by the government’s lack of concern, Pirio decides to look into the matter herself.  “Because if a child’s parent has to be killed in a freak accident, that child deserves to see an aftermath of concern and accountability,” she thinks.  We empathize as Pirio is drawn into the investigation, tracking down how Ned became the owner of the lobster boat immediately after quitting his job at Ocean Catch, as she puts herself in danger while trying to find the answers to give to Noah.

Elisabeth Elo has surrounded Pirio with a group of fascinating characters.  Thomasina, whom Pirio has known since they were adolescents in boarding school together, is a mess–a woman with a genius  I.Q. who drinks, takes drugs, and is available for nearly any man who is close by; Noah, her gifted son, bereft by his father’s death and wondering how the collision between his father’s lobster boat and the never-found freighter/tanker could have happened; the mysterious “Larry Wozniack,” who crashes Ned’s funeral, pretending to have been a friend of the deceased; and Johnny O, a friend and co-worker with Ned at Ocean Catch and formerly Pirio’s lover.  

North of Boston is an exciting read, a novel that’s hard to put down.  In this, the author’s first novel, she has introduced a charismatic heroine to the Boston mystery scene.

You can read more about Elisabeth Elo at this web site. 

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.