Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Reviews

Scott Turow’s latest novel, Identical, is as exciting a thriller as his debut mystery Presumed Innocent, and that’s saying a good deal.

Identical opens in an unidentified midwestern city with a substantial Greek-American population.  The year is 1982, and multimillionaire Zeus Kronon is holding his annual picnic on the vast grounds of his home.  Virtually the entire congregation of St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church is there to celebrate the ecclesiastical New Year, including twin brothers Cass and Paul Gianis; their mother Lidia; Zeus and his wife Hermione; their daughter Dita; their son Hal; Zeus’s sister Teri, who is Lidia’s best friend; Paul’s girlfriend Georgia; and Sophia, a neighborhood girl now in medical school.  It’s quite a cast of characters.

Like a Greek tragedy, strands are woven and woven again, until it’s hard to tell where relationships begin and end.  Cass and Paul seem almost to inhabit one mind, they are so close.  Dita, Cass’s girlfriend, is disliked by all of his family, particularly his mother.  Lidia hasn’t spoken to Zeus in more than twenty years, leaving her sons to wonder why she has agreed to attend this party.  And Paul, whom everyone thought was going to get engaged to Georgia, is suddenly smitten by Sophia.

After the party ends and the guests disperse, Dita is in her room waiting for Cass.  When morning comes, Dita’s bloodied body is discovered by her parents.  Cass admits to the murder, never giving a motive for the slaying, and spends the next twenty-five years in prison.

Twenty-five years later, Cass is applying for early release from prison.  Hal, who as Zeus’s only surviving child has inherited his father’s corporate empire, is appearing before the parole board to prevent this.  When the board approves Cass’ release, Hal orchestrates a crusade against Paul and his recently launched mayoral campaign, saying that Paul had lied under oath at the trial about his twin’s whereabouts the night of the murder and therefore doesn’t deserve to be mayor.

Using his vast wealth and his undying anger at both Cass and Paul, Hal orders his security chief and a former city detective to investigate what really happened the night of his sister’s murder.  He’s never had any doubt that Cass is guilty, but now he’s determined to discover Paul’s involvement as well.  With the unlimited resources at his command, he sets out to find what the Gianis twins have been hiding for over two decades.

Not only are all the characters extremely well drawn, the picture of the close-knit Greek-American community is compelling.  Like many other first or second generation ethnic groups, the Greek-Americans in Identical have formed their own community within the larger city.  Disputes brought over from the old country still resonate within families, sometimes even without the children or grandchildren of the immigrants knowing the reason for the original disagreement.  And the transliterated Greek comments that Turow has inserted at various point in the novel somehow bring the reader closer to the people in the book.

As expected of the author of eleven previous books, including Presumed Innocent and Reversible Errors, Identical is a page-turner, a mystery that will keep you engrossed until the last page.

You can read more about Scott Turow at this web site.

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

Alec Wynn is a very wealthy man with a very big problem. His young wife is missing, leaving behind only a note saying “Don’t look for me. C.” Alec knows there have been problems in their marriage–the difference in their ages, her infidelities–but he doesn’t understand why she left and doesn’t want to be found. So he hires private investigator Amos Walker to find the missing Cecelia in Don’t Look For Me.

Alec tells Amos that Cecelia was a serial adulterer, the last affair being with an employee of Alec’s, Lloyd Debner. “I fired him , naturally. ….gave him excellent references,” says Alec. So Amos’ first visit is to Lloyd, who reluctantly admits that Cecelia broke off their relationship because she told him he couldn’t satisfy her sexually.

His next visit is to Cecelia’s best friend, Patti Lochner. According to Alec, “If anyone was born to cause trouble in a happy marriage, her name is Patti Lochner.” After hearing only negative comments about Cecelia’s marriage and affairs from Patti, Amos asks her why she dislikes Cecelia so much. Surprised at Amos’ question, she responds, “Cecelia? She’s my best friend.” With friends like this….

The search continues, with stops at a natural health foods/vitamin store that might be a front for something more dangerous, a studio shooting pornographic videos with Cecilia’s former maid as a performer, and a gambling casino where Amos can talk things over with his friend Barry Stackpole. Cecelia was into some dangerous stuff, or at least sniffing around the edges of some of it, but Amos isn’t really getting anywhere. And then Cecelia calls him.

This is, I believe, the twenty-third novel that features Amos Walker, Detroit’s best-known private eye. Amos hasn’t lost a bit of his quick wit, although that doesn’t go over so well with his present client. When asked how big his agency is, Amos responds, “About six-one and one-eighty….I lied about my weight.” Alec’s response–“The humor I can take or let alone.” But the snarky remarks and quick comebacks are part of the Walker persona. He’s been in the business long enough not to be cowed by his clients, no matter how wealthy or powerful they are. After all, they came to him, didn’t they?

Don’t Look For Me brings back two men who form the basis of Amos’ “family.” One is John Alderdyce, now an inspector with the Detroit Police Department, a big bear of a man with a sense of fashion. The other is Barry Stackpole, an investigative journalist wounded a few books back by the Mob, who now has a bad leg and a steel plate in his head. John and Barry might not always agree with Amos or with what he’s doing, but they always have his back.

Loren D. Estleman recently received the Eye, the lifetime achievement award given by the Private Eye Writers of America. That should come as no surprise, as Amos Walker is surely one of the best known and best loved private eyes in America.

You can read more about Loren D. Estleman at this web site.

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

Times are tough in Little Rhody, one of the nicknames for the smallest state in the United States. The economy is down, Liam Mulligan’s job at the Providence Dispatch is threatened by the possible sale of the newspaper, and there’s a killer in the capital city.

There’s no apparent motive for the murders of a young single mother and her daughter although the killer left behind plenty of clues, including a smear of blood and a print of his forehead on a window. Then, two years later, another woman is found murdered along with her two young daughters. This time the killer left his prints on a windowsill and on the medicine cabinet. In both cases the victims had been slashed repeatedly with a knife. The prints in both cases match each other, but they don’t match anything in the system.

The pattern of entrance and murders in both cases is nearly identical, and FBI profiler Peter Schutter has decided that the killer is a white male in his twenties. But Liam becomes suspicious of a black teenager, Kwame Diggs, who lives close to where the victims lived. When he shares his thoughts with the profiler, Schutter tells him to forget it. “No way this kid’s your killer. Don’t waste your time on him,” Schutter says to Liam. The federal agent is convinced that the official profile is accurate.

But Liam is not so sure. Another reason Schutter dismisses Kwame is because he was only thirteen when the first murder was committed, but to Liam this is another factor in favor of Kwame’s guilt. The shoe size prints in the first murder were size eleven and in the second murder were size twelve. To Liam this means that the killer was still growing, thus adding to the possibility of a young, still developing, male rather than a fully-grown twenty-someone. When he revisits Kwame and questions him, Kwame says that he takes a size ten shoe, but Liam can see for himself that that’s false, as the teenager’s shoe is slightly larger than Liam’s own size eleven. The police arrest Kwame for the murders, and he’s convicted. But the law has given Kwame a way out of what would ordinarily be a life sentence.

The action that propels the book is a law that was on the Rhode Island books that if a juvenile commits a crime, regardless of the severity of the crime, he must be released from custody upon reaching the age of twenty-one. Although the authorities have been able to hold Kwame in prison for several more years due to some possibly illegal actions on the state’s part, he is now about to be released, causing protests from frightened citizens that are leading up to the governor’s door. And the governor is a long-time friend of Liam’s with her own popularity at stake.

The supporting characters in Providence Rag are vivid and compelling. There’s Kwame’s widowed mother, Esther Diggs, who cannot bring herself to believe that her son is guilty despite his confession; Iggy Rock, a right-wing radio personality who is leading marchers to protest Kwame’s upcoming release; Gloria Costa, Liam’s colleague on the Dispatch, trying to overcome her fears after fleeing from an attempted rape; Edward Anthony Mason III, also called Thanks-Dad by Liam, sixth generation of the publishing family that owns the Dispatch; and Felicia Fryer, Kwame’s new attorney who is convinced that the authorities have kept her client in jail for years after his original release date by perjured testimony from prison guards.

This novel is the third in the Liam Mulligan series; the first one, Rogue Island, won the Edgar and Macavity awards. Look for more kudos for Providence Rag.

Bruce DeSilva has been a journalist, a writing coach, and a college professor, all roads leading to the Liam Mulligan books. You can read more about him at this web site.

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

Now a teacher at a public school in Manhattan, Raymond Donne was formerly a New York City policeman who changed careers following a tragic accident.  When one of his former students, now a student at a prestigious private school, is stabbed to death under the Williamsburg Bridge, Ray gets a phone call from the boy’s mother and becomes drawn into the case.

Douglas Lee was the perfect student for Upper West Academy in Manhattan to feature in its brochures in order to increase its number of minority students:  a bright African-American teenager with a slight learning disability being raised by a single mother.  Dougie was popular and well-liked, both in his neighborhood and at his school, but somehow he ended up murdered.  And when the police see that he’s wearing the colors of a local street gang and has bags of marijuana in his socks, they’re sure this is a drug-related death.  It seems as if there will be little official follow-up to this crime, so Mrs. Lee contacts Ray to see if he has any clout, as a former cop and Dougie’s former teacher, to try to keep the investigation open.

Crooked Numbers follows Ray as he meets with Allison Rogers, a journalist he met several months earlier when he was on the police force and who is covering Dougie’s death for her newspaper.  Also involved in the investigation is Dennis Mercer, a detective who graduated from the police academy with Ray and was formerly romantically involved with Ray’s sister.  Dennis wants to believe the investigation is over, minimal as it was, but Allison and Ray persuade him to keep it open a few more days by talking about negative publicity for the police force if nothing more is seen to be done.  “We both know how they love a good cops-screwed-up piece next to a picture of the victim’s grieving mother,” Ray tells Dennis.

There is a terrific sense of place in Crooked Numbers.  The differences between Williamsburg, the section of Brooklyn where Dougie and his mother lived, and the Upper West Side of Manhattan are brilliantly portrayed.  As the author says, the distance is slight.  “Five miles.  Geographically.  Demographically, the Upper West Side might as well be on the other side of the world.”

Tim O’Mara also writes some memorable characters.  In addition to the ones mentioned above, there is Tito, head of the Brooklyn gang the Royal Family, and he doesn’t like the fact that someone put those “gang” beads around Dougie’s neck; no way was that kid a member of his gang.  There’s Elliot Henry Finch, a classmate of Dougie’s at the Academy who’s also a serious birdwatcher and computer nerd.  There are the two friends of Dougie’s from the Academy, Jack Quinn and Paulie Sherman.  And then there are Angel Rodriguez, a student at Ray’s public middle school who is being harassed and bullied by some older kids at his bus stop, and Angel’s father, who takes steps to stop it.

Crooked Numbers is the second in the Raymond Donne series, and I’m going back to read the first book, Sacrifice Fly.  I have no doubt it is as engrossing and well-written as its successor.

You can read more about Tim O’Mara at this web site.

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

V. I. (Vic) Warshawski’s friend Lottie Herschel was rescued from the Holocaust, transported to England on the Kindertransport with another young girl, Kathe Saginor.  That was more than seventy years ago, but the long arm of history has reached into present-day Chicago, bringing with it lies, betrayals, and murder.

Lottie was a child of the upper middle class in Vienna before the war.  Her playmate Kathe was the granddaughter of the Herschels’ seamstress.  Kathe’s own mother, Martina, was too involved in her scientific career to care for her daughter.

The two girls were separated upon their arrival in England and didn’t see each other for years afterward.  They led very different lives until Kathe, now renamed Kitty, ended up in Chicago, the city where Lotte resides and has a medical practice.  Lotte never married, but Kitty married an American serviceman and has a daughter, Judy, who became a drug addict and dealer.  It is Judy whose story precipitates Vic’s involvement in Lotte and Kitty’s tangled histories.

Searching for Judy, Vic finds an abandoned crystal meth-making house, a starved dog, and a man’s corpse.  When Vic tells Kitty what she has found, Kitty lets Vic know in no uncertain terms that she has no interest in where her daughter is or what trouble she is in now.

But Kitty is very concerned about Judy’s son Martin, who left their home and his job ten days ago and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.  Cordell Breen, the president of the company where Martin works as a computer programmer, wasn’t told that Martin hasn’t been at work for more than a week, and he is now concerned that the young man may have taken some important confidential information with him.

Critical Mass goes back and forth between the present in Chicago and the late thirties and early forties in Vienna.  Martin’s great-grandmother, Martina, was a brilliant physicist who lost her research and teaching jobs because she was Jewish.  She continued as best she could, reading scientific journals and making copious equations about heavy water and atomic molecules, often disagreeing with the conventional wisdom of the time.  Her research was ignored due to her religion and gender, but she persevered.  Sent to a concentration camp during the war, Martina was never heard from again.

Despite opposition from Kitty and Lotte, Vic decides to look for Judy and eventually for Martin.  This involves her with the family of Benjamin Dzornen, Martina’s mentor in Vienna and winner of the Nobel Prize for physics.  The remaining Dzornens, his two daughters and a son, have only contempt for Kitty, her daughter, and her grandson.  There’s a secret connecting these families–the Herschels, the Saginors, and the Dzornens–and Vic is determined to find out what it is, in addition to locating Martin and Judy.

V. I. is, as always, tough, determined, and willing to put herself in dangerous situations to get at the truth.  Warned off by friends and foes alike, she continues her search in order to ferret out the story of Kitty’s family.  Critical Mass is a powerful novel with fascinating characters, and the plot resonates with historical truths many people would prefer to forget.

You can read more about Sara Paretsky at her web site.

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

Rivers and mountains, trees and trails.  That’s what most people think of when they think of Montana, the Big Sky country.  But even beside the beautiful Papoose Mountains, there is murder.

Sheriff Martha Ettinger is looking for Nanika (Nicki) Martinelli, the fly fishing guide/dude ranch naturalist who is missing from the Culpepper ranch.  Nicki had gone out with a group of tourists and another guide from the ranch, said she would take the long road back alone, and never returned.

As part of the search party, Martha is riding up a mountain trail when she sees a body in the snow.  Closer examination shows that it’s not Nicki but one of the Culpepper wranglers who had started searching for her before the sheriff was called in.  And the wrangler has an elk’s antlers piercing his midsection.

The missing Martinelli woman had cast a spell over nearly all the men in the Madison River Valley.  Before she joined the staff at the Culpepper spread, she worked as a river guide at Sam Meslik’s place, a job that led to a brief sexual relationship between the two.  And just two nights before she went missing, Sam and the now dead wrangler got into a fist fight over Nicki.

The issue of wolves in Montana runs through the novel.  The reintroduction of wolves into the state in the mid 1990s was, and still is, controversial.  Most ranchers and farmers oppose it, claiming that the wolves would devastate animal herds, while environmentalists and tourism groups claim the wolves could be contained and bring in much needed revenue from outside the state.  In Dead Man’s Fancy, the anti-wolf group believes that Nicki was killed by a marauding pack of wolves, and after she has not been found following a search of several days, their point of view gains adherents.

Knowing that Sam is Sean Stranahan’s close friend, Martha calls Sean back from a fishing trip to talk to Sam and get the full story about his relationship with Nicki.  Sean, also a fishing guide, has a private investigator’s license and has helped Martha out in previous cases.  After speaking with Sam, he starts looking more deeply into the life of the missing Nicki.

His search takes him to the county where she had lived with her father, to a sheriff whose county has been poisoned by asbestos, to Martha’s cousin who is getting ready to marry a wealthy widow despite the opposition of her family.

The characters in Keith McCafferty’s series have grown and matured over the three novels in the series.  Sean is still a man searching for his place in the world, or at least his place in Montana, but he seems closer to finding it.  And Martha Ettinger has become more self-confident and assured in her role as sheriff.  They both have baggage from their pasts, but they seem to be more at ease with themselves and each other now.

Keith McCafferty brings the Treasure State to life.  His love for the outdoors is obvious and not surprising given his position as Survival and Outdoor Skills editor of Field & Stream.  Just as impressive as his ability to bring his home state alive is his ability to make his characters real.  Both recurring characters and new ones are vibrant, believable, and make us care about them.  I’m already eager to read the next book in the series.

You can read more about Keith McCafferty at this web site.

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

There aren’t many mysteries that leave you with a smile on your face.  But that’s what Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith did for me.

It’s not that this novel isn’t frightening.  It definitely is.  It’s simply that it’s so well written, its characters so well drawn, that when the book ends the way you hope it will, you’re totally satisfied. 

There are four main threads that tie the novel together, although at first they seem to be separate, unrelated strands.  First we are introduced to Joseph, a multilingual translator working in the Russian city of Kaliningrad, far from the capital.  He has transcribed notes for the conference at which he was translating, notes not in shorthand but in a secret code that only he is able to read.

The second thread takes us to the Moscow funeral of Mafia boss Grisha Grigorenko, his empire left up for grabs.  Who will be able to claim it and hold it:  his son Alexi, not considered to be the equal of his late father; Ape Beledon and his two sons, all three rival mobsters of the Grigorenkos; or the Shagelmans, a husband and wife specializing in banking and building schemes?

The third is the eponymous Tatiana, an investigative journalist in Moscow.  According to the newspapers and the police, she jumped to her death from her apartment window.  But those who knew her, or knew her simply by reputation, don’t believe that.  They say she was fearless and totally committed to uncovering the corruption rampant in the “new Russia” and would never have killed herself because she valued the importance of her work too much.  There has been no further investigation and no body available, so naturally police detective Arkady Renko gets involved.

And the fourth is Arkady’s semi-official foster son Zhenya, now seventeen and determined to join the Russian Army.  Because he’s still a minor, he needs Arkady’s signed permission to enlist, something that Arkady refuses to give him.  So Zhenya takes matters into his own hands with a bit of extortion.

The four threads eventually combine, tangle, and knot.  Arkady investigates the case, although his superiors tell him numerous times that there is no case; and there’s no body because, either accidentally or deliberately and in spite of written directions to the contrary, Tatiana’s body was cremated.  Still, Arkady plugs on.

Having read nearly all the previous Arkady Renko novels, I’m still in awe of his survival powers, first in the Communist Soviet Union and now in the “new Russia.”  The police are just as corrupt as they were decades earlier, and now Arkady must contend with the forces of the newly mega-rich Russians who have their own agenda.  Their luxury cars, their expensive jewels, their elegant dachas–these Russians don’t want to give them up and will use any means necessary to hold on to them.  How Arkady manages to survive in this world of government ineptitude and corruption and billionaire oligarchs is nothing short of miraculous.

I’ve been a fan of Martin Cruz Smith ever since his short-lived series, Gypsy in Amber and Canto for a Gypsy, appeared in the early 1970s.  I really enjoyed those novels and wish the series had continued.  But I find every Arkady Renko novel a thrilling read, so I can’t complain.

You can read more about Martin Cruz Smith at this web site.

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

Terry Shames has written a second novel about former police chief Samuel Craddock, and it’s just as good as her first, A Killing at Cotton Hill. 

Jarrett Creek, Texas, is a small town obsessed with its high school football team.  As the story opens, Samuel is on his way to the Town Cafe, where the locals meet daily, usually to discuss the fortunes of the team.  One of the regulars is Jack Harbin, a local man who was blinded and lost a leg while he was serving in the Gulf War.  Never married, Jack has been confined to a wheelchair since his return home and has been taken care of by his father, Bob.  When Samuel arrives at the Cafe, the Harbins are not there and they don’t answer their phone when Samuel calls.  Bothered by this departure from the Harbins’ regular routine, Samuel drives to their house and finds Bob lying unmoving on the grass and Jack on the sidewalk near his overturned wheelchair.

Bob is dead, apparently of a heart attack, and Jack’s fellow veterans rally around him to help him get on with his life.   When Jack’s younger brother Curtis arrives, the bad feeling between the siblings is evident.  Curtis wants Jack to sell the house and live in a veterans’ hospital, something Jack definitely doesn’t want to do.

When the preliminary autopsy results come back, they show that Bob had a large amount of Benadryl in his system.  Jack says that can’t be right, his father never  took any drug that would cause him to sleep so soundly that he wouldn’t hear if Jack called him during the night.  Curtis dismisses Jack’s statement out of hand, but it makes Samuel decide to look more closely into Bob’s death.

When Jack was in high school, his best friend was Woody Patterson, a teammate on the football team that Jack quarterbacked.  Both boys volunteered for the army upon graduation, but a previously unknown medical problem kept Woody home while Jack was sent to the Middle East where he was so grievously wounded.  After his return, Jack cut off contract with Woody; in fact, the two haven’t spoken in twenty years.  But now, after Bob’s death, Woody wants Jack to come to live with him, his wife, and their two children.  Then Jack is murdered, opening another criminal investigation.

Samuel is asked by the Texas Rangers to take over the investigation, as the Jarrett Creek’s sheriff is out of commission (read drying out) and the deputy isn’t deemed capable enough to replace him.  Samuel agrees, determined to find out the truth about Bob Harbin’s death and all that followed.

Terry Shames brings small-town Texas to life again, with its secrets and feuds going back decades.  The present-day economic crisis hasn’t improved lives or tempers either, and Samuel keeps coming across figurative locked doors and high walls in his attempt to solve the crime.  Samuel Craddock is as wise and compassionate as he was in the first novel.  The Last Death of Jack Harbin is a wonderful successor to A Killing at Cotton Hill.

You can read more about Terry Shames at this web site.

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

A honeymoon spent in a one room log cabin, on a frozen lake, locked in by the perfect storm.  That’s where Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne find themselves in this eighth novel in Julia Spencer-Fleming’s clerical/police series.

Clare Fergusson is the minister at St. Albans Episcopal Church and is newly married to Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne.   Actually, she’s a little too newly married for some of the parishioners and the church board, being five months pregnant after only three months of marriage.  There are those who think this is a blot on the church and its ministers, and Clare has been offered the option of resigning from St. Albans rather than facing a disciplinary panel.  If she resigns she would be free to lead another church in the diocese; if she’s fired, she won’t be allowed to do so.  She is given a week to make her decision.

At the same time, Russ is informed that the Millers Kill police force may be disbanded in an effort to save the town money and its duties taken over by the New York State Police.

Each keeping her/his secret from the other, Clare and Russ are determined to have their honeymoon as planned.  But three factors complicate this, and the three combine to make the plot of Through the Evil Days.

First is the disappearance of young Mikayla Johnson.  The foster home she was living in was set on fire, killing the girl’s foster parents, but Mikayla’s body wasn’t found.  Her situation is desperate because she is on life-saving drugs following a liver transplant, and how would the person who abducted her know that or be able to obtain the medication Mikayla needs?

The second strand involves the Young Mothers Program run by St. Albans.  Amber, one of the young women in the group, asks Clare for a ride up to the lake cabin near where Clare and Russ will be honeymooning and where Amber and her baby are supposed to meet her boyfriend.  Clare and Russ duly deposit the mother and child there, but when they return to check on her, she and her child are no longer at the cabin.

The third part of the plot is the romantic involvement between Kevin Flynn and Hadley Knox, two members of the Millers Kill police force.  Their relationship has been a difficult one, and just when it appears to be going well, Hadley’s former husband comes to town with a devastating ultimatum that could wreck not only her plans with Kevin but her job as well.

Through the Evil Days is wonderful, as is every other book in this series.  Clare and Russ are strong, believable, and anxious to have a happy marriage, but life keeps throwing them curveballs.  And the relationship between Kevin and Hadley, in love but facing hurdles neither one knows how to handle, asks the question:  is love enough?

You can read more about Julia Spencer-Fleming at this web site.

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

Navajo Nation Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito is enjoying a quiet staff breakfast at a small restaurant near Window Rock, Arizona.  As Bernadette and retired police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn leave the breakfast and walk to their vehicles a shot rings out and Leaphorn falls to the pavement, critically wounded.

Anne Hillerman’s first novel follows the path paved by her late father, the greatly admired mystery author Tony Hillerman.  The characters will be familiar to those who have read the previous Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee novels, but in Spider Woman’s Daughter it’s Bernie Manuelito who takes the lead role.

It’s hard for the police to find any motive for the shooting.  Leaphorn was well-respected by all members of the community, including those he apprehended.  Bilaganna, or revenge, is not a part of traditional Navajo culture, but it’s possible that whoever attempted to kill Leaphorn is either a white person or else an Indian who has fallen far from the values of the Navajo.

Although she has been taken off the case because she is a witness to the shooting, as is police procedure, Bernie cannot leave the shooting alone.  She continues to ask questions in her search for the shooter.  She tells Captain Largo, “This case is personal.  I promised I’d find whoever shot him.”  Largo responds, “I don’t want to have to fire you.  But I will if you can’t take orders.”

So instead of investigating the crime, Bernie is sent off to find Louisa Bourebonette, the woman Leaphorn lives with, and any relatives Leaphorn may have.  But Louisa isn’t at home or at work, and Bernie can’t find any relatives, so she decides to look for Leaphorn’s killer despite Largo’s orders.

The only possibly pertinent thing Bernie finds at Leaphorn’s house is a large envelope addressed to a Dr. John Collingsworth at the AIRC, a museum and gallery in Santa Fe.  She drives to Santa Fe to give Collingsworth the envelope, but he is disappointed when he opens it.  It’s Leaphorn’s bill, not the report he expected.  The AIRC is anticipating a huge donation of Indian works.  Given Leaphorn’s investigative background plus his knowledge of Indian pottery and rugs, Collingsworth had hired him to look over the valuations of the items donated to see if they were realistic.  But Leaphorn’s report is missing.

In addition to her unauthorized police work, Bernie is dealing with her own family issues.  Her sister Darleen and their mother are living together, an arrangement that sounds good on paper but isn’t working well.   Their mother is showing early signs of dementia and shouldn’t be left alone, but Darleen can’t be trusted to stay with her and resents her role as a caretaker.  She views Bernie as having it all–a loving husband in Jim Chee, an exciting job, and no real responsibility for their mother.

It’s a pleasure to read Ms. Hillerman’s debut novel.  Her characters are real, and her knowledge of the lore of the Diné (Navajo) people is profound.  She seamlessly weaves this information into the plot, and the reader feels as if she/he is taking a tour of the Navajo Nation (Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), a fascinating place to be.  Anne Hillerman has written what I hope will be the first in a long series about the continuing adventures of the Navajo police in general and Bernadette Manuelito in particular.

You can read more about Anne Hillerman at this web site.

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

Kinsey Millhone is back, and I’m delighted to see her.  There’s a lot going on in W is for Wasted–a will, long-lost relatives, an unethical private eye, a returning former lover–but it all hangs together, given Sue Grafton’s always excellent character studies and plots.  The story is told in the first person by Kinsey and in the third person by Pete Wolinsky, whom we discover is dead in the third sentence of the prologue.

It’s 1988, and Kinsey is taking a brief vacation from investigating.  Her bank balance is healthy, her needs are modest, and she’s delighted to have a few days to herself.  Then she gets a call from a friend at the coroner’s office, asking her to identify a body.  The deceased was homeless, and a slip of paper found in his pocket bore Kinsey’s name and phone number.

When Kinsey goes to view the body in the morgue she tells the coroner’s assistant she has never seen the man before.   Intrigued by why the deceased was apparently trying to contact her, she decides to try to find out who this man was.  From small acorns do mighty oaks grow.

Kinsey’s first stop is the area where the body was found, and there she meets three of the man’s friends.  After a bit of verbal sparring, one of the trio tells her Terrence was the dead man’s name, and Kinsey’s investigation begins.

Deceased private investigator Pete Wolinsky’s story is told by an unknown narrator.  He was a P.I. without a moral compass, a man who got others to do his investigating, falsified his expense accounts, owed money to countless businesses, didn’t file tax returns, and wasn’t above subtle extortion attempts.  That last one was a big mistake on his part.

As readers of the alphabet series know, Kinsey was orphaned at an early age and raised by her maternal aunt.  Aunt Gin wasn’t much of a warm-and-fuzzy person, and she apparently had no use for the members of her family other than Kinsey.  Thus Kinsey didn’t know, until years after her aunt’s death, that she had a large family on her mother’s side living not far from her home in Santa Teresa, California.

She’d never been much interested in them and had seen no reason to look into her father’s side of the family.  But now they’ve entered her life with a vengeance.

Several familiar characters are in W, and very welcome they are.  Of course there’s Henry Pitts, the octogenarian landlord, former baker, and current provider of delicious meals and desserts for Kinsey; his older brother William, a confirmed hypochondriac; Rosie Pitts, recently married to William and owner of the nearby Hungarian restaurant where Kinsey eats most of her meals; and Kinsey’s former lover, Robert Dietz.  And there’s a new addition:  Ed the cat, who soon has Kinsey and Henry eating out of his hand (or paw).

W is for Wasted is another winning novel by Sue Grafton.  It’s fun for me, who knew Kinsey from the beginning (A is for Alibi), to follow her personal and professional life.  She has not remained a stagnant figure, stuck in time, but has grown into a mature woman who still has the recognizable quirks that made her a success from the beginning of the series.

You can read more about Sue Grafton at this web site.

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

I’m usually not a huge fan of short series, generally finding them less satisfying than novels.    The exception to this is the Sherlock Holmes canon of stories, which I think are greatly superior to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s full-length books.  So I picked up The Mystery Box not expecting to be overwhelmed by the contents.  But I was wrong, very wrong.

Several of the authors were familiar to me (Jan Burke, Laura Lippman, Joseph Finder), while others were  new to me (C. E. Lawrence, Mary Anne Kelly).  But each story was a gem, perfectly written and totally satisfying.

The unifying theme of the collection is given away in the title–no mystery there.  Every story had to contain a mystery box.  What the box contained was obviously up to each author.

I’ll start with Jan Buke’s “The Amiable Miss Edith Montague,” the first story in the collection.  The narrator’s great-aunt, Miss Edith Montague, has been murdered.  Very wealthy and popular with all the people in the town, she raised the narrator after the death of his parents.  She was so generous with her time and money that no one seems to have benefited by her death…except for the person whose secret lay in the box and who killed to protect it.

Then there’s “Heirloom” by Joseph Finder.  An ordinary middle-aged couple is invited to the home of their new neighbors, a young and wealthy couple who bought the house next door to them on Nantucket.  No sooner does the older couple arrive for a barbecue than the husband starts inserting sly remarks into the conversation about the many problems the house has and why it took so long for it to be sold.  And no, the heirloom in the title refers not to jewels or valuable manuscripts but to tomatoes!  You’ll have to read the story to find out why.

The final story of the twenty-one is probably the funniest short story I’ve ever read.  “Remmy Rothstein Toes the Line (annotated)” by Karin Slaughter is so clever, so unexpected, so wild…I’m stumped for how to describe it.  I’ll simply say that it’s a story about an adjudicator for a records-setting book trying to re-establish herself as reliable after an episode she refers to only as “the domino debacle.”

Remmy Rothstein is attempting to set a new world record for the Longest Tongue in the World (man)–I kid you not.  The story’s characters include Mindy Patel, the adjudicator; Remmy Rothstein, aka the Cajun Jew, trying to get into the world book of records; his one-legged albino African-American half-brother, Buell Rabinowitz; and their incredibly foul-mouthed mother, Rebekkah.  Oh yes, and the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, is a “character” essential to the story.  And about the mystery box in this story?  Read it and cringe.

I’ve described only three stories in The Mystery Box, leaving you to discover the other eighteen on your own.  Brad Meltzer did a fabulous job in bringing this group of authors together for our reading pleasure.  In addition to enjoying the contents of this collection, an added plus is discovering new authors to add to our reading lists.  I know I’ve added to mine.

You can read more about Brad Meltzer at this web page.

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

Virgil Cain needs a few dollars to pay his tax bill, so when two men from the production company that’s shooting a movie nearby ask to rent his two Percherons for the film at five hundred dollars a day, he agrees.  Then it turns out that they need a wrangler to handle the horses, given that their leading man has a horse phobia, so Virgil is going to get an additional five hundred dollars a day for himself.  Sounds good, even though Virgil probably hasn’t seen a Hollywood film made after 1970.  Easy money, right?

Shoot the Dog is the third Virgil Cain mystery.  Virgil is a farmer and cattle rancher in upstate New York, a man without a plasma television set, a cell phone, or an answering machine/voice mail on his landline.  But he’s content with his life and very happy about his relationship with Claire, a New York state trooper.

He doesn’t quite see what all the fuss regarding the film is about, just because Olivia Burns is coming to town to star in “Frontier Woman.”  In fact, even after he’s hired, he remains unmoved by the hoopla surrounding the movie.  That is, until Olivia’s body is found in the river.

Olivia was the nicest person involved in the film.  The clueless director, Robb Fetterman, hasn’t read the book on which the movie is based; the director’s wife and the film’s co-producer, Samantha Sawchuk, will do anything to get the necessary funding for the film, including lying, backstabbing, and firing people who are in her way; Levi Brown is another producer and is the self-absorbed, self-proclaimed “money man”; and Ronnie Red Hawk, a pseudo-Indian and multi-millionaire, is the latest addition to the list of producers.

Brad Smith’s ear for dialog is terrific, as are his depictions of the characters in the novel.  The movie-town threesome of Robb, Sam, and Levi is brilliantly written.  It’s hard to decide which member of the trio is more unappealing; I found myself fervently rooting against each one of them.  And Ronnie Red Hawk, with his delusions of grandeur and his preparation for his acceptance speech at the Oscars based upon his twenty-four hours as a movie backer and producer, is a masterful portrait.  Indeed, a scummier group would be hard to find.

On the other hand, you will find yourself totally delighted by Virgil Cain.   He’s down-to-earth, hard-working, and intelligent enough to know when to appear a trifle slow.  If the movie people want to see him as a rube, a small town nobody, that’s okay with him, as long as they pay him a thousand dollars a day for himself and his horses.  His put-downs of the Hollywood types are swift and to the point.

How did Brad Smith write two previous books that got past me?  I’m going to place my order for Crow’s Landing and Red Means Run right now.

You can read more about Brad Smith at this web site.

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

Life in mid-sixties Brooklyn was tough, especially for the lower middle class.  Like Haight-Ashbury, Brooklyn had hippies and drugs.  But it also had bombings and murders.

In 1966, Moe Prager was a student at Brooklyn College, an urban commuter school that was one of New York City’s prestigious tuition-free colleges.  You had to be smart to gain entrance into Brooklyn College, and Moe is smart.  But he’s unhappy too, unhappy with his uninteresting social life, unhappy to be still living with his mother and father and two siblings while he knows that other, more fortunate twenty-year-olds are living in dorms on green campuses and having a true college experience.

Moe’s closest friend is Bobby Friedman, another Brooklyn College student but one who’s not as serious or rule-bound as Moe.  Bobby is out to make money, lots of money, as quickly as possible.  Bobby had been dating the beautiful Samantha Hope, another college student, when she and a friend were blown to pieces in an explosion.  The police believe that the two were killed when a bomb they were planning to throw exploded too soon.  But none of their friends in the college leftist movement believes that their two friends would have been planning to injure innocent people.

Then Moe’s girlfriend tells him to keep away from Bobby, that Bobby’s in danger.  Moe doesn’t believe her, but the following night a car tries to run Bobby down.  Moe pushes him out of the way, and Bobby makes light of the situation in his usual style.  Was it an accident caused by the icy streets, or, impossible as it seems, did someone deliberately try to run the man down?

Moe Prager is a wonderful protagonist.   Onion Street is the eighth book in this series.   There’s always a lot of backstory by the time there are seven previous books in a series, but because this novel is told in flashback, except for the first and last chapters, it will tell you all you need to know about Moe and his relationships.  He’s actually telling this story to his daughter Sarah after they’ve been to Bobby’s funeral, where the rabbi has given the departed a fulsome sendoff.  Obviously, the rabbi didn’t know Bobby as well as Moe did.

Sarah has asked Moe numerous times why he became a cop in the first place, and he’s always avoided telling her the reason.  After the funeral he finally does, starting with the events of 1967.  When he’s finished telling Sarah his story, she says, “I guess those were very different times.”  Moe’s response is succinct:  “Sometimes, when I think back to those days, I can’t even imagine I lived through them.”

I gave a rave review to Innocent Monster, the sixth Moe Prager novel, on this blog in July 2010.  I missed reviewing Hurt Machine, but I’m back in the Moe Prager fold once again.

You can read more about Reel Farrel Coleman at his web site.

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

Alexandra James, red-haired Cambridge journalist, is always working on a story.  That’s how she keeps her life in order, because if she has too much free time, the memories come barreling back.

Alexandra is employed by the New England Chronicle, and her beat is education.  In a city with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to say nothing of other universities across the river (Boston University, Boston College, Simmons, and others too numerous to count), there’s always something going on.  But the new assignment she’s given by the paper’s editor, Hyde Rawlins, is the most intriguing and dangerous one she’s ever covered.

Waiting for a friend at a Cambridge bar, Alex gets a text sent to all Chronicle reporters that a body has been found outside the Eliot House residence at Harvard and asking for a reporter to get there ASAP.  Since Alex is practically around the corner, she texts the editor that she’ll go.

Never a shrinking violet, Alex manages to get past the police lines and into Eliot House but isn’t able to get much information.  Later the university puts out a statement that an alumnus has fallen to his death from one of the House windows; the body is that of Thomas Carlyle, son of the legal adviser to the president of the United States.

Because Thom had just returned from a year at Cambridge University in England and Alex had also been a student there, she convinces Hyde to send her to England to follow the story, to find out why this bright and well-liked young man fell to his death only hours after he returned from his graduate year abroad.  Finding the answers to this question proves much harder and more dangerous than Alex had supposed.

At Cambridge, Alex meets Petronella Black, Thom’s former girlfriend.  She’s a “right piece of work,” according to the “bedder,” or chambermaid, at the college.  When Alex knocks on Petronella’s door there’s a man in her room, Lucien Sly, and it’s very obvious that the two had been in bed together.  It’s only three days after Thom’s death, Alex thinks.  Not much heartbreak here.

The plot line takes the reader from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Cambridge, England, with a stop in Pakistan along the way.  The characters include the wealthy and politically connected Carlyle family, the glamorous and spoiled Petronella Black, the attractive and aristocratic Lucian Sly, Alex’s demanding yet compassionate editor Hyde Rawlins, and the mysterious Pakistani scientist Nadeem Siddiqui.  Each has a distinctive voice and an important presence in the novel.

Alex James is a very appealing heroine.  She’s tough, definitely not shy, and extremely confident in the way she goes about getting a story.  But deep inside her there’s a secret that she’s hidden from nearly everyone.  And, as every mystery reader knows, secrets have a way of not staying hidden.  They often emerge at the most inauspicious times.

Mary Louise Kelly is a broadcast journalist and has the background to make Alex a true-to-life protagonist.  The plot is totally believable, as are the characters.  Anonymous Sources is the first book in what I hope will be a long-running series.

You can read more about Mary Louise Kelly at this web site.

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