Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Reviews

Before we get too nostalgic about the “good old days,” perhaps we should reflect for a moment about Victorian England.  No child labor laws meant that children as young as five worked twelve hour days as chimney sweeps and in coal mines, to name just two perilous fields.  Boys were stuffed up chimneys to sweep out the accumulated coal dust; boys and girls spent their working days in the narrow alleys of pitch black mines, waiting to open and close the doors for the coal-laden trolleys.  And girls as young as ten were “tweenies,” maids in well-to-do households who got up before daybreak to light the fireplaces.  Plus there were the “workhouses,” but the less said about them, the better.

It’s the year 1889 in London, in the latter part of Queen Victoria’s reign.  Scotland Yard is trying to recover from the horrific murders committed by the man known as Jack the Ripper.  Morale at the Yard is low, and the public’s opinion of the Yard is even lower.  The new commissioner of police, Sir Edward Bradford, is determined to modernize the force and bring respect back to the institution.

The Yard opens with the discovery of a corpse inside a steamer trunk found in a London railway station. The body is that of Inspector Christian Little, his eyelids and lips sewn shut, and the officers standing by the body are naturally horrified.  The newest detective on the force, Detective Inspector Walter Day, is given the assignment of bringing the killer to justice.  And Dr. Bernard Kingsley, a surgeon who has been giving of his time and knowledge in an effort to bring new forensic practices to Scotland Yard, is joining the effort.

Two lowly constables in the already stretched police force are looking into another crime, one officer reluctantly and one whose background makes the case a personal crusade.  Nevil Hammersmith, remembering only too well his own upbringing as a child laborer, is horrified when he finds a boy’s corpse stuffed inside a chimney in a doctor’s house.  “You must stop thinking of this body as a boy.  This is a laborer….Nobody cares about this body, and it is not our job to take up lost cases,” one of Nevil’s superiors tells him.  But Nevil persists in his efforts to find who left the young boy wedged up the chimney and didn’t care enough to return to get him out before he baked to death.

What struck me most in reading The Yard is how Alex Grecian, a first-time novelist, made each character stand out.  Between the police in the newly formed Murder Squad, the two prostitutes still reeling from the unsolved Jack the Ripper attacks, the forward-thinking doctor and his young daughter who is his assistant, and the force’s official tailor, there are more than a couple of dozen characters to keep track of.  By his skillful writing, the author makes that an easy and pleasurable task.  I found that I cared about or was fascinated by each one of them.  The Yard is a masterful debut.

You can read more about Alex Grecian at this web site.

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

The Last Kashmiri Rose is a terrific mix of multiple murders, sexual tension, and exotic atmosphere.   It’s a cozy read that holds your interest to the end.

It’s 1922, four years after the end of the Great War, and Commander Joseph Sandilands of Scotland Yard is on his way home from India.  He’d been assigned to Calcutta for six months to help the Bengal Police and is more than anxious to return to London.  But on the day before he is to leave, a formal request comes to him from the acting governor of Bengal to come to his office at once.

The governor’s niece, Nancy Drummond, is there waiting for Joe.  She brings photographs of the bloody corpse of her close friend, Peggy Somersham, who was found a week earlier in her bath with her wrists cut.  Nancy insists that Peggy was happy in India, happy in her new marriage, and would have had no reason to kill herself.  Nancy, who had been a nurse during the War, thinks it would have been nearly impossible for Peggy to have cut her own wrists the way they were cut.

Even stranger, according to Nancy, is that in addition to Peggy, four other officers’ wives in the Greys regiment have died in various types of accidents over a period of years, each during the month of March.  One was killed in a fire, one thrown from a horse, one bitten by a snake, one drowned while crossing a river in a boat, and now Peggy has been found dead.  Those are too many bodies for Nancy to believe that they all were accidents, and she wants Joe Sandilands to investigate before he returns home.

The area’s police superintendent clearly believes Peggy’s death was a suicide, and he’s obviously annoyed that Joe has been called in.  He’s not eager to offer much help, but he does assign an Indian officer, Naurung Singh, to assist.  That’s as far as he’ll go because he believes that simply telling the other officers’ wives “not to worry their pretty little heads” about this case is all the attention it deserves.

But Naurung agrees with Nancy that the deaths of these five women are not accidents, and Joe starts looking into the case.  And it doesn’t hurt that his interest in the charming, vivacious Nancy Drummond, wife of the Collector of Panikhat (a title that meant administrator and revenue officer in the former British Civil Service) is returned.

Pre-independent India is a fascinating place.  The Last Kashmiri Rose takes us to a place that no longer exists and will never exist again.  The British were the rulers, the natives the servants.  The army officers and civil servants and their families lived an almost fairy tale life.  The men paraded daily in their uniforms, the women visited each other and did small charitable deeds for the villagers while their food was prepared and served, their clothing washed and ironed, their children looked after, and their household details taken care of without their noticing.  Whether you think this was good or bad might depend on whether you envision yourself as a British civil servant or an Indian house servant.

Regardless of one’s opinion, the novel makes this life alive again.  The Last Kashmiri Rose is the first in the Joe Sandilands series; there are nine others.  But the first novel is a great place to start.

You can read more about Barbara Cleverly at this web site.

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

One might imagine that a Catholic monastery, hidden for hundreds of years in the remote Quebec wilderness, would be the last place to look for a murder.  But at Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loupes (among the wolves), that is exactly what you would find.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his assistant Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Surete de Quebec are called to the monastery following the death of its proctor, Frere Mathieu.  The proctor was struck down in the abbot’s private garden and was found there by a fellow monk.  And although the community of Saint Gilbert has taken a vow of silence and willingly removed itself from the world, its abbot, Dom Philippe, has called the Surete to investigate this murder.

Saint Gilbert’s has recently become world famous for its recording of Gregorian chants.  Throughout its history, chapters in the Saint Gilbert’s order have practiced near-total silence except for their chanting of prayers several times a day.  A year ago a recording was made of several of these chants and released to the families and friends of the monks.

What then happened was a modern-day phenomenon–suddenly the recording was being heard all over the world and thousands of copies of the CD were sold.  What followed, of course, was an avalanche of unwanted visitors to the remote abbey–news helicopters, visitors from other religious groups, pilgrims–all wanting to meet the monks who had unwittingly given this gift to the wider world.

That avalanche set the scene for the major rift that has split the abbey–those monks, led by the abbot, who want to continue the order’s self-imposed exile and refuse to consider making another recording, and those led by the proctor, who see the recording and its attendant wealth as a gift from God that should be repeated.  The tension comes to a boil when Mathieu is murdered and the community is further divided.

Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Bouvier are dealing with their own personal problems as well as those in the abbey.  A recent police maneuver that Gamache headed went terribly wrong, resulting in the death of four policemen.  In a situation similar to the world-wide interest in the abbey’s Gregorian chants, a video of the raid and its horrific aftermath that was made solely for the Surete was released and went viral.

In that raid, Jean-Guy was badly wounded and became dependent on painkillers.  Although he has been off them for three months at the time the novel opens, it is obvious that his mental health is still fragile.  In addition, he and Annie, Gamache’s daughter, are in love and planning to announce their engagement, but Jean-Guy is fearful of Annie’s parents’ reaction, afraid that they won’t welcome him into their family.

There is a great deal of backstory in The Beautiful Mystery, both in terms of the history of the persecution of the monks of the Saint Gilbert order, going back to the Inquisition, and Gamache’s tenure in the Surete.  All the characters are well drawn, and the author’s obvious love of music, to which she refers in the acknowledgements, comes across throughout the book.  The only thing that would have made this book even better would have been the inclusion of a CD of Gregorian chants.  Lacking that, the next best option is going to YouTube:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MbDqc3x97k to hear chanting for yourself.

Louise Penny has written another intriguing chapter in the lives of Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Bouvier, this one with much personal pain suffered by the two men.  The story is deeper and more heartfelt than many others in the genre and not one the reader will easily forget.

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

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

These Scandinavian authors certainly know how to freeze their readers’ blood.

Carl Morck has been exiled to Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold case office.  And exiled is the right word, because Department Q is in the police department’s basement, far from the bustle of others doing their work.   However, it’s also far from the higher-ups who might be tempted to oversee Carl’s work, and Carl, ever the loner, likes that just fine.

Due to Carl’s outstanding work in a previous cold case, he’s greeted as a returning hero by his colleagues after his three-week vacation.  His Iraqui assistant, Assad, is delighted to see him, but Carl still isn’t sure how he feels about Assad.  He is sure, however, how he feels about his new secretary, Rose, a police recruit who failed her driver’s test and thus must make do with being a secretary rather than a detective; he’s sure he’s going to take the first opportunity to get her transferred out of his department.

Immediately after Carl’s return to work, a file appears on his desk that contains reports of a double murder that took place in 1987, twenty-five years ago.   A brother and sister were brutally killed in their parents’ vacation home.  There are two strange features about the case:  a man confessed nine years afterward to the killings and has been in prison ever since, and no one will admit to putting the folder in Department Q’s files.

Although there was no discernible motive, a group of students at a local boarding school were suspected of the murders and with involvement in other incidents as well.  There were five males and one female in the group, all of whom except one came from extremely wealthy homes.  The man who confessed to the crimes is Bjarne Thogersen, the only one of the group who came from modest means.

When it came time for the trial, the other students’ fathers were very visible in court, with their high-paid attorneys, and no charges were ever filed against their sons.  Now grown men themselves, the former students have surpassed their own fathers in the accumulation of wealth:  Ditlev Fram, now owner of, among other things, a string of medical facilities specializing in plastic surgery to the rich and famous; Torsten Florin, clothing designer; Ulrik Dyboll, financial wizard; and the late Kristian Wolf, killed by an accidental self-inflicted wound while hunting.  The lone woman, Kirsten-Marie Lassen, has disappeared and hasn’t been seen in years.

Intrigued by the fact that the file on this double killing seems to have come out of nowhere, Carl begins an investigation, spurred on by the fact that the father of the brother and sister killed was a policeman, Henning Jorgensen.  Immediately after seeing his children’s mutilated bodies, Henning went home and turned his gun on himself.  Now there is only the mother left, and her mind and body have been unhinged by this triple tragedy.

The characters in The Absent One are wonderfully drawn.  Carl Morck is a man who wants to be left alone to pursue his cases, but naturally departmental politics interfere.  Assad is learning the ropes as an “assistant assistant detective,” but I’m sure I’m not the only reader who thinks there’s more to this recent immigrant than meets the eye.  And when Rose is introduced, she of the dyed jet-black hair and braying laugh, we know there will be fireworks between her and Carl.

You can read more about Jussi Adler-Olsen at his web site.

“Wow” is the only word with which to begin a review of Blue Monday.  It expresses my thoughts about every part of the novel–the plot, the characters, the setting.

Two sisters are walking home from school in 1987.  The nine-year-old girl wants to get to the neighborhood candy store quickly and is annoyed that the younger one, age five, is loitering and holding her back.  Finally, the older girl’s desire for candy gets too strong, and she runs ahead to start looking at the display cases and choosing her treats.  And then, two minutes later when she looks around, her sister is gone.

Skip ahead to the present and meet Frieda Klein, a well-regarded, thirty-something psychiatrist.  A new patient is brought to Frieda at the clinic where she works.  Alan Dekker had originally been referred to another psychiatrist, but that referral didn’t work out well.  It went so badly, in fact, that Alan is thinking of making an official complaint.  Thus the patient is brought to Frieda in hopes she can work with him and possibly dissuade him from reporting the first doctor.

Alan at first seems to be in the middle of a mid-life crisis, although he’s a bit young for that, but it gradually comes out that he’s having a type of panic attack.  He and his wife want children, but lately he has been unable to perform sexually and refuses to consider adoption.  He wants a child of his own, he says, both to his wife and Frieda.

He’s been dreaming about this child and describes the child and his dream in detail:  it will be a boy, five years old, with red hair like his, and he’s teaching him to play football.  He admits to Frieda that he’s had similar attacks and dreams in the past, when he was in his early twenties, but that time his dreams involved a young girl.  Alan doesn’t know why he’s having these attacks and dreams again, more than twenty years later, but they are definitely impacting his life and his relationship with his wife.

And then, several days after Alan discusses his dream with Frieda, a five-year-old boy is snatched from in front of his school in an almost exact repeat of the abduction of the five-year-old girl twenty-two years earlier.  And Frieda isn’t sure what to make of Alan and his dream.

This powerful novel is the first in a series featuring Frieda Klein.  We’re given little information about her.  She’s single, never been married, and for some reason is estranged from her birth family.  Her only contact with relatives is with her neurotic sister-in-law Olivia whose husband, Frieda’s brother, has left her for a much younger woman, and her niece Chloe who has been cutting herself for years.

Blue Monday is a powerful novel, one that will have your heart racing.  All the characters have deep layers, some of which are peeled off one by one, but there are always some remaining.  The ending has multiple surprises, but they all make sense.

Nicci French is the pseudonym of Sean French and Nicci Gerrard, an English husband and wife writing team.  The second book in the Frieda Klein series has just been released in the United States, and you may be sure I’ll be reading it before the year ends.

You can read more about the Nicci French collaboration on their web site.

You can see my entire blog at:  http://www.marilynsreads.com

What starts off perfectly for Crissa Stone as the last in a series of ATM robberies ends with her two partners shooting each other to death.  Not exactly the way Crissa had hoped it would end.

In Kings of Midnight, Crissa is the brains behind a number of successful robberies.   Forced to run after the murders, she now needs a way to launder the stolen money, all $340,00 of it.  So she goes to an old friend, Jimmy Peaches, a former mobster now living in a nursing home, to ask for his help.

At the same time, another mob-connected guy, Benny Roth, has seen his carefully constructed life fall apart after he’s found by some wise guys who think he knows where millions of dollars from a twenty-year-old robbery can be found.  Benny manages to escape, grab his girlfriend and a suitcase, and run.  And, as the plot would have it, he runs to Jimmy Peaches.

Nobody in Kings of Midnight is blameless.  Crissa has been a thief for years and now needs money to support her young daughter, who is living with Crissa’s cousin, and her lover, whom she is hoping will soon be released from prison.  She’s willing to do almost anything to get the money she needs, but she knows she needs to be careful; there are bad guys after her.  “Nothing’s ever easy, she thought.  No matter how much you plan, allow for every contingency.  Things go bad, and then you have to work twice as hard just to get back to where you started.”  But Crissa’s determined to do what she has to do for her daughter and her lover.

Benny is in a similar situation.  Many of the old mobsters are dead, and the ones who are alive want him to lead them to those millions.  Benny needs to protect himself and his girlfriend, not an easy task.  Although he was involved with gangsters when he was younger, Benny was never a killer, but right now he’s surrounded by men who are.

Wallace Stroby has written a thriller that has you cheering for the “bad guys,” hoping they don’t get caught by the police or killed by the really bad guys.  It’s a tightrope act for an author, but Stroby handles it perfectly.  His characters, flawed as they are, have enough humanity in them to touch us and make us like them.  We know they are on the wrong side of the law and that they chose to be there, but we still want them to come out on top.

You can read more about Wallace Stroby at his web site.

Sometimes a book is so good that when you finish reading it you simply have to close your eyes and relish it for a moment. Talking to the Dead is one of those books.

This is the first mystery I’m blogging about that takes place in modern Wales; the only other Welsh book on my blog is One Corpse Too Many, one of the Brother Cadfael twelfth-century mysteries by the late Ellis Peters.

Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths is an honors graduate in philosophy from Cambridge University and a relatively new member of the Cardiff police force. She already has a bit of a reputation for unorthodox behavior–when a suspect made some inappropriate advances to her, she broke his kneecap and three of his fingers.

Two bodies are found in a shabby, seemingly abandoned house in the city.  They are identified as Janet Mancini, a part-time prostitute with a drug habit, and her six-year-old daughter April.  In the midst of the squalor the police come across a credit card belonging to Brendan Rattigan, a wealthy businessman who died in a plane crash several months before the book opens.  What could this card be doing in Janet Mancini’s possession?

The narrative is in the first person, in Fiona’s voice.  We know almost from the beginning there is something off, not quite right about her. She’s not able to show emotions, and only by viewing what those around her are showing is she able to approximate the appropriate ones–fear, happiness, surprise.  And, to the best of her memory, she has never in her life cried.  In fact, she doesn’t know what tears would feel like–would they be hot, would they hurt?  She simply doesn’t know.

Fiona is sent with another officer to interview Cardiff’s prostitutes, hoping for a clue into Janet’s murder.  The women are initially reluctant to speak, not having had good experiences with the police, but they open up to Fiona a bit more willingly after a second prostitute is murdered.  They have to decide which is more frightening–talking to the police and hoping for protection or waiting for the killer to strike again.

Fiona is also investigating the case of a former police detective who will soon be on trial for embezzlement.  She thinks there’s a connection between his case and the murders, but no one else seems to share her feelings.  So she’s working overtime to follow her instincts and trying to connect the cases.

Fiona Griffiths is a remarkable character.  She’s smart, intuitive, courageous.  She’s trying to understand who she is, both personally and professionally, but she is plagued by frequent night terrors that she can’t explain, even to herself.  There were two years in her mid-teens when she had a complete mental breakdown, and neither she nor the mental health professionals who tried to help were successful in figuring out the cause or causes.

Following Fiona as she tries to deal with the blank spots in her memory is an important part of the novel.  When the book ends and the explanation given, I promise that you will not be unmoved.

The other characters in Talking to the Dead are wonderful too.  Her superior officer, her colleague who might become something more, her loving parents are all beautifully and realistically drawn.  This is a mystery but also a story of a young woman trying hard to find her place in the world.  It’s a remarkable debut.

You can read more about Harry Bingham at his web site.

Who am I to argue with the late, great Tony Hillerman?  He said “[Coel is] a master,” and I agree.

Buffalo Bill’s Dead Now, the latest in the Wind River series, again takes the reader to the home of the Arapaho Indians of Wyoming.  The two protagonists in the series are Vicky Holden, an Indian lawyer with a strong sense of personal responsibility to her clients, and Father John O’Malley, a Catholic priest who has served at the St. Francis mission for ten years.  As the story opens, the Arapaho Museum, located in the mission, is anticipating the arrival of priceless artifacts from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show of the 1890s.  Black Heart, chief of the Araphoes and a valued member of the show, had a beautiful collection of Indian jewelry, clothing, and headdresses, some belonging to him and some to his father, who had fought in the Battle of Little Big Horn against General George Armstrong Custer.

When the show was touring in Berlin at the end of the nineteenth century, the most valuable items in the show were either hidden by someone in the show to protect them or stolen.  At any rate, although Black Heart and the rest of Buffalo Bill’s troupe returned home, the artifacts never did.  And to this day, various families on the Wind River rez are still fighting over what happened to Black Heart’s legacy.

The memorabilia had been donated to the museum by Trevor Platt, a newcomer to the area, who approached Father John about the items.  Trevor arranged for them to be shipped from Berlin, where they were found when an old building was about to be demolished, more than one hundred years after their disappearance.  Trevor told Father John that he bought the antiques in order to return them to the heirs for display in the museum.  But during the brief time between the cartons’ arrival at the small local airport in Wyoming and their delivery to the mission’s museum the following day, the cartons had been unpacked, the items removed, and the cartons resealed.

An interesting sidelight to the main story is the divergence of views concerning the Indians who traveled with Buffalo Bill to Europe.  Some Americans, including the Secretary of Indian Affairs, thought the show celebrated the “savage” life the Indians had lived before white settlers went west to “civilize” them, and these people were instigating for the Indians to be forced to leave the show and returned to their various reservations.  Others realized that the show was the Indians’ best opportunity to earn a living and to display at least some part of their culture to the wider world.

While trying to find the missing treasures, Vicky and Father John become ever more aware of their attraction to each other, and adding fuel to that particular fire is the return of Vicky’s former law partner and lover, Adam Lone Eagle, to town.  He wants to rekindle both his romance with Vicky and their law partnership, but Vicky isn’t sure about either one.

I found it fascinating to learn about the Arapahos, both those in the present day and those who lived in the nineteenth century.  All of them came alive for me, even those who had been dead over a hundred years, thanks to the skill of Margaret Coel.

Margaret Coel has added another winning entry to the Wind River series.  You can read more about her at her web site.

It’s Concord, New Hampshire, in the very near future.  But, unfortunately, there’s not much future left.

Hank Palace, less than two years on the Concord police force, is about the only person there who still believes it’s important to do the job.  The issue is that in less than six months the earth will be hit by a giant asteroid, an upcoming event that has people leaving their homes, jobs, spouses, and often killing themselves rather than waiting for the collision.   According to the scientists, at least half of the world’s population will die when the asteroid hits, bringing with it earthquakes and tsunamis.  Kind of the end of the world as we know it.

Concord seems to be a “hanger town,” with people hanging themselves in any available space by any available means.  So no one is surprised when a report comes in from a quasi-McDonald’s (nearly all the real ones have closed) that there’s a man hanging in the men’s bathroom.  Hank is the only one who thinks it’s possible that the man was murdered rather than having killed himself.

The assistant district attorney assigned to oversee the case and Hank’s fellow detectives all believe it’s suicide, and even if it’s not, what difference could it make when everyone will be dead in just a few short months.  But to Hank, newly promoted to the detective section and idealistic, it does make a difference, and he receives reluctant permission to investigate Peter Anthony Zell’s death.

Both Peter’s boss, Theodore Gompers, and his co-worker, Naomi Eddes, describe Peter as a loner, a hard worker, someone who kept to himself and seemed the same as always when he left work on the night of his death.  The elderly security guard in the office building says that a red truck picked Peter up that night, a truck the guard had never seen before.

In addition to Zell’s co-workers, Hank also interviews J. T. Toussaint, a childhood friend of Zell’s. Toussaint tells Hank that he and Zell had been close friends for years.   Then he completely lost touch with Zell when the latter went off to college and Toussaint remained in Concord doing construction jobs.  He tells Hank that Zell called him up a few months ago, out of the clear blue sky, and they’d been getting together ever since.  He admits picking Zell up the night of his death, but he knows no more than that. They had a couple of drinks, went to a movie, and then parted ways.  He says he never saw his friend again.

It’s Hank Palace’s youth and naivete that keep him on the job.  He can’t believe that finding out the truth about Peter Zell’s death isn’t important, and just as important is bringing the murderer, if there is one, to justice.  The fact that “justice” may end in six months isn’t important to him; he’s got a job to do and he’ll do it until the end.

The Last Policeman is a wonderful mystery, of course, and an excellent character study as well.  If you knew that the Earth would be destroyed in the very near future, what would you do?  Do you have a bucket list, or would you remain with your family, in your job, until the very end?  By the way the men and women in the novel react, their characters, foibles, and emotions are revealed.  Some react the way the reader is led to expect, and some surprise one totally.

You can read more about Ben H. Winters at his web site.

In Dublin, newspaper magnate Richard Jewell is sitting on a chair in his sumptuous study.  Well, his body is sitting on the chair; much of his head is elsewhere.  There’s a shotgun in his hands, but the police aren’t sure it’s really a suicide.

A Death in Summer brings readers back in time more than half a century.  Diamond Dick, as Jewell was known to friends and foes alike, was a tough businessman; like a diamond, he had more than one facet to his persona.  He was ruthless, but he also gave generously to various charities, although no one could say for certain if that was because he truly believed in their aims or if he wanted to better solidify his place in Dublin society.

Inspector Hackett is called in to investigate the death.  Francoise d’Aubigny, Jewell’s widow, professes to be “baffled” by her husband’s death, but she certainly doesn’t appear saddened or distraught.  She explains to Hackett that she and her husband had lived separate lives and she doesn’t understand, or says she doesn’t, why her husband’s death by suicide should interest anyone except herself, their eight-year-old daughter, and Jewell’s sister Dannie.  But then Hackett tells Francoise that he thinks her husband did not kill himself.

Hackett calls in the state pathologist, but because that doctor is ill Hackett’s friend Dr. Quirke comes instead.  The two have worked together before, and it’s not long before Quirke is doing some investigating on his own, with special attention paid to the beautiful and seductive Francoise.

Hackett learns that the deceased’s estate manager, Maguire, had served a prison term for manslaughter; that Jewell’s business competitor, Carlton Sumner, was trying to take over Jewell’s newspaper empire; that Teddy Sumner, Carlton’s son, who had been sent to Canada to avoid prison time has now returned to Dublin; and that the marriage between the Jewells was a marriage in name only.  Plus there are millions of euros at stake from various Jewell enterprises.  Plenty of motives for murder.

An interesting sidelight is the fact that Richard Jewell was Jewish, although he didn’t practice his religion, and that he gave huge amounts to St. Christopher’s, a Catholic boarding school.  Maguire, the estate manager, spent part of his childhood at St. Christopher’s;  Marie Bergin, the Jewells’ former maid, had worked there.  And Quirke had spent a year in the orphanage before being sent elsewhere.   Is there some sinister connection?

Benjamin Black has assembled a fascinating cast of characters in A Death in Summer.  Since this is the fourth novel featuring Quirke but the first one I’ve read, there’s a lot of back story that I’m not familiar with.  Dr. Quirke is a protagonist I’d like to get to know better, a man whose name certainly describes his unusual and often difficult personality.

Thanks go to my friend Kate, who recommended this series.  I look forward to doing some catch-up reading about Hackett, Quirke, and the Dublin of the 1950s.

You can read more about Benjamin Black, also known as the prize-winning novelist John Banville, at his web site.

Ice hockey is the be-all and end-all in the northern Michigan town of Starvation Lake.

Gus Carpenter, the editor of the Pine County Pilot, is infamous in the area for having let the winning goal slip between his legs when he was a teenager on the town’s hockey team. His team lost the state championship to its bitter rival, and in a way the rest of Gus’ life has been trying to make up for that unfortunate moment nineteen years earlier.

Now playing in the adult league as the goalie for the Chowder Heads of the Midnight Hour Men’s League, Gus is called out of the locker room after a game by a deputy sheriff and taken to his mother’s house.  There Gus finds that his mother’s best friend and quasi-caregiver, Phyllis Bontrager, has been killed in Bea Carpenter’s house.

The town has been hit by a rash of burglaries over the past few weeks. It’s being called the “Bingo Night Burglaries” because each one has taken place on a night that the weekly bingo game is being held at St. Valentine’s Church.  The strangest part of these burglaries is that nothing appears to have been taken from any of the homes, but personal records have been rifled.

Usually both Phyllis and Bea would have been at that game, but Bea tells her son that she hadn’t felt like going and Phyllis was keeping her company.  Bea’s memory loss is intermittently getting worse; sometimes her memory is fine and sometimes it isn’t.  All she’s able to tell the police is that she had gone to bed, with Phyllis downstairs, then gotten up to use the bathroom, and there she found Phyllis bleeding on the floor.  She knew to call 911 but has no idea of how someone got into her house or why they’d want to murder her friend.

To further complicate the situation, Gus’ former girlfriend, Darlene Esper, is both a county deputy sheriff and daughter of the victim. In Phyllis’ last moments, she called her daughter and left a message on her cell’s voice mail that there was someone in Bea’s house, but Darlene was responding to another call and decided she could call her mother back.  But by then it was too late.

Gus had left Starvation Lake years before to make a name for himself in Detroit’s newspaper world.  But a brush with the law had ended his career there and sent him back home.  Now he edits the twice-weekly Pilot, along with a fellow journalist who also gave up the fast track in the Motor City to come to Starvation Lake.  Luke Whistler, a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, had come to town to take things a bit easier, he said, to get away from the frantic pace of the Free Press but not to retire.  He’s a tireless investigator, and once he gets the bit between his teeth, he won’t let go of a story.

Into this mix comes Wayland Breck, a stranger from the city who is involved in a Christian camp on the outskirts of town.  He’s fighting the town council to object to a raise in the group’s taxes, and his hold over the people living in the compound seems total and eerie.  Is there more to Wayland’s crusade than taxes?  Where did he come from and why is he here?  And why is his hold on the people in the compound so tight?

The Skeleton Box holds a lot of secrets, some going back more than sixty years.  Like Pandora’s box, once the skeleton box is opened it can’t be closed again.

Bryan Gruley has written an intriguing follow-up to the two previous novels in the Gus Carpenter series. His writing is sharp and will keep you turning until the very surprising end of the story.   Guy is a terrific protagonist, one I’m anxious to see again.

You can read more about Bryan Gruley at his web site.

A small Minnesota town, next to an Ojibwe reservation, is the site of the killing of Jubal Little, independent candidate for governor of the state. And former sheriff Cork O’Connor was with Jubal while he lay dying with an arrow in his body.

In the remote area of Minnesota where the novel takes place, hunting is a major pasttime.  Serious hunters, like Cork and Jubal, make their own arrows.  Each hunter creates a unique design, called fletching, that makes the arrows immediately identifiable to other hunters.  The arrow protruding from Jubal’s body has the markings that are on all of Cork’s arrows.

Although those townspeople who know Cork don’t believe he had anything to do with Jubal’s death, all concede it is strange that Cork made no attempt to get help but stayed with Jubal for the three hours it took him to die.  And Cork’s comments that Jubal asked him to stay and not leave him alone to die ring a bit hollow to the state detective who is called in to handle the investigation.

Cork and Jubal go way back, back to childhood when Jubal and his mother moved to the town of Aurora. Tall, good-looking, and smart, Jubal was outstanding in everything he did, in every sport he played.  But it was his relationship with Winona, an Ojibwe girl, that was to rule his life.

It seems as if nearly every boy in Aurora was a bit in love with Winona Crane.  Cork and Jubal were two of them, but it was obvious to Cork that Winona’s heart belonged to Jubal and vice versa.  They were, according to a tribal healer, two parts of the same broken stone.  That’s a beautiful image, but a disturbing one as well.

Trickster’s Point has narratives in the present and in the past.  Secrets long held by Cork, Jubal, Winona, her twin brother Willie, and others in the town are slowly revealed, and as mystery readers know, the longer secrets are hidden, the more devastating it is when they come to light.

Cork O’Connor is a strong character.  He’s had lots of deaths in his life, and although he’s conscientiously trying to stay away from trouble, it always seems to find him.  His wife was murdered, and he’s done his best by his two children, even giving up his job as sheriff to remove himself from dangers that might take him from them.  But danger follows him, with or without his badge. You can call it fate, or karma, but it seems there’s no escaping it for Cork.

William Kent Krueger is the winner of multiple Anthony Awards for his novels, and you will understand why when you read Trickster’s Point or any of the earlier mysteries in the series.

You can read more about William Kent Krueger at his web site.

The brooding mountains of West Virginia hang over the small town of Acker’s Gap. And so do poverty, ill health, and lack of education.  It’s a tough place to live, but attorney Bell Elkins has returned home from a more affluent life in Washington, D.C. to “give back” to her community.

Bell, short for Belfa, had a hard childhood in Acker’s Gap.  Her mother deserted the family when Bell was six, leaving Bell’s older sister Shirley to cope with grinding poverty and their drunken, abusive father.  Bell doesn’t talk about her sister any more, hasn’t seen her in nearly thirty years, and Bell’s daughter Carla wonders what the mystery is.

The drug problem in the state, and particularly in small towns such as Acker’s Gap, is growing fast. Spurred by lack of employment and poor educational opportunities, prescription drugs have made big inroads into the town, bringing increased crime to its citizens.  Still, the whole town is shocked when a trio of elderly men, sitting over their morning coffee at the Salty Dawg fast-food restaurant, is gunned down in front of the other diners.  And Bell’s daughter, Carla, is a witness to the carnage.

There are three narratives in A Killing in the Hills. The prologue and much of the story is told by Bell.  The first chapter is told by Carla, an unhappy sixteen-year-old, who is sitting at the Salty Dawg when a gunman comes in and shoots the three men.  In the seconds it takes before the shooter runs away, Carla catches a glimpse of his face, a “piggy face” that stirs a memory.  The third narrator is Charlie Sowards, the hired gun, whose dismal life has led him to murder for hire at the behest of a powerful figure.  And the next victim, Charlie is told, will be Bell.

Bell Elkins is a complex protagonist. She grew up in a life of grinding poverty and abuse, married her high school sweetheart, went to college and law school, had a child, and was headed for a comfortable life in the nation’s capital.  But she felt compelled to return to her hometown and offer what she could to the community.  Her husband, by that time a very successful lawyer-turned-lobbyist, wanted no part of the life he’d gladly left behind, so Bell returned home with her young daughter and carved out a life as a single mother and prosecuting attorney.

The influx of prescription drugs into the state and more specifically her community has strengthened Bell’s resolve to stay in Acker’s Gap despite the hand-to-mouth life she’s living.  But with the downturn in the state’s never-robust economy, there’s less and less money available for criminal investigation and fewer people on Bell’s staff.  Bell’s closest friends, sheriff Nick Fogelsong and Ruthie and Tom Cox, help out as much as they can, but between the demands of a never-ending workday and a rebellious teenage daughter, Bell’s life seems to be in a downward spiral.

Julia Keller has perfectly captured life in this small town, a place with almost no resources and a population with few opportunities.  Her portrait of young people who either drop out of school or finish high school only to find that the best jobs in their hometown are flipping burgers is a searing one.   Sketches of children who are undersized because of lack of food or are missing teeth because they’ve never seen a dentist will make readers wonder if this is America or a third world country.

Julia Keller’s first book is an absolute winner. You can read more about her at her web site.

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

Willie Mays Black’s life is a little precarious these days. The newspaper he’s been at for most of his professional life is cutting jobs right and left; he has three broken marriages behind him; his relationship with his college-age daughter is minimal at best; he needs a roommate to help pay his rent; and now he’s following a story that is beginning to remind him of the worst mistake he ever made in his journalistic career.

Willie gets to the scene of a brutal murder just as the police do.  There’s a body dangling from a tree, the body of a Virginia Commonwealth University student who has been missing for four days. Gruesome as that discovery is, it’s even worse when the corpse is turned around and everyone sees that the girl’s head is missing.

The police make a quick arrest, a thirty-two-year-old man named Martin Fell who had been dating the dead woman, Isabel Ducharme.  Witnesses saw an argument between the two at a bar, then Isabel walking out alone, shortly followed by Martin.  When it’s discovered that Martin was accused years ago in an assault case, the matter seems open-and-shut.

Then Willie’s number-three ex-wife, Kate, contacts him and tells him that she’s the attorney for Martin and that Martin’s mother wants to see Willie.  The reporter is less than enthused.  And when the mother tells Kate and Willie that her son was with her at the time the murder was committed, Willie thinks to himself, “You’re his mother.  Of course you don’t believe your darling boy chopped a girl’s head off.”  But when Louisa Fell tells him the time her son came to her house that night, Willie realizes that it would have been nearly impossible for him to have murdered Isabel.  Of course, that assumes that Louisa is telling the truth, but it’s enough to make Willie determined to look into the matter.

Willie is an intriguing character. He’s so full of faults it’s a bit hard to know where to begin.  An admitted adulterer, a heavy smoker, a man who can drink to the point of blackouts, a mostly absent father.  It seems as if any reader would be put off by these character traits.  On the other hand, Willie’s a stand-up guy.  He’ll pull himself out of bed in order to rescue his mother’s boyfriend from the roof he’s climbed onto; he’ll insist on writing newspaper stories about Isabel’s murder in his own way, aware that one false step will send him to the unemployment line.

He’s surrounded by other interesting people.  There’s his mother, Peggy, who is still smoking weed day and night; her live-in boyfriend, Les, a former minor league baseball player who is showing the beginnings of dementia; the editor and the publisher of the Richmond paper Willie writes for, both of whom are seemingly more concerned with the paper’s bottom line than with its contents; and Willie’s three former wives.

Oregon Hill is the neighborhood in Richmond where Willie grew up. It’s a place that hasn’t changed much, if at all, in the more than forty years since his birth to a marijuana-addled seventeen-year-old girl.  His mother still lives there, but also still in the neighborhood is David Junior Shiflett.  A bully as a boy, he is now the detective who arrested Martin Fell and who still strikes fear into Willie’s heart.

Howard Owen is an established novelist and short story writer.   He’s written the sequel to Oregon Hill, due out next year, and I’m already eager to read it.

You can read more about Howard Owen at his web site.

In 2008, the city of New Orleans was still reeling from the hurricane that had savaged it three years before. Homes and businesses were devastated, especially in the poorest districts, most particularly the Ninth Ward.  Nola Cespedes, a new reporter on the Times-Picayune, is all too familiar with the problems that the city had faced even before the storm hit.

Brought up by a single mother who emigrated from Cuba and earned her living cleaning the homes of rich white people, Nola has lifted herself out of childhood poverty on the strength of her brains and her mother’s love and belief in her.  But Nola has hidden her past even from her three closest friends, and, it turns out, even from herself.

Nola’s opportunity to break out of the Living and Lagniappe section of the newspaper comes when she’s given an assignment to interview men convicted of sexual crimes.  Over eight hundred men are on the streets of the city–rapists, child molesters, sexual perverts–and Nola’s editor wants her to follow up. She doesn’t want the story, but she has no choice.  And the subject becomes unfortunately current when a young woman is abducted in broad daylight, as was another woman in the city who was found raped and killed.

After reviewing the files of dozens of convicted abusers, Nola decides to interview five of them, although in the end only four of them agree to meet her.  With her stomach churning, Nola tries to find out what makes one man rape and cut, another beat his victims before raping them, a church pastor abuse thirty-two of his parishioners, an elementary school principal rape his female students, and a wealthy New Orleans resident of impeccable heritage force himself on his household help.

In addition, Nola decides to speak to several of the victims of abuse and tell their stories to the paper’s readers.

Outside of work, there’s a lot going on in Nola’s private life.  She meets weekly for dinner with her three closest friends.  But in Nola’s mind, each one of them has things she doesn’t have and has never had–a fiancee, wealthy parents, a homeland she can return to.  Nola believes that if her friends knew the truth about her–her poverty-stricken past, her budget-crunching present–they would pity her, and with that she cannot and will not deal.  So she goes along, pretending. As she puts it to herself, “You silence the parts of yourself that point out how privileged they are, or else they make you feel sordid, small, ashamed.”

Joy Castro has written a fascinating novel about the sexual abuse that is sadly a too-common story. The feeling that no one can be trusted–not clergy or teachers or family members–is all too real in today’s word, just as it is in Hell or High Water.  The author brings that reality home to her readers skillfully, but she also tells the story of a young woman trying to face down her fears and anxieties while continuing with her own life.  The characters in this novel are realistic and compelling.  Some are charming, whom you would like for friends; others are depraved, whom you hope you would never encounter.

You can read more about Joy Castro at her web site.