Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Reviews

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.

In Don’t Ever Look Back by Daniel Friedman, Baruch (Buck) Schatz is trying desperately to prove that old age can’t hold him back. 

Buck was a detective with a reputation for violence on the Memphis police force.  His favorite weapon was a nightstick, followed by a rolled-up telephone directory when he was questioning suspects, and he shot and killed more than a dozen people in the line of duty.  All together, not a role model to emulate.  But one thing Buck says about himself, he was never corrupt.

When we meet Buck in the second novel in the series, he’s living with his wife in an assisted living facility.  Now, at age eighty-eight, he is using a walker, getting physical therapy, and reluctantly coming to recognize that he’s not the man he used to be.  But he still doesn’t want to give up without a fight.

In 1965, midway through Buck’s career, Memphis was facing a strike by the city’s black dockworkers.  At the same time, Buck is approached by a mysterious European named Elijah who thinks he can enlist the detective’s help because they’re both Jews. 

Elijah is a Holocaust survivor who saw his mother, father, and sister killed at Treblinka.  In his contempt for all governments he has become a bank robber, believing that the atrocities his people suffered over the years give him the right to flout laws and take what he wants. 

He hasn’t approached Buck to offer him a bribe, Elijah insists.  “I wish to engage your participation in a rather elaborate and highly lucrative criminal enterprise,” he tells Buck. Buck declines his offer. 

“And here’s a fair warning,” Buck says, “since I reckon you’ve seen your share of suffering.  Don’t pull any jobs in my town.  Because, if you test me, I’ll kill you, kindred soul or not.”

The city’s police have been after the mysterious Elijah for years, knowing he was guilty of many crimes but unable to prove anything against him.  When Buck comes across evidence that Elijah is planning to break into the “invulnerable” vault of the Cotton Planters Union Bank at the same time the strikers are massing a block away, he’s torn between alerting his fellow officers and his feeling that Elijah’s attempted theft will reinforce the anti-Semitic feeling in the department and the city.

Don’t Ever Look Back‘s chapters alternate between 2009 and 1965.  In the forty-four years in between, Elijah has prospered and remained free, but now he has come to Buck for a favor.  

Buck Schatz isn’t an easy man to admire.  He’s done his share of illegal things as a detective, is stubborn, willful, and has a really foul mouth.  But he has his own ethical standards, strange as some of them may be, and this reader ended up both liking and admiring him.  Don’t Ever Look Back is a terrific read, fast-paced, with characters who simply jump off the page.  Don’t miss it.

One more thing.  There’s a beautiful Author’s Note at the end of the book.  The author’s grandfather, Harold “Buddy” Friedman, died in 2013 at the age of ninety-seven.  He was a man typical of his age, and in fact he sounds a lot like my late father, a former New York City police captain, who died in 2006 at the age of 93.  If they’d known each other, I think they would have been friends.

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

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

Off on a camping trip with two of her friends and their daughters, Anna Pigeon is enjoying a well-deserved vacation.  Her friends are at the campsite while she’s enjoying an hour or two of solitude in a canoe on Minnesota’s Fox River when she hears a noise that sounds “off.”  It’s the sound of a pistol being cocked, Anna knows.  As a park ranger, she knows the sounds of guns as well as the sounds of nature, and she’s sure this is the former.  As quietly as possible, she heads the canoe back toward the campsite.

The four people at the campsite are as different as possible, given that they consist of two mothers and two daughters.  Leah Hendricks is the brains behind Hendricks and Hendricks, a sports gear and fashion company.  Her daughter Katie, age thirteen, is an unwilling participant on the trip.  The tension between them is palpable.

Heath and her daughter Elizabeth are the second mother and daughter, and they share a strong and happy relationship.  Heath is in a wheelchair, the result of an accident that broke her back; Elizabeth was adopted by Heath some time ago after a traumatic incident nearly took the girl’s life.  One of the reasons for the trip is for Heath to try out the new wheelchair, a product of Leah’s combined technical and creative abilities.  So far it’s been everything its inventor could have hoped, and the trip, except for the strain between Leah and Katie, could be termed a success. 

Then into the clearing come four men, each carrying a gun.  After making sure who Leah and Katie are, the leader of the men orders the two women and their daughters bound with plastic ties.  Just then Heath hears the faint sound of a canoe on the water, and she realizes that Anna is approaching.  Heath shouts out a warning, ostensibly at the intruders, “Stay away from us!  You hear me?”  But Anna realizes the warning is meant for her, for her to keep out of the camp and try to devise a plan to rescue her friends.

The four men don’t bother to explain the reason they are abducting the women, and the two mothers have no idea why they’ve been targeted.  Could it simply be random, Heath wonders.  But the idea of four heavily armed men coming deep into the wilderness in hopes of finding a group to kidnap seems absurd.  Plus, of course, the men knew Leah’s and Katie’s names.  For some reason the gunmen came looking for them.  But why?

Destroyer Angel is the eighteenth novel in the Anna Pigeon series, each book set in a different park.  Based in part on Nevada Barr’s own experiences as a ranger, the books take Anna from the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas (the first book) to the Iron Range in northern Minnesota in Destroyer Angel. 

The books, besides being excellent reads, give the reader a look into our national forests and our history.  Ms. Barr’s own background, both as a ranger and a former actress, makes her a natural storyteller.  Anna Pigeon is a character with brains, compassion, and abilities that shine through in every book.

You can read more about Nevada Barr at this web site.

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

It’s 3:05 a.m., and Atlanta police detective Dave Mackno is anxious for his shift to end.  He’s been watching a house outside Wilson Field, home of the major league Atlanta Barons.  There have been no lights or movement in the house for hours, and Dave is just about to pop his second beer, preparing to drive home in the muggy heat, when a Porsche goes speeding by, doing at least 80 m.p.h.

Because he’s driving his wife’s car, rather than a police cruiser, Dave knows there’s no way to catch up to the Porsche.  To his surprise, however, the sports car doesn’t continue but stops suddenly at the fence outside the baseball field.  This gives Dave his opportunity, and he walks towards the car, intent on forcing the driver out.

When Dave gets close enough to see the car’s license plate, he’s stunned; it’s BIG STK 44.  The Porsche belongs to Remo Centrella, the home run star of the Barons, voted the league’s Most Valuable Player three times.  

It appears that Remo’s celebrity has gone to his head, because he refuses Dave’s repeated order to leave his car.  When Remo finally gets out, he infuriates Dave by offering him bribes–first baseball tickets, then money.  It’s obvious to Dave that the ballplayer is high.  When Dave attempts to handcuff him, Remo, fueled by steroids, jumps on him.  It’s a desperate fight that ends with Remo dead and Dave hospitalized with serious injuries.

At first the shooting seems like a clear case of self-defense, but there are influential men who have other ideas.  One is Ray Manning, owner of the Barons.  Although the team was heavily insured against the loss of its home run hitter, Ray is furious to find out that a “felony clause” will invalidate the insurance.  If Remo was trying to kill Dave, his intention to commit a felony would allow the insurance company to pay nothing.  And Ray badly needs that money.

The two other influential men are Georgia’s governor, Frank Durkin, and Atlanta’s district attorney, Maurice Bass.  With a combination of alleged worry about what the killing of a biracial man by a white policeman would do to the city’s image and a huge serving of political self-interest, Frank and Maurice decide that a charge of murder should be brought against Dave.

R. C. O’Leary’s thriller goes back and forth through the years, following Dave’s career.  Combining baseball, racial tensions, backroom politics, and greed, the novel portrays a less-than-ideal picture of people in power and their desire to hang onto that power by any means necessary.  The compelling courtroom scenes and those that follow don’t show the characters in black and white but in shades of gray, similar to real life.  Mr. O’Leary has written about a culture where even the heroes are less than heroic.

You can read more about R. C. O’Leary at this web site.

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

Sophie and Emmett Kohl started out as a typical young couple in 1991.  Fresh from Harvard, they married and decided to spend their honeymoon in Europe, avoiding the usual tourist places and going “where history’s happening,” as Emmett described it to his wife.

Emmett’s career took him to various embassies, and Sophie went with him.  Slightly bored but not knowing what she really wanted from life, it was an easy path to take.  And so in 2001, sitting in a Budapest restaurant with Emmett, Sophie is shocked when Emmett confronts her with two startling statements. 

First is the accusation that she had an affair in Cairo with a colleague of his, Stan Bertolli, and that Stan had called Emmett to tell him about it.  Sophie reluctantly admits the affair, telling Emmett that one of the reasons she did this was because he had changed so much in their time in Cairo, emotionally removing himself from their marriage.  “I was lonely, Emmett,”  she said.  “Simple as that.”

The Cairo Affair is a multi-layered story of espionage, love, and betrayal.  The novel opens in the present day, during the “Arab Spring,” but its roots go back to 1991 and Yugoslavia.  When the couple was in in that country two decades ago, they met a woman named Zora Balasevic.  Now Emmett tells a startled Sophie that two years ago Zora, working at the Serbian embassy in Cairo, had tried to enlist him to spy for her country.  Shock number two.

Emmett tells Sophie that he naturally refused but never reported the incident because he wasn’t sure who at the embassy could be trusted.  Eventually his superiors at the embassy realized that information was getting out; Emmett was among those who came under scrutiny because he had been seen with Zora. 

But before the conversation between Emmett and Sophie can go much further, a man walks into the restaurant and shoots and kills Emmett. 

The novel is told from the point of view of several different people, each one telling his/her own version of what happened in the past and what is happening now.  Jibril Aziz is a CIA employee of Libyan descent.  For years he’s been involved in a mysterious project called Stumbler, a project which he believes involves United States government officials’ secret involvement in the Libyan efforts to unseat Muammar Gadhafi.  Unable to convince the powers in charge of his version of events, he takes off for the Mideast to try to control the situation.

Stan Bertolli also has come under scrutiny from his embassy superiors who are trying to plug the information leak.  But while that should be his major concern, he is preoccupied with his longing for Sophie.  And when she contacts him after Emmett is murdered, he tells her to come to Cairo at once and he will help her.

Sophie is now on her own for the first time in her life.  Not knowing whom to trust in Hungary and fearful of any investigation, she returns to Egypt and Stan, although she’s not certain that that’s the best place for her either.

Sophie and Emmett’s lives are filled with secrets and lies, impacting both on Emmett’s career and their relationship with each other.  The Cairo Affair gives readers a look at the price people pay, in both professional and personal terms, when truth gives way to falsehoods and evasions.

You can read more about Olen Steinhauer at this web site.

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

Serial killers are not common in Sweden, certainly not in small towns such as Fjällbacka.  But although the idea of such a killer is slow to take hold in the police department, eventually the detectives come to that conclusion when a series of apparently unrelated murders are seen to have a common thread.

The Stranger opens with a new hire for the town’s police department, Hanna Kruse, its first female detective.  She has arrived just in time to join veteran detective Patrik Hedström in investigating a fatal car crash.  At first glance it looks cut-and-dried; the driver smells strongly of alcohol and there’s an empty vodka bottle on the floor.  But there’s something about the scene and the victim’s body that bothers Patrik.

Upon further investigation, Patrik discovers the semi-hidden life of the victim, Marit Kaspersen.  Marit had been living with Kerstin, ostensibly as a roommate, with Kerstin pushing for coming out in the open as lesbians while Marit insisted that it would do irreparable harm to her daughter Sofie.  The two women had fought about this many times, and to Kerstin’s distress, the last words that she and Marit had had the night before the accident ended with Kerstin saying to Marit, “Go ahead and run away….And this time don’t bother coming back!”

Fjällbacka is opening its doors to the filming of a reality television show, with all the attendant publicity and chaos that such filming involves.  The self-involved twenty-somethings in the cast know how the game is played–do the most outrageous things and you get the most airtime.  Chosen from previous reality show contestants, the group includes a girl who cuts herself, a wealthy playboy, a surgically enhanced bombshell, and a Turkish emigree, among others. 

Then one of them disappears, and the already busy police department becomes overwhelmed by the pressure from the national media.   Interestingly, the missing cast member doesn’t seem to have left behind grieving mates; the overwhelming feeling is “sorry she’s gone missing, but look at all the extra publicity we’re getting.”

Several other threads run through the novel, bringing the town and its inhabitants into greater focus.   Patrik’s wife Erica is dealing with her sister Anna, who is deeply depressed by a horrific event that occurred in the previous novel, while caring for Anna’s two children.  Bertil Mellberg, the inept head of homicide, is starting a romantic relationship that will turn his life around.  Erling Larson, a wealthy, self-satisfied businessman, is responsible for bringing the reality show to his town and cares only for the onrush of tourists he expects as a result.  And Hanna, the new detective, appears overly eager to close the book on the automobile crash that claimed Marit’s life.

The Stranger is Camilla Läckberg’s seventh book that has been translated into English.  The novels should ideally be read in sequence, as the characters and stories continue from one to the other.  But even if you start with The Stranger, I promise you’ll want to go back and read the others to get the full story of life in Fjällbacka.

You can read more about Camilla Läckberg at this web site.

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

“The glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome” are the lines that Edgar Allan Poe wrote in 1845.  There is grandeur in Lindsey Davis’ The Ides of April, and there are also appealing characters, great writing, and a terrific plot.

Flavia Albia, the heroine of the story, is a private informer, what today we would call a private eye.  She is the adopted daughter of the well-known Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco.  Abandoned as an infant, Flavia knows nothing of her biological family.  Marcus and his wife Helena Justina found her wandering the streets of Londinium, Britannia, and brought her to civilization, to Rome.  Flavia is now twenty-nine, a full Roman citizen, a widow, and following in her father’s business.

What brings Flavia into the case at the center of the book is the tragic death of a three-year-old boy who was run over by a builder’s cart.  Flavia is hired by the owner of the building company to thwart the boy’s mother’s demand for compensatory payment.  Although unsympathetic to the owner Salvidia, a female informer can’t be too choosy when it comes to jobs, so Flavia takes the case. 

After doing so, she reads a notice asking any witnesses to the accident to come forward.  Intrigued, Flavia goes to the Temple of Ceres, the headquarters of Manlius Faustus, the aedile (magistrate) for this area of Rome, to get more information.  Not having any luck at the Temple, she goes to his office where she meets Andronicus, the aedile’s clerk, and sexual sparks fly between them.  Andronicus tells her the aedile won’t assist her, but he lets her know that he’ll keep his eyes open to try to help.

Not having gained any insight into the case and disliking her client more and more, Flavia returns to the construction company to tell Salvidia that she is quitting.  When she gets there, she is told by the woman’s servant that Salvidia is dead, having come home from the market, gone to bed, and then stopped breathing.  Looking at the corpse, the only unusual thing the informer can see is a slight scratch on one of her arms, certainly nothing to cause death.

At Salvidia’s funeral the next day, Flavia meets the deceased’s neighbor, an elderly woman who concludes their conversation by saying, “You do what you can for her, dearie,” a statement Flavia interprets as the neighbor thinking that Savlidia died under suspicious circumstances.  And the following day, the neighbor is dead.

The writing in The Ides of April is excellent, always told in Flavia’s voice.  She can be empathic, as when she meets the family of another possible murder victim.  “Lupus the oyster-shucker would not easily be forgotten; I thought never,” she says to herself as she sees the family’s grief.  She can also be wry.  “…and (the man) could only come if his son was not using the false leg that day.  Assume I’m joking, if that comforts you.”

The Ides of April is the first in the Flavia Albia series.  The Marcus Falco series by this author is twenty novels long, and I’m hoping for at least that many for Flavia.  She’s a delight.  Hopefully, she’ll keep poking her nose into Rome’s secrets.

You can read more about Lindsey Davis at this web site.

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