Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Reviews

The Armenian-American community in Philadelphia is centered around Cavanaugh Street.  The Armenian Apostolic Church is located there, home to Father Tibor Kasparian.  Cavanaugh Street is home as well to Gregor Demarkian, a former FBI agent who is now a consultant to police departments across the country.

Father Tibor has been the priest of the church for many years, and he is considered by all to be cultured, intelligent, and extremely compassionate.  So how did it come to be that this man has been arrested, accused of murder in the first degree?

Fighting Chance, the title of Jane Haddam’s latest mystery, is exactly what Father Tibor is not giving himself.  He was found in the office of Judge Martha Handling, covered in her blood.  Even worse, someone took a video of the cleric that seems to show him repeatedly beating on the judge’s head with a hammer.  Why would he have done that, and who could have taken that video?

Judge Handling was not a popular or respected member of the judiciary.  Recently the state of Pennsylvania had turned its prison system over to a private firm, and it is to that firm’s benefit to fill every prison bed since they receive a daily stipend for each occupied one.  It was well known that Ms. Handling’s sentences for juveniles was so out of line with her those of her colleagues that many people thought she was corrupt and being paid to give harsh prison terms. 

The state police had begun an investigation into the judge’s conduct, but the case wasn’t ready to be presented to the district attorney’s office.  In the meantime, Ms. Handling continued to send juveniles to serve the longest possible time for the most minor crimes, where other judges would have looked for alternatives in hopes that the offenders could be rehabilitated outside of prison.

The Armenian community in Philadelphia is an extremely close-knit one.  All of its members are stunned by the accusation that their priest murdered a judge and equally stunned by the fact that he refuses to defend himself.  More than that, he refuses to speak to anyone at all, even his close friend Gregor Demarkian. 

After refusing the services of an attorney who is a member of his church and refusing to talk to Gregor, Father Tibor is brought to court to answer the charge of capital murder.  After once again refusing to be represented by any counsel, the priest is asked by a rather annoyed judge to enter his plea. 

“If it please the court,” Father Tibor says, “I plead nolo contendere.”

Fighting Chance is the twenty-ninth novel featuring Gregor Demarkian.  As with any long-running series, there is a lot of backstory, and readers may find it worthwhile to return, if not to the beginning of the series, at least to one or two earlier books.  That being said, Ms. Haddam’s latest can stand alone because the novel is so well-written, each of its characters so clearly described. 

Something that I always enjoy in books about minorities, whether they be religious, cultural, or ethnic minorities, is learning about their customs and beliefs.  Ms. Haddam, herself an American of Armenian descent, does a wonderful job in giving the reader a sense of this community–the church, the food, the importance of family life–it is all there.

You can read more about Jane Haddam at this web site. 

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

The year is 1645, three years into The English Civil War (1642-1651).  The city of York has fallen into the hands of the Puritans, led by Oliver Cromwell; religious fanaticism is well underway.  Into the city comes Hezekiah Ward, preaching the Puritan doctrine to its citizens, calling fire and brimstone down on those who deviate from the doctrines of the Godly Party.  At this time, all of England was Christian; Jews had been expelled in 1290 and would not return until 1657, and there were no Muslims in the country.

Shortly after Hezekiah’s entry into York, a series of gruesome murders targeting prostitutes and their clients begins.  Lady Bridget Hodgson, a wealthy gentlewoman and landowner, has been a midwife for some years.  She does not discriminate between the high-born ladies of the city and its unfortunate whores, so she is not surprised by a summons from her brother-in-law Edward to examine the body of a murdered prostitute.  Upon entering the woman’s home, Bridget and her assistant, Martha Hawkins, are horrified to see the bloody bodies of a woman they know as a harlot and an unknown man lying across her.

As she examines the bodies Bridget notices a crumpled bit of paper clutched tightly in the woman’s hand and a similar one in the man’s hand, with the numbers of chapters and verses from the Bible written on each.  Examining her Bible when she returns home, Bridget reads the two verses, one from Isiah concerning whores and one from Revelation urging repentance.  Martha voices the thought that both women have:  “So the murderer thinks he is doing God’s work?”

It seems as if each sermon by Hezekiah Ward is followed by a murder, although the methods vary.  And Lady Bridget is getting the feeling that her brother-in-law Edward, whom she greatly admires, is perhaps none-too-eager for her to look deeply into the crimes, preferring that his son Joseph, one of the town’s constables, investigate.  But given Joseph’s strong ties to the Puritans, Bridget is not certain that he can be trusted.

Bridget’s favorite nephew is Joseph’s younger brother Will.  Just as Will is Bridget’s favorite, Joseph is their father’s, and this of course leads to bad feelings and jealousy between the two brothers. 

Lady Bridget was widowed twice, bore two children who died young, and when this novel (the second in the series) opens, she owns a large house and is in possession of various lands and a good deal of money.  She occupies an exalted place in York’s society, but her favored position doesn’t stop her from being compassionate toward the many townspeople who are less fortunate than she is, especially toward the women she sees who have been forced by social and economic circumstances into selling their bodies.

The Harlot’s Tale is an exciting read that takes the reader into what is known as the Early Modern Period of history.  Lady Bridget is a wonderful heroine who has brains and convictions but still is hampered by society’s views on the proper place of women.  What allows her to speak her mind relatively freely are the facts of her own aristocratic birth and the high position that her late husband’s brother holds.  She is a woman to be admired and to be followed (hopefully) in future novels in this excellent series.

Sam Thomas is a historian with a Ph.D. in history with a focus on Reformation England.  You can read more about him at this web site.

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

Gabriel Allon is a man with two very different but equally intriguing professions.  On one hand he is a master art restorer, bringing paintings back to their original brilliance through careful cleaning and repainting.  On the other he is a spy in the Israeli intelligence service and next in line to become its head.

The novel opens with a historical fact.  In October of 1969, the revered and priceless Caravaggio painting, Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, was stolen from a church in Palermo, Italy.  Rumor has it that the Mafia was behind the theft, although that was never proven.  The masterpiece remains missing to this day.

Gabriel is restoring another Italian work, Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints, in a church in Verona when he is ordered to meet with the chief officer of the carabinieri, the Italian national military force which polices both military and citizen populations.  General Ferrari explains that he has called Gabriel because a friend of Gabriel’s, art gallery owner Julian Isherwood, has discovered the body of an Englishman in a Venetian mansion.  The murdered man, both tortured and hanged, was a man with a shady background.  In the general’s words, he had “a reputation for acquiring paintings that were not actually for sale.”

Reminding Gabriel that the carabinieri were holding Julian for questioning since he had found the body, the general tells Gabriel he is willing to let Julian return to England on the condition that Gabriel finds out who killed Jack Bradshaw and finds what the murderer was looking for.   And so a deal is struck.

Under this pressure, Gabriel leaves his pregnant wife Chiara and his restoration work on Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints to solve the crimes of murder and art theft.  Chiara too is an Israeli agent, but Gabriel refuses to let her accompany him on his search.  His first wife and their son were killed years ago by a car bomb, and Gabriel is determined to leave Chiara and their unborn twins in Venice under the protection of her family and the Italian police.

Silva’s novel takes the reader on a voyage through numerous countries–Italy, France, England, Holland, Switzerland, and Israel.  Gabriel enlists the help of art thieves, spies, mercenaries, and bankers, all in an effort to find the Caravaggio and Jack Bradshaw’s killer. 

The novel is so current that it might have been written today.  Corruption, double-dealing, murder–they are in the headlines every day, and the joining of political ambition and dirty money in The Heist is a dangerous combination.  Gabriel Allon is resourceful, talented, and compassionate–the latter not always a trait that one would expect to find in a spy.  But Gabriel is a three-dimensional man, a fact that makes Daniel Silva’s series worth reading.

You can read more about Daniel Silva at this web site.   

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

It’s been three years in real time since the publication of Resurrection Day, but only a week has passed in fictional time for Lewis Cole.  In that novel, a protest against the nuclear plant in Lewis’ adopted home town of Tyler, New Hampshire turned violent, leaving his best friend and town police officer Diane Woods in a coma.  Lewis saw the brutal attack and is determined to bring the killer to justice, or at least his idea of justice, in Fatal Harbor.

The only survivor of a project gone tragically wrong when he worked for the Department of Defense, Lewis has no faith that the any government agency wants to find the killer.  Every step he takes convinces him that he is endangering his own life and the life of his friend, Felix Tinios, by pursuing the man who nearly killed Diane and that the government is not on his side.  But Lewis won’t stop his investigation and pursuit.  He knows who the killer is, he just has to find him.

Lewis and Felix follow the trail to Boston University where faculty member Heywood Knowlton is known to be sympathetic to the Nuclear Freedom Front, the group behind the protest.  Posing as a free-lance journalist writing a story about the plant and the violent demonstration that took place there, Lewis talks to the professor but Heywood tells him in no uncertain terms that he won’t cooperate.  To Heywood, the man Lewis is looking for is a “true believer, a fighter for the people….”  And if a police officer was injured or killed, that’s the “price of progress.”

As Lewis exits the university building, he sees Felix talking to two men.  As Felix walks away from the men, they begin shouting at him, and he sees one of them reach under his coat for a weapon.  Felix fires first, the men fall, and he drives away. 

Picking up Lewis later in the day, Felix explains that the two men had said they were FBI agents.  Felix knows, from past experience, that they were merely impersonating federal agents and that the whole scene was a setup to get him into their SUV.   The next day the Boston Globe carries a very short paragraph reporting the incident.  The authorities call it a false alarm, a film shoot gone wrong.  When Lewis reads this, he is more convinced than ever that the only justice Diane will ever receive has to come from him.

And when Lewis is near the end of his journey and is talking again to the university professor, Heywood Knowlton, Heywood is stunned.  “A friend?  You’re doing this for a friend…Not even a family member…a friend….”  But to Lewis, a friend is the most important thing there is.

Brendan DuBois has written another page-turning novel.  Lewis Cole comes across as a real person, dealing with a difficult past and a traumatic present.  Regardless of the dangers, he continues his search for the killer.  Lewis’ friendships are vital to him, and a promise is sacred.

To completely appreciate this excellent book, I strongly suggest reading Resurrection Day first; it will make Fatal Harbor more understandable and even more enjoyable.

You can read more about Brendan DuBois at this web site.

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

For the admirers of all things Québécois, there’s good news for your end-of-summer reading.  Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is back!

Actually, he’s retired Chief Inspector Gamache now.  After a series of incidents that nearly took his life, he has left the force, and now he and his wife, Reine-Marie, are living in the village of Three Pines, the scene of many of his earlier cases.  Now it is his wish to live in there quietly and enjoy the company of his wife and the many friends they’ve made in the community over the years.

But, bien entendu, this is not to be.  Clara Morrow, one of  Armand’s neighbors, very hesitantly comes to him with a problem.  A little over a year ago she and her husband, Peter, decided on a trial separation.  

All through the years of their marriage Peter had been the famous one, a painter of renown throughout Canada.  More recently, however, Clara’s paintings have been recognized for their originality and brilliance, and while her star rose, Peter’s fell.  He has not dealt well with this, not used to being the also-ran in their relationship, and finally Clara asked him to leave their home.  

As Clara tells Armand and his son-in-law, police detective Jean-Guy Beauvoir, at last she had recognized something that was long obvious to their friends.  “He never understood my art.  He tolerated it.  What he couldn’t tolerate was my success.”

The plan was for Peter to return, or at least contact Clara, a year from the date he left to discuss the state of their relationship.  But that date came and went with no word from him.  And now, several weeks later, she has finally worked up enough courage to ask Armand for his help.

Clara has no idea where her husband has gone, but she is convinced that wherever he is, he is painting.  Joined by Armand, Jean-Guy, and her closest friend, Myrna, Clara begins to search for her husband.

Reading The Long Way Home is, in fact, like going home for readers familiar with this series.  Now that Armand and Reine-Marie are finally ensconced in their new home, which actually is the oldest house in the village, they are with their friends on a daily basis. 

Besides Clara, there is Myrna, a psychologist and owner of the village bookstore; Olivier and Gabri, the gay couple who own a bistro in Three Pines; and Ruth, the prize-winning poet with a foul mouth and a duck who appears to speak only vulgarities.  And on the weekends, the Gamaches’ newly-married daughter, Annie, often arrives with her husband, Jean-Guy, Armand’s former colleague and still his close friend. 

Armand Gamache is a good man, struggling with his own demons after nearly losing his life and being unfairly vilified by a colleague during his tenure as chief inspector of homicide in the Sûreté du Québec.  He is working hard to banish these demons, not wanting to go again into any situations that might bring them to the forefront of his thoughts.  But when Clara asks him for help, he cannot refuse.

As with all of Louise Penny’s novels, the characters, with their virtues and flaws, are very, very real.  Watching them age and grow, the reader may see some of her/himself in some or all of them.  This trip back to Three Pines is suspenseful, wonderful, and sad.

You can read more about Louise Penny at this web site.

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

After each book I read by Laura Lippman, I’m reminded why she’s one of my favorite authors.  After I’m Gone has only reinforced my feeling.

Some people have incredible charisma, and Felix Brewer was one of those.  Not especially good-looking, not college-educated, he nevertheless charmed everyone he met and was able to parlay this into life with a beautiful wife, three lovely daughters, a large house in Baltimore, and a significant presence in the city’s Jewish and philanthropic communities.  However, he always wanted more.

But somehow, in After I’m Gone, things have gone awry.  Felix is hiding in a horse van, hoping not to be stopped by the police, because he’s on his way out of the country to avoid a fifteen year prison sentence.  He’s with his mistress, Julie Saxony, but he has no intention of taking her with him, nor is he taking his wife and children.  It’s July 4, 1976.

Bambi, Felix’s wife, has known almost from the beginning of their life together that not everything Felix did was legal.  It wasn’t exactly illegal, or at least not all of it, but it was slippery.  “People will gossip.  But we’ll be so respectable–so rich–that no one will be able to afford to look down on us,”  he tells her.  Bambi deals with that, just as she deals with knowing that Felix is unfaithful, consoling herself with the thought that he loves her best. 

Sandy Sanchez is the instrument that will open up this thirty-five-year-old history.  He’s a former police detective in Baltimore, working as a consultant on cold cases for the force.  Going through some old files, he comes across a photo of Julie, Felix’s girlfriend at the time he disappeared.  Julie vanished ten years after Felix did, but her body was not discovered for another fifteen years.  Her murder has never been solved, so Sandy decides it’s worth a closer look.

In addition to following Sandy’s pursuit of Julie’s killer, over the years we are introduced to the oldest Brewer daughter, Linda, on the night of the 1980 presidential election; Rachel, the middle daughter, caught in an unhappy marriage with a cheating husband; and Michelle, the spoiled youngest child, who never knew her father and perhaps misses him the most.

And there’s the beautiful Bambi, still turning heads at forty, fifty, sixty.  Too proud to ever let friends know how dire her financial situation really is, she manages from month to month, holding her breath as the bills pile up. 

The lives of everyone in the book have been touched both by the presence of Felix Brewer and by his absence.  It’s fascinating to watch the dynamics so many years after he leaves.  It’s as if his energy and personality are still vibrating nearly four decades later.  It’s not simply that his family and friends are still missing him, although they are.  It’s also that their lives are so different than they would have been if he had not left. 

After I’m Gone joins all the other novels by Laura Lippman as a wonderful read.  The characters are real, as are their reactions to what is happening to them.  The plot is outstanding; more than simply a mystery, it is a narrative about how each person’s life impacts so many other lives.

You can read more about Laura Lippman at this web site.

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

Third rail, a symbol of danger.  According to Wikipedia, “the electric rail threatens electrocution of anyone wandering or falling onto the tracks.”  As a metaphor, it’s perfect for the life of Eddy Harkness–dangers surround him at every turn.

Formerly a high-profile narcotics detective on the Boston police force, Eddy became the butt of a thousand jokes when he failed in his attempt to save a man from being thrown off a bridge.  The tragedy was captured digitally by onlookers and put on YouTube where, as they say, it went viral. 

After that, there was no way that the Harvard Cop, as Eddy was known, could remain in the city; he was placed on a year’s unpaid administrative leave.  The police captain of his hometown, Nagog, offered him a patrolman’s job for the year, and Eddy was glad to accept. 

Much of Third Rail revolves around Eddy’s search for his missing gun.  The morning following a drunken, drug-riddled party, Eddy wakes up at his girlfriend’s apartment to discover that his Glock is missing.  Retracing their steps from the party to the apartment yields nothing, and Eddy knows that a lost or stolen gun could be the end of his career in Nagog.  So he goes into the town’s small variety store, owned by an old friend, and gets a plastic gun similar in style to his Glock.  And he hopes no one will notice the toy gun and hopes that he won’t need to use it.

In this novel, Third Rail is the name of a new designer drug that is about to hit the streets.  Unlike other drugs that make the users forget things, Third Rail “rewrites history and unmakes the mistakes,” according to an expert Eddy interviews.  Although that sounds positive, when the drug wears off the users experience anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure.  That means they must search for bigger thrills, bigger risks, in order to feel something, anything.  And that can lead to some dangerous pursuits.

There are a lot of threads in Third Rail.  In addition to Eddy’s search for his missing gun (losing one’s weapon may lead to dismissal from the police force) and the possibility of the new drug becoming readily available in Nagog, he is also contending with a corrupt politician’s run for mayor of Boston, his own suspicions about his drinking-and-drug-taking girlfriend, his hair-tempered brother, his dementia-suffering mother, and the memory of his larcenous father who committed suicide rather than face an investigation and prison.  Oh, and a Laotian gangster who deals in drugs and underage Thai girls.

The characters in the novel are fascinating, and the plot is fast-paced and believable.  There doesn’t seem to be anyone in the book without flaws; certainly Eddy Harkness has more than his share.  But he also has virtues and strengths in his ability to know right from wrong and his desire to make both Nagog and Boston better places than they currently are.

Third Rail is the first in a proposed series, and I am certainly looking forward to seeing Eddy Harkness back in action.

You can read more about Rory Flynn at this web site.  You can also view a trailer for the book on YouTube.

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

The young woman’s body was found in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria, the luxury Manhattan hotel that was home, over the years, to such celebrities as Marilyn Monroe and Cole Porter.  The suite was supposed to be unoccupied, but someone had entered with the victim, killed her, and left unseen. The New York City police are under a tight deadline to solve this crime–in less than a week, the president of the United States will be checking into the Waldorf while visiting the city to address the United Nations.

The corpse has no identification, and in addition to her slashed throat she has marks on her back and legs.  The marks look like “ladders” that were carved into her skin deliberately.  What could they mean?

Then a second body is found in an alley near the hotel.  This time the victim is a man, probably homeless, so initially there seems no connection to the first crime.  But a closer inspection shows that his body has the same “ladder” marks as the first one.  When the neighborhood patrolman sees the body, he immediately knows who it is.  The victim’s name is Carl, and he lived in the train tunnels under Grand Central Terminal. 

Grand Central was the brainchild of “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt.  First there was Grand Central Depot, then Grand Central Station, but they weren’t large enough for all the trains entering and leaving the city.  Vanderbilt recognized that to maintain the city’s superiority it needed to be a major railroad hub, so the immense terminal was built and completed in 1913.  Sparing no expense, it has floors of Tennessee marble, wall trim of Italian marble, and ceiling tiles in the Oyster Bar that were copied from those in the cathedral of St. John the Divine in uptown Manhattan.  Stone statues adorn the building’s fasçade.

Now assistant district attorney Alex Cooper and her team, including police detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, are trying to find the connection between the first corpse and the second.  The people who live in the tunnels, like Carl, are called “moles.”  So Alex, Mike, and Mercer go underground in hopes of finding out something about Carl that will help them solve both murders.

Terminal City is a fascinating read because of its characters, its plot, and its sense of history.  Alex is a tough woman, a formidable prosecutor of sex crimes, but her history has made her vulnerable in her private life.  Her relationship with Mike Chapman is currently at its strongest point, or it was until Mike was out of touch for several weeks and then returned to the city without telling Alex.  Now she’s not sure where she stands with him, and he evades all her questions.

Linda Fairstein’s knowledge of New York City is encyclopedic, as she has proven in Terminal City and her other novels.  Here she takes the reader into every part of Grand Central, into places so removed from its elegant bar and historic Tiffany clock that it’s like traveling to another world.  Her characters are strong and believable, and the plot moves at a rapid pace.  And then, of course, there’s the delight in learning about the building itself, a National Historic Landmark since 1976.  No matter where you’re reading Terminal City, you’ll feel as if you’re in the Big Apple.

You can read more about Linda Fairstein at this web site.

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

The scene is Maine, the time 1797.  Will Rees, the protagonist of Eleanor Kuhns’ debut mystery A Simple Murder, has spent the last few months farming his land in Maine, but his heart isn’t in it.  By occupation and desire he’s a traveling weaver, plying his trade in New England and the adjoining states. 

Then he and his new bride, Lydia, get a letter from an elder of the Shaker society in Zion, where the couple met.  Sister Hannah Moore, better known by her nickname Mouse, has left Zion and now lives at Mount Unity, a small Shaker enclave near Albany, New York.  She has been accused of kidnapping five children from their home and bringing them to the religious group. 

Despite the treacherous wintry road conditions, Will and Lydia feel compelled to rent a carriage and follow the stagecoach route from Maine to Dover, New York, to find out what compelled Mouse to abduct the children.  Arriving at Mount Unity, they first meet with the Shaker Elder who explains the situation.  Mouse, along with another Sister of the Shaker community, had gone, as part of their charitable outreach, to the home of a poor woman with five children. 

On their first visit all appeared under control, although the mother seemed the worse for drink.  However, Mouse was not satisfied about the children’s welfare; when she returned on her own a few days later, she was aghast at the squalor and unhealthy living conditions of the family.  She took the children with her back to the Shakers, and the next day the children’s mother came to the compound with the town’s constable and the children were returned to her.  Mouse is still convinced that the children are in an unhealthy situation and that their mother is unfit to care for them, and she begs Will and Lydia to look into the situation.

Eleanor Kuhns has given readers a fascinating look into life at the end of the eighteenth century in the newly-formed United States.  Towns and cities had what was called Poor Relief, a kind of welfare for indigent residents.  Such relief was limited to people who had been born in that town, or possibly limited even more stringently to people whose parents had been born in the town.  Otherwise, the councils were entitled, and most often did, to force a family to leave their home and seek refuge elsewhere. 

That was a constant threat against Maggie Whitby, the mother whose children Mouse had taken.  But although Maggie had no obvious means of support, she had inherited the ramshackle cabin she lived in and thus was considered a property owner who could not be sent away or, in the words of the times, be “warned away.”

However, before any action against her is taken, Maggie Whitby is found murdered.  Mouse is the main suspect, although there are others with motives at least as strong.  Will is determined to prove Mouse’s innocence, and his investigation leads him into the many secrets that this small town is hiding.

Cradle to Grave is the third in the Will Rees series, the first novel having been the winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s First Crime Novel Award.   This book is equally good, with strong, interesting characters and the author’s knowledge of the early days of American history skillfully woven into the well-developed plot.

You can read my review of A Simple Murder elsewhere on this blog.  You can read more about Eleanor Kuhns at this web site.

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

Seventeen-year-old Toni Murphy is an angry, troubled girl.  She is her parents’ challenging daughter while her younger sister Nicole is the perfect one.  No matter what she does, Toni feels that her mother and father are always angry and disappointed.

The story opens in 2012, when Toni is released from prison.  She and her boyfriend Ryan were convicted seventeen years ago, despite their protestations of innocence, of killing Nicole.  Now Toni is thirty-five, determined to return to her home town of Campbell Island, British Columbia, although she has no friends there and is estranged from her parents.

Under the terms of her parole, even if Ryan is released at the same time as she is and chooses to go home, they are not allowed to see or talk to each other.  But the temptation is strong for Toni to contact the only other person who knows that Nicole died at someone else’s hand.

That Night is told in alternating chapters, switching between the present and the past (1996), when Toni is a very unhappy, disobedient teenager.  She’s bullied at school by a group of girls, the leader of the group once having been her best friend, and she’s constantly compared to her sister, who in their mother’s eyes can do no wrong.

As a teenager, the only bright spot in Toni’s life is her relationship with Ryan, a boy in her senior class in high school.  Although Toni’s parents haven’t forbidden her to go out with him, they’ve made their dislike quite clear.  But Ryan and Toni are in love, and they are planning to move in together as soon as they graduate, regardless of parental disapproval.

The bullying at school keeps getting worse, her relationship with her sister begins to deteriorate, and her fighting with her parents escalates, until the night that Toni and Ryan give in to Nicole’s pleading and take her to the beach with them.  But that one night changes everything.

Chevy Stevens’ narrative is outstanding.  It’s always hard for an author to sustain tension and suspense when the story is told in flashbacks.  Yet so vivid is Toni’s story that there is never a letdown, never a sense of not continuing to read simply because you know who is killed and who is punished.

The characters in That Night are believable, sometimes almost unbearably so.  I both sympathized with Toni and wanted to shake her, often simultaneously.  I wanted to tell Toni to calm down, do what her mother wants, while at the same time I was angry at her mother for always assuming the worst about her older daughter while ignoring the similar behavior of her younger one.

Toni never seems to get a break.  The accounts of the bullying by her former friends are difficult to read, as are her descriptions of her years in prison.  You feel she is hanging onto her sanity by a thread, but she keeps on fighting.  Her feelings for Ryan are real; however, she discards even that comfort while she’s in prison because she can’t deal with the pain of missing him.

That Night is a riveting novel.  It captures the angst of being a teenager, of feeling that you are a disappointment to your parents, of being on the “outs” with those who once called themselves your friends.  It also captures the toughness of a girl, later a woman, who decides that her past will not define her.

You can read more about Chevy Stevens at this web site.

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

Bartender Harper Flynn was in the midst of a busy night at Xenon, a very “in” club in Los Angeles.  Suddenly shots are fired, but the hired security is so hemmed in by the crowd that they can’t get to the shooters.  In the melee Harper’s boyfriend Drew Westerman is shot, and despite her efforts to pull him to safety, he dies.

Questioned by the police afterward, Harper maintains she saw three gunmen in hoodies shooting into the crowd, but nearly all the other witnesses say there were only two.  The sole person agreeing with Harper is Aiden Garrison, a sheriff’s deputy who was there with his partner.  But Aiden suffered a traumatic brain injury that night, and he now has Frégoli Syndrome. 

Named after the French quick-change artist Leopoldo Frégoli, sufferers from this disorder believe that the people around them are actually other people in disguise, capable of changing their gender or dress in a moment.  Aiden is on medical leave from the sheriff’s office because, as he says, “I can become convinced that a random person–a neighbor, or somebody crossing the street, is the shooter.” 

He is still convinced that he and Harper are right, that there was a third shooter, but his mind is now too compromised for the authorities to believe his account.  With Harper, then, being the sole credible survivor who insists on a third man, the police have closed the case.

At the one year anniversary of Drew’s death, Harper attends a memorial service for him.  Harper thinks she sees a man, partially hidden in a grove of trees a few hundred yards away,  who reminds her of the hooded figure at the nightclub.  She tries to follow him but is unsuccessful. 

Frustrated, Harper tracks Aiden down and tells him what she saw at the memorial.  Aiden says that he too has seen the mysterious figure since the shooting, several times in fact, but with his current medical condition no one believes him.  But when Aiden tells Harper that he glimpsed a tattoo with the letters ERO on the shooter’s spine as he raised his arm to shoot that night, she reveals her history to him. 

There was one letter you didn’t see, Harper says.  The letter Z; the word is ZERO.  It’s the nickname of  Eddie Azerov, the person who had forced her, as a teenager in a dysfunctional family, into a life of crime.  And so Harper and Aiden, the only two people who believe in the third man, begin a hesitant collaboration to find him.

Phantom Instinct is a roller coaster ride.  The plot beautifully explores the dilemma of two people who know what they saw but are unable to convince anyone else and are forced to work together to find Zero with no official assistance.  In doing so, Harper is led straight back into her troubled past, and Aiden must confront his fear of another Frégoli episode that would endanger them both.

Meg Gardiner has written a mystery with intriguing characters and a totally suspenseful plot.  Harper and Aiden are flawed, but they are determined to bring Zero and his cohorts to justice.  But each step they take brings them deeper into danger.

You can read more about Meg Gardiner, recipient of the Edgar for China Lake, at this web site.

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

When I first heard about The Girl with a Clock for Heart, I didn’t understand what the title meant.  But after reading Peter Swanson’s remarkable first novel, I totally get it.  Liana Decter has no more feeling, no more empathy, than a mechanical device.  She’s a human being without a heart.

George Foss is forty, working for a literary magazine and having an on-again off-again relationship with Irene, a woman he’s known for years.  But he can’t commit because he lost his heart (and some might say his reason) more than twenty years earlier when he was a college student.  That’s when he met Liana, then calling herself Audrey Beck, and the two of them had a passionate, whirlwind romance throughout their first semester. 

Each went home separately during winter break, George to Massachusetts and Audrey/Liana to Florida.  She gave him her phone number but asked that he not call her, saying that her parents wouldn’t be happy if she received calls from a boy she’d met at college.  She promised to contact him, but she never did.

The day George returned to Mather College, he phoned his girlfriend’s room several times but never got an answer.  Later that night, he got a call from her roommate telling him that Audrey was dead, having asphyxiated herself in her parents’ garage.  Devastated by grief, George takes a bus to the small Florida town where she had lived to pay his respects, only to find out that the girl at Mather calling herself Audrey Beck was actually someone else.  The real Audrey is dead, but where is the girl who has been using her name?  And who is she?

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart switches between past and present, between George’s college years and his current life.  George is one of the walking wounded.  On the outside, he’s gainfully employed, owns his own apartment, and is in a relationship.  On the inside, he’s stuck as the business manager of a literary magazine that’s destined to fold soon, and his relationship with Irene has been going nowhere for years.  He spends his nights at Jack Crow’s Tavern in Boston’s Back Bay, making a couple of drinks last as long as possible, before returning to his apartment where only his cat will be waiting for him.

But all that changes one night when, waiting for Irene to meet him for a drink, he looks across the tavern and sees Liana.  Even though two decades have passed, Liana still exerts an almost mystical hold over George, and when she tells him she’s come to him for help, he cannot resist.  Each favor she asks of him drags him more deeply into danger, but he’s helpless to stop himself.

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is an incredible debut novel.  We all have known characters like George, who is so self-effacing that he has put his life on hold because of his first and only love.  And we’ve also known characters like Liana, so uncaring and selfish that, for them, the rest of the people in the world don’t exist.  Indeed, if Liana is the girl who feels nothing, George feels too much.

You can read more about Peter Swanson at this web site.

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

Have yourself a glass of iced tea, a sugar cookie or two, and you’ll be in the perfect frame of mind for this charming cozy.  Doing It at the Dixie Dew, the debut novel by Ruth Moose, won the 2013 Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Competition for Best First Traditional Mystery Novel.  It’s easy to see why.

Beth McKenzie grew up in the small town of Littleboro, North Carolina, then she went north for college and didn’t return until her beloved grandmother died fifteen years later.  Mama Alice had raised Beth after the death of Beth’s parents, and she left Beth the only thing she had of value, her home. 

But the house, once a spic-and-span showplace from which Mama Alice ran her catering business, is now in need of major repairs–new gutters, new roof, major paint job.  No one would buy it as is, so Beth’s only option is to turn it into something that will give her a living, hence its new life as a bed and breakfast establishment.

But in its first night as a B & B, disaster strikes.  Miss Lavina Lovingood, a former Littleboro resident who recently returned from Italy, went upstairs to sleep in the Azalea Room and didn’t come down for breakfast the next morning.  At first glance it seems that she died a natural death; after all, she was close to ninety years old.  But Police Chief Ossie DelGardo seems suspicious, both of the death and of Beth.  Does he really think she would have killed Miss Lovingood, or is he just looking for some publicity and glory?

Beth is sadden by the death but also concerned that prospective guests will be dissuaded from coming to the Dixie Dew.  “Bad news always wore winged shoes,” she thinks.  “And gossip danced with taps on its heels.”

Then there’s a second death, that of the town’s Roman Catholic priest, and Chief Ossie questions Beth again.  “You’re the only thing these two have in common,” he tells her.  And, he continues, Miss Lovingood’s death was not natural; she was poisoned. 

Upset by what she perceives as the police chief’s determination to see her as the guilty party, Beth decides to do a little investigating on her own.   And there are enough suspicious characters in town to keep her busy. 

One is Beth’s former piano teacher, Miss Temple, who seemed to delight in punishing all her young students with a ruler over their knuckles whenever they hit a wrong note; second is Mama Alice’s best friend Verna Crowell, perhaps a bit too fond of an afternoon tipple of sherry; third is Miss Lovingood’s out-of-town cousin, Lester Moore, who believes that Beth has stolen Miss Lovingood’s valuable jewelry.

Luckily, Beth also has people who support her and her investigation.  There’s her housekeeper Ida Plum Duckett, her handyman/contractor Scott Smith, and her best friend Malinda Jones.  Without them on her side, the Dixie Dew would never have gotten off the ground.

Ruth Moose has written a mystery filled with interesting characters and a great setting.  We’ll have to wait for a second novel to see if Beth McKenzie can make the Dixie Dew a permanent part of Littleboro, North Carolina.

You can read more about Ruth Moose at this web site.

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

When two wealthy men come to the small town of Brewster, Missouri, old secrets are revealed and murder follows.  That’s the trouble with secrets; it’s hard to keep them hidden.

Skeet Bannion is chief of police at Chouteau University, having left her job as a detective in Kansas City for what she hoped would be a quieter life.  But even in a small town, there are motives for murder.

Brewster is divided, as are many cities and towns, by the possibility of a mall coming in and changing the face of the city.  Small business owners are afraid that the new mall will decimate the cluster of shops in the center of town, but they are fighting against men with the money to get their way.

Walker Lynch has big pockets, and it’s his money that is behind the mall.  Walker has brought in a man who grew up in Brewster, Ash Mobray, as an ally to convince the citizens to vote in his favor, but that might not have been the best idea.

Ash came from the worst family in town, but somehow he got together the money to go off to college and become a success.  But it seems as if he has returned home not just to back the mall but to get even with a number of Brewster’s citizens.

Ash’s pronouncement at the city council meeting that he’s the biological father of Noah, the high school quarterback, startles nearly everyone there.  But that’s not the only remark he makes that causes trouble.  He throws innuendos at one of the town’s businessmen, Peter Hume, who is in a homosexual relationship with a younger man.  Bea Roberts, owner of an antiques and collectibles store that would be hurt by the coming of the mall, is publicly trading insults with Ash.  And his offensive manner alienates him even from one of his former supportors, Pearl Brewster, the “first lady” of the city who gave him the money to leave town and go to college years ago.

Then, the morning after the meeting, Ash is found dead outside the country club, his head bashed in by a golf club.  Although the murder is outside her jurisdiction, Skeet is brought into the investigation by her foster son Brian, a friend of Noah’s.  It’s Noah’s club that was used repeatedly on Ash, and his fingerprints are the only ones on the club. 

Skeet has personal problems to deal with as well, problems that may be impacting on her investigation of the murder.  Three men are showing that they’re romantically interested in her:  her ex-husband, the town’s sheriff, and one of Walker Lynch’s employees.  However, Skeet has created a wall around herself, and she’s not sure if she wants to tear it down. 

Every Hidden Fear is the third Skeet Bannion novel.  The recurring characters in the series are well-drawn, and readers will care for them because they ring true to life.  Their strengths and vulnerabilities are something we can relate to as they try to get through life and the many problems they face.  Every Hidden Fear will bring readers more deeply into Skeet’s life and make them eager to follow her in the future.

You can read more about Linda Rodriguez at this web site.

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

I don’t think of Bergen, Norway as a place with a lot of criminal activity.  But there’s apparently enough crime and abuse to keep private detective Varg Veum busy.

Varg has just recovered from a life-threatening attack, one which killed his client, and he’s still feeling a bit vulnerable.  So when he’s approached by Hege Jensen, his son’s childhood friend, he’s wary of taking her on as a client, especially given the case she wants him to investigate.

Hege’s friend Maggi Monsen has been missing for three days.  Hege won’t go to the police, she tells Varg, because “…you know how they treat cases like this when it’s about people like me and Maggi.”  By “people like me and Maggi,” Hege means prostitutes.  Varg is forced to agree with her assessment, so a bit reluctantly he sets out to search for the missing woman.

Varg’s first action shows him the dangers surrounding the two women.  He gets the key to Maggi’s apartment from Hege, but aside from a small photo album he finds nothing of interest there.  He’s about to leave when he hears a key inserted into the lock and two men enter.  They present themselves as the owners of Maggi’s apartment, having come for her rent, but it’s obvious to the detective that they are her pimps.  And to underscore their message that finding Maggi is none of Varg’s business, one of the men cuts a sharp line with a knife from Varg’s ear to his collarbone.

Determined not to be stopped by the threats and the attack, Varg finds out that the two men are Kjell Malthus and his knife-wielding assistant, Rolf.  Kjell is a lawyer who runs an investment firm, and Varg finds another connection between Kjell and Maggi besides prostitution.  Maggi’s brother KG has been imprisoned for years for the murder of Kjell’s brother.

Maggi was one of three children of dysfunctional parents: the father was an abusive alcoholic and the mother a depressed, passive woman.  Sent to school without lunch and looking malnourished, the children came to the attention of Bergen’s social services.  But before anything could be done officially, a committee of five friends of the family intervened with the intention of making certain that the children were not removed from their home.  The committee promised to provide food and assistance to the family, anything to keep the family together.  But in the end, given the history of two of the three children, was this the best outcome?

Cold Hearts takes the reader into the seamy side of a small Norwegian city, showing how the strains of child abuse, incest, and hypocrisy follow its victims and its practitioners throughout life.  Not a story for the faint-of-heart, the novel is extremely well-written, with characters and settings that bring the story to life.

Gunnar Staalesen is a well-known novelist throughout Scandinavia.  A statue of Varg Veum stands outside the Strand Hotel in Bergen; a photo of Gunnar Staalesen and his literary creation are available at this Google web site.

There are several translated sites about the author on the web.

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