Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Reviews

The recent death in October 2009 of Stuart M. Kaminsky left a huge void in the mystery world. He was the author of more than 60 mysteries, featuring four fascinating and different protagonists. His Toby Peters series features a down-at-the-heels private eye circa World War II who solve crimes involving such movie luminaries as Clark Gable, Gary Grant, Bette Davis, and Judy Garland. His Lew Fonesca series has as its hero a depressive process server in Florida trying to deal with the hit-and-run death of his wife. The Abe Lieberman series (the only one I’m not familiar with) features a Chicago police detective (called the rabbi) and his partner Bill Hanrahan (called the priest) as they walk the streets of the Windy City. And his Porfiry Rosnikov novels portray a Moscow police officer starting during the Soviet communist regime and continuing to present-day Russia.

A Whisper to the Living is the last of Mr. Kaminsky’s books about Rosnikov, who, in the words of the book’s jacket, is “one of the last honest civil servants in a very dishonest post-Soviet Russia.” The system may have changed in these post-communist times, but the struggle for power continues among those who have survived. Rosnikov is often given cases that no one else wants or will take, and very often his superior, known as The Yak, gives him a case with the unvoiced hope that he will fail to bring the perpetrator to justice if that would in any way bring trouble to The Yak or to the untouchables in power. The Yak, much as he admires Rosnikov, is willing to sacrifice him and his team if that proves necessary for his own protection and advancement.

In A Whisper to the Living Rosnikov and his team, as usual, are dealing with several crimes. The Maniac is a serial killer strangling mostly elderly men in a Moscow park; Ivan Medivkin, also known as The Giant, is a professional wrestler whom the police believe has killed his wife and her lover; and the detective’s team is trying to protect an English journalist investigating a story of prostitution in Russia. Kaminsky weaves the stories back and forth effortlessly, and his characters, both good and evil ones, are incredibly alive.

The death of Stuart Kaminsky was one of five in the past year that, in my mind, removed a major talent from this genre. The others are Philip R. Craig, author of the Vineyard mysteries featuring J. W. Jackson; Dick Francis, author of many stand-alone racing novels; Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser, Jesse Stone, and Sunny Randall novels; and William Tapply, author of the Brady Coyne series that features a Boston lawyer. It’s painful to realize that we have either read the last works by these gifted writers or from now on we will read novels that are published posthumously. How lucky we were that they shared their literary gifts with us.

There is no dedicated web site about Kaminsky, but there are many interviews with him and reviews of his books available on the web.

The recent death of Robert B. Parker came as a shock to mystery lovers everywhere. I’ve been a fan of Parker’s since The Godwulf Manuscript and have read each Spenser novel as soon as it was published, although I strongly believe that Parker’s first dozen books were his best.

I’ve not been so enamored of the Jesse Stone or Sunny Randall novels, although I have read several in each series.  Split Image reinforces my belief that Stone is a faint copy of  the “later” Spenser. The too-cute sexual repartee between Spenser and Susan Silverman is identical to that of Stone and whomever he’s bedding.  In addition, there’s always some soft-core verbal sexual talk between Stone and Molly Crane, the sole woman in the Paradise P.D.  In Split Image, Stone, the police chief of the afore-mentioned town, and Sunny Randall, a former Boston detective and current private investigator, try to comfort themselves by hopping into bed.   Again.

Parker portrays each of them as trying to get over their former spouses, and he does a credible job combining Stone’s efforts at moving on with his life while trying to solve two murders that involve beautiful twin sisters, each one married to a crime boss.  What’s so upsetting to Stone, and what nearly derails him, is the question how come these guys (read:  undeserving) got such beautiful, devoted wives while I (read:  deserving) got stuck with a woman who felt being rich and famous was more important than being married to me.  It takes Stone a few sessions with his psychologist and a few talks with Sunny to work out his feelings.   I wanted to say to Stone:  get over yourself, it’s not about you, it’s about solving the crimes in your town.

While Stone is dealing with his psyche, two murders take place in Paradise.  (Not so aptly named, perhaps?  It’s hard to resist taking shots at a town with a name like that.)   There’s too much angst and not enough mystery in Split Image.  In fact, there’s not much mystery at all.  The book, with its wide margins and mini-chapters, is 277 pages, but it probably could have been reformatted to 200.

In the Spenser novels, food plays a big part; in the Stone novels, it’s alcohol.  Although Stone tries to deal with his drinking with various degrees of success, the problem is always with him.  He denies he’s an alcoholic, but as he says here, he drinks when he’s happy and he drinks when he’s sad. If that’s not a good definition of an alcoholic, I’d like to know a better one.

Split Image is not a bad book, it’s just a book that feels like a retread. The mob bosses from Boston, the sexy women who find Stone irresistible, the sly sex talk–we’ve heard it all before.  I borrowed this book from a close friend.  He’s a very knowledgeable reader of mysteries and had given up reading Parker years ago, making fun of me for continuing.  However, on hearing of Parker’s death, he bought Split Image as a sort of homage to the late author.  It was a worthy thought, and I wish it had been for a better book.

You can also find out more about Robert B. Parker at his web site.

Steve Hamilton’s series with Alex McKnight is one of my favorites, and I’m glad to add his stand alone book The Lock Artist to this group.

The novel opens in the present and flashes back between different years in the protagonist’s life.  It’s the year 2000, and Michael, the lock artist, has been locked up for ten years.  He is electively mute from a childhood trauma, the details of which we won’t discover until the end of the story.  He jumps back and forth between 1991, 1996, 1999, and 2000, explaining that the story can’t be told chronologically or consecutively but that he must go back and forth to try to make the reader understand how he wound up behind bars.

Hamilton says in his acknowledgements that he had the help of a professional safecracker in his writing but that some of the details of that “art” have been changed so as not to make the novel a textbook.  Perhaps so, but you can’t prove it by me–the descriptions of Michael’s lock-picking ability are so detailed that I felt like going out immediately to the nearest Home Depot and buying a few combination locks on which to practice.

As a speechless eight-year-old coming to live with his uncle, Michael leads an unhappy life until he discovers three things:  an ability to draw, an ability to crack the codes of the most difficult locks/safes, and a teenage girl named Amelia.  To protect Amelia’s father, he is “forced” to become a member of a group of thieves and murderers.  The novel is written in the first person, which adds immediacy to Michael’s dilemmas.  He sees rather clearly each fork in the road that is leading him further into criminality but can’t seem to extricate himself without bringing hurt to the girl he loves.

Hamilton is an outstanding writer.  Even though you know from the first chapter that Michael has been caught and imprisoned, you keep reading to find out, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.  And even though this is a story told by someone committing criminal acts over a period of years, Michael doesn’t make you feel that he’s a criminal.  It’s simply that he can’t see a way out other than following the path he has started on.

Would it  have made a difference if he could speak?  We’ll never know because he can’t.  But we can listen to his thoughts, as created by Steve Hamilton, and get caught up in his silent world.

You can also learn more at Steve Hamilton’s web site.

Linda Barnes‘s latest mystery novel takes her heroine, P.I./taxi driver Carlotta Carlyle, to a fork in the road.  It’s not the first time Carlotta has had to make a choice concerning her on-again, off-again lover Sam Gianelli.  But in Lie Down With The Devil the decision seems permanent.

Carlotta walks the path of other female private investigators, although she varies that career path with working as a cab driver down the sometimes mean streets of The Hub, as Bostonians like to refer to their city.  As in Hub of the Universe.

She’s in the mold of Kinsey Milhone, V . I. Warshawski, and Sharon McCone. She’s tough, strong, and determined.   But she’s got two soft spots–one for her “foster daughter” Paolina, whose father was a Colombian drug lord, and the aforementioned Sam of the Boston mafia.  Nice company she keeps, doesn’t she?

Now Carlotta is facing two dilemmas.  Sam has left the country without explanation and without telling Carlotta where he is.  The problem is that the police and F.B.I. don’t believe Carlotta, and they’re determined to get Sam’s whereabouts from her.  And Paolina, recovering from being kidnapped and the brutal death of her father, won’t speak to Carlotta.

A new client enters Carlotta’s office.   She spins a story about being suspicious of her fiance, with only weeks left to the big wedding, and she wants Carlotta to follow him for just one night while she’s away.  If he’s faithful that night, she’ll marry him; if not, she’ll call the wedding off.  It seems kind of bizarre to Carlotta, but she needs the money and the distraction from her own problems, so she takes the case.  Then two Boston detectives come to have Carlotta identity a dead body, and it’s her client.  The name she gave Carlotta was false, the “fiance” can’t be found, and the cops think that Carlotta is responsible for the client’s hit-and-run death.

I really do enjoy this series.  Carlotta, like Sharon McCone, Kinsey Millhone, and V. I. Warshawski, are believable characters, women whom you would like to meet.  They’re strong and resilient, yet not afraid to show their vulnerabilities.

You can learn more at Linda Barnes’ web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

In the spirit of true confessions, I will say that I read the third book of this series first.  But I really hate to do that, so I went back to see if the first one, False Charity, was as good as its successor.  And it is!

Bea Abbott is newly widowed after a long second marriage.  She and her husband had run a very successful domestic agency dealing with clients who need cleaners, servants, helpers of all types.  But her husband had actually done most of the work, and Bea returned to London unsure of whether or not to try to run the agency.

Still in grief, she’s beset by other people’s problems. Her spoiled son from her first marriage, now married himself and a Member of Parliament (apparently you must always capitalize those words) would like her to close the agency and move out of her house so that he and his even more spoiled wife can move in; her close friend Coral is facing bankruptcy because she was conned by a pair of swindlers; two young people have moved into her house “temporarily,” but as they have no place else to go, Bea’s mothering instinct takes over and she can’t decide whether to make them leave or have them help her run the agency.

The main plot involves Bea, Coral, and the two young people trying to work out a scheme in which they can get Coral the money that is due her; it turns out that the con artists have bilked numerous other people with their bogus charity drives.

False Charity and the third novel in the series, False Step, are definitely “cozies,” although there is certainly action in each.  What’s most interesting is the character development I saw, although I did see it backwards–Bea developing a stronger sense of self and the two young people finding careers in the agency.   The only character who doesn’t seem to be maturing much is Bea’s son Max, as his mother has apparently always solved his problems for him.  Even in the third novel, she can’t seem to let him make his own bed and lie in it.  I did find that a bit hard to swallow, but perhaps Max will improve over time.  I found him to be a rather disagreeable character, but then I don’t have much patience for people who can’t take charge of their lives.

False Charity and False Step are definitely interesting additions to the “cozy” genre.  If that’s your cup of tea, as the Brits say, I think you’ll enjoy this series.

You can also learn more at Veronica Heley’s Web site.

“Revenge is a dish best served cold” is attributed to three different authors, according to Wikipedia.  And although the readers of Craig Johnson’s novel don’t know who among the cast of characters has been waiting for revenge, or for how long, there’s no doubt that the murderer believes it’s worth the wait.

The Cold Dish, first in a series that began in 2005, just popped out at me from my library’s shelves a couple of weeks ago.  I hadn’t read anything about this book or the ones that follow it, but when I read the flap about a sheriff in a remote Wyoming town solving the shootings of two teenagers who had been convicted of raping a young Indian girl with fetal alcohol syndrome, it reminded me of a real case that took place not too long ago.  Also, one of the reasons I read so many mysteries is because they take me to locations I’ve never visited, and small-town Wyoming fits that bill.

Sheriff Walt Longmire is a 50-ish widower who still mourning his wife three years after her death.  He can’t seem to move ahead in his personal life, living in a log cabin with minimal walls, minimal plumbing, and unpacked boxes in every room.  His only child lives two thousand miles away, and he times his calls to her when he’s sure she won’t be home or available at work.  In his professional life, however, Longmire is capable and trusted; he’s been sheriff of this county for nearly twenty years.

The case involves the murder of one of the four boys who was convicted of brutally raping the Melissa Little Bird two years before the story opens. The four were given extremely short sentences, and many of the townspeople, as well as the girl’s family on the nearby reservation, believe that justice wasn’t served.  The ringleader and least repentant of the four is murdered first, and a second murder soon follows.  Although Longmire is totally unsympathetic to the rapists, he does want to uphold the law and stop the murderer before the other boys become victims as well.

The sheriff is also dealing with some issues in his personal life.  After walling his emotions and desires away since his wife’s death, he finds he’s now attracted to two women.  One is a recently hired deputy who is in an unhappy marriage; the other is a well-to-do woman who has returned to the county after years back east.  Longmore feels himself awkward and rusty in the romance department, but his interest in the women shows a breach in the wall of solitude he has constructed for himself since becoming a widower.

I plan to read all the remaining books in Johnson’s series–Walter Longmire is an interesting man whose career I want to follow.

You can also learn more at Craig Johnson’s web site.

Sue Grafton doesn’t need my review of her latest mystery to propel her to the top of the best-sellers’ list.  She’s been on top of the heap since her first mystery, A Is For Alibi, was published in 1982.  But it’s nice to report that this novel is as appealing as any of her others and gives us a deeper look into Kinsey than we have glimpsed before.

U Is For Undertow is somewhat of a departure from Grafton’s previous novels.  This is as much a book about families and relationships as it is a mystery. Those who have followed Kinsey’s backstory know that her parents were killed in a car crash when Kinsey was five, that she was raised by one of her mother’s sisters, and that she had no contact with and wasn’t even aware that she had other living relatives until midway through the series.  At that point she’s contacted by cousins who’ve known about her and now want to meet her.  Over the following novels she has kept this family at arms’ length, rebuffing their attempts to include her in their circle.

Even though Kinsey doesn’t age at the same rate as the rest of us do (she’s apparently going to remain in her thirties throughout the series), her maturity has increased as the series has moved on, and at this point she is wavering between her loyalty to her late aunt and a pull toward finding out the complete story of her mother’s expulsion by her family.  This backstory of familial relationships connects with several others in the novel.

Kinsey is approached by Michael Sutton, a young man who believes that more than twenty years ago he was witness to the burial of a little girl who was kidnapped. His story is nearly unbelievable, but Kinsey decides to work for him for a day to see what she can discover.  Michael, it turns out, has a bizarre history that includes repressed memories of sexual abuse by his parents, later proven false, and estrangement from his sister and brothers.  His history is connected to that of two other men in the fictional town of Santa Teresa where Kinsey lives.

All of these families–Kinsey’s, Michael’s, and the two men who now are respectable citizens of Santa Teresa–have skeletons, both metaphorical and literal, in their backgrounds.  The more deeply Kinsey delves into Michael’s family background, the more she’s pulled into her own.  And the two men have their own family issues that must be explored before the book is over.

Undertow shows us a Kinsey who is more introspective than the one we’ve known before.  She has come to the understanding that seeing things in black and white is not always seeing them clearly, that many shades of gray show up in every family relationship.  Even though she’s not getting older, she is getting wiser.

You can also learn more at Sue Grafton’s web site.

The second novel featuring Joe Pike is a winner, just like the first.  To my mind, Robert Crais has never written a book that wasn’t terrific, and apparently he’s not about to start with The First Rule.

Frank Meyers, a member of Joe’s former contract military team, is gunned down in his house, along with his wife and two young sons. The only survivor is a nanny, who is in a coma.  The police connect Pike to Meyers through a photo in the deceased’s house, but when they tell Pike that Frank must have been dirty like all the other victims of recent home invasions in the city, he refuses to believe it.  At a hospital visit to see the nanny, Pike meets her sister.  The nanny dies, and the sister hires Pike to recover a baby she says is hers; the nanny was hiding the boy at the Meyers’ home from his father, a Serbian mob boss.  So Pike has two goals:  to prove that Meyers was clean and to find the missing baby.  What could the killers want with a ten-month-old child?  Was killing Meyers the reason for the invasion or was he collateral damage?

The title of the book comes from the thieves’ code in the former Soviet Union, the Vorovskoy Zakon.  It’s made up of eighteen written rules, the first one being:

A thief must forsake his mother, father, brothers, and sisters.

He must not have a family–no wife, no children.

We are his family.

If any of the eighteen rules are broken, the punishment is death.

Halfway through the book, Pike calls on Elvis Cole, his close (and possibly only) friend and business partner to help him with this case. Pike also calls on a few others, a couple of whom were also members of his contract team.  But feeling that Meyers was clean and being able to prove it is something else, something that Pike needs to do for his own sake.

Following The Watchman, The First Rule shows a more developed, more human side of Pike, although the reader must wait until the end of the book to discover it.  It’s a surprising discovery, but it’s worth the wait.

You can also learn more at Robert Crais’s web site.

If you’re looking for a mystery featuring a trash-talking Puerto Rican babe from the streets of the tough Brooklyn Brownsville neighborhood, The Last Gig is for you.

Alessandra Martillo grew up on her own after the death of her mother and the desertion of her father.  Before he left, however, her father taught her that she had to protect herself and showed her how to do it, and that’s a lesson she learned well.  At twelve she ran away from an uncaring, unloving aunt and slept in a neighborhood pool hall when she was lucky and on the streets of Brownsville when she wasn’t. The shrink’s report on her noted that she had a “personality disorder, attachment disorder, and borderline sociopathic tendencies.”   He didn’t mention she’s afraid of almost nothing and once started can’t be stopped.

Alex is working for a former cop, ostensibly as an office assistant but in reality doing the tough, often dirty jobs he can no longer handle.

This debut novel begins with a gangster who comes to the agency to find out who’s skimming from his various businesses.  Is there a connection between that and the recent death of his musician son, a death that has been ruled a drug-related suicide although nothing much seems to confirm that.

As Alex gets deeper into the case, she’s threatened, beaten, almost raped, attracted to one of the musicians in the band the gangster’s son played in, deals with the upcoming death of her beloved “tio Roberto,” and reconnects with the father who has reentered her life.   All of this while trying to figure out who the traitor is in the  mob boss’ operation and retrieving a tape showing steamy sex between the mobster’s dead son and a top female rocker nicknamed “God.”  This girl is busy!

The Last Gig has a handful of interesting characters:  Marty Stiles, Alex’s boss, a man who’ll do pretty much anything for a dollar and who’s past his prime but won’t admit it; Anthony, her tio Roberto’s lover; and her Aunt Magdalena who barely fed and clothed her after Alex’s mother’s death.  If there are to be future novels in this series, I hope they’ll still be around.

This novel has a lot going for it–an interesting heroine, lots of action, and family dynamics that should continue to play out in any future books.  Here’s hoping we haven’t seen the last of Alex Martillo-she’s a chica to watch.

Norman Green needs to have his own web site.  If you’re reading this, Mr. Green, why not contact www.flyte.biz–the best in the web design business.

The clever graphic on the cover of  Something Missing lets you know at once that this is an offbeat mystery; the graphic spells the second word as Mis ing.

Martin Railsback, Jr. is an unusual type of career criminal. He’s a thief who has OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, while also having perhaps a place on the Asperger’s scale.  He enters houses, first making certain the homeowners are absent, and steals items he thinks they won’t miss–canned foods, tubes of toothpaste, towels, etc.

After he’s made numerous trips, he may begin to take items of more value, perhaps some silver tableware or diamond earrings. He uses a digital camera to make sure he leaves a room exactly as he found it, has a timer on his watch to make sure he doesn’t stay too long in the house, and probably knows more about the homeowners and their habits than they do about themselves.

He learns the latter through the items we all scatter around our homes–computers left on with no password needed, bank passbooks and passports in dresser drawers, charge card bills on desks, and extra keys in those hiding places that are all too obvious–under the doormat, inside the flower pot, inside the toilet tank, etc.  And what about all the party invitations on the refrigerator–they’re like a newspaper announcement telling the world when we’ll be away from home.

Martin comes prepared for all emergencies, locating two or three emergency exits in each house; he wears a hairnet and latex gloves to make sure he leaves no DNA traces behind.

These precautions almost always work…if they were foolproof, there’d be no book.

This book isn’t a true mystery, I must confess, because you know from the outset who’s committing the crimes.  You’re privy to Martin’s thoughts, although I did wish the author had explained Martin’s motive a bit more.  Why does he steal such inexpensive items?  If he’s going to break into someone’s house, why not go for the big stuff at once without the need to come back and put himself at risk?  There’s a deep psychological reason somewhere, but I wasn’t able to find it.

However, to make up for that lack, it’s wonderful to follow Martin’s thinking and methodology.  He is so socially awkward that he’s unable, at the beginning of the novel, to say more than hello without practicing his side of the conversation beforehand.  It’s painful to see him try to interact in any social setting.  He wants to be comfortable with others but doesn’t know how.  That’s the Asperger’s aspect of him.

But as the story progresses, so does Martin.  He does things and takes risks that would have seemed impossible to him at the outset of the novel, and by doing so he becomes a more fully-formed person.  He has our sympathy from the outset, even though he’s committing illegal acts, but he has our admiration at the end.

Twice during the course of the novel Martin changes his routine to benefit his “clients,” as he refers to them, putting himself in danger of discovery.  But by changing the routine that he has perfected to keep himself safe and undiscovered, he also changes into a mature man, more capable of interacting with others and finding a happier place for himself in the world.  It’s a novel of discovery, and it’s wonderful to go along with Martin for the ride.  I’m hoping that Matthew Dicks will invite us along for another ride with Martin Railsback, Jr. soon.

Matthew Dicks needs to have his own web page.  If you’re reading this, Mr. Dicks, why not contact www.flyte.biz–the best in the web design business.