Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Joe Gunther, head of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, is presented with a most unusual crime.  A body, encased in concrete with no identification on it save a wedding ring inscribed “HM and SM forever,” was found at the soon-to-be-dismantled Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, close to the VBI’s office in Brattleboro.  Vermont Yankee was controversial from its beginnings in 1970, and finding a corpse there more than forty years later will prove to be just as troubling.

With the workman’s discovery, all of the state’s investigative agencies are called in.  The autopsy, conducted by Vermont’s chief medical examiner Beverly Hillstrom, brings several facts to light, namely that the body is that of a man in his thirties, almost certainly a manual laborer, who had broken his upper right arm shortly before his death.  That last piece of information leads Joe to a nearby hospital where records show that a Hank Mitchell had been treated for such an injury decades earlier.  Hank Mitchell’s next-of-kin is listed as Mrs. Sharon Mitchell at a local address, so Joe and a colleague go to her home to find out if the man at the plant was her husband.

After examining the body in the morgue, Sharon confirms the man’s identity.  She tells Joe and his fellow officer Willie Kunkle that Hank left their house one day in 1970 and never returned, so she and the couple’s son and daughter were left in limbo until the present discovery.  “What you showed me today proves I was right all along.  I never believed he just walked away, like people said,” states his widow.

On a lighter note in the novel we meet the father-daughter team of Dan and Sally Kravitz.  Dan has been known for years in Brattleboro by various sobriquets–the man without a home, the man without a fixed job, the man who could do everything–and many more.  But for all those nicknames, none got to the true Dan Kravitz.  Only two people in the city know that he is “The Tag Man,” a man who enters people’s home while they’re sleeping or away, never taking anything but leaving a note saying “You’re it.”  Oh, and he always makes certain to eat some of the homeowners’ delicacies before leaving.  And now his daughter is working with him.

The two people who know about Dan’s secret identity are his daughter and the above-mentioned Willie Kunkle.  Why doesn’t Willie arrest Dan?  Well, because he’s proven himself useful in the past, albeit in an illegal way, and will do so again.

Presumption of Guilt is the twenty-seventh Joe Gunther mystery.  In such a long-running series, there is naturally a great deal of back story about Joe and the various paths he’s taken in his career.  Archer Mayor, too, has taken many different roads to lead him to being the successful author he is:  political advance-man, newspaper writer/editor, lab technician, and death investigator for the Vermont Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.  He brings that wealth of experience to his protagonist, a strong, ethical professional who is in law enforcement for all the right reasons.  Presumption of Guilt will keep you guessing until the last page.

You can read more about Archer Mayor at this web site.

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

One would think that an inheritance, especially an unexpected one, would be a welcome thing.  But that is not always the case.

Charles Lenox is surprised and a bit concerned by the letter sent to him by an old school acquaintance, Gerald Leigh, wanting to meet him again.   Gerald was a friend, although not a close one, when both were students at Harrow, the famed English boarding school that was founded in 1572.  Nearly all of the boys attending the school came from noble or wealthy families with ties to the school that went back generations, but Gerald was not one of those boys.

Regardless, his father had been determined to send him to Harrow, but Mr. Leigh’s untimely death left no money for the tuition.  Gerald, however, was notified by the school’s administration that he was the recipient of a bequest that would pay his school costs.  The unknown philanthropist was called M. B., the Mysterious Benefactor, by Gerald and Charles.  The former cursed this nameless person vigorously, as his only desire was to leave school and return home to his mother and his all-consuming study of flora and fauna.  In time he achieved this goal by flunking out, almost deliberately.

Now, thirty years later, Charles receives Gerald’s letter, arranging for an appointment at Charles’ home.  But Gerald never arrives, and the next day, when Charles goes to the hotel mentioned in the letter, it is apparent that his friend, although still registered, has not been there since the day the meeting between the two was scheduled.

Charles is concerned with other problems at the same time that he looks into Gerald’s disappearance:  his wife’s unhappiness, the tension between his two partners, and a strange crisis in Parliament.  When he does find Gerald, things get even more bizarre, for now there is a second bequest from an unknown person.  Is it the same Mysterious Benefactor from Gerald’s school days, or is it someone else?

Having read several of the books in this series, one of the things I find most delightful is the author’s clever insertion of interesting facts that I’d never given much thought to before.  The expression “by hook or by crook”?  A laborer, by generations of tradition, was allowed to get firewood from his squire’s land.  He wasn’t permitted to cut it down, but he could get any branches that had fallen by using a hooked branch or the crook of his walking stick.  “Bunk?”  It means nonsense and comes from a speech given in Buncombe County, North Carolina; it had transmogrified into bunkum and then bunk.  There are several more examples like this in The Inheritance, but you’ll have to read the book to find them.

Charles Finch has created one of the most intelligent, interesting protagonists around.  The Inheritance is the tenth book in the series, and it is as well-written and satisfying as the earlier ones.  The setting, the second half of the nineteenth century in London, is beautifully drawn, the plot is engrossing, and the personalities of all the characters are vivid.  There’s not a misstep in the novel.

You can read more about Charles Finch at various sites on the web.

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

Reading Under the Midnight Sun is like taking a twenty-year trip through Osaka and Tokyo, starting in 1971.  It’s an incredible novel, one that requires a lot of patience and concentration to read but is well worth the effort.

Right from the beginning, Osaka Police Detective Sasagaki finds the murder of Yosuke Kirihara, owner of a pawnshop bearing his name, distinctly odd.  His body, found in a desolate building, is punctured with several stab wounds to the abdomen.  It appears to Sasagaki that the victim was there for a sexual interlude, but why would any man bring a woman to such a dirty, unpleasant place?

Yosuke’s wife Yaeko, eleven-year-old son Ryo, and Isamu Matsuura, the shop’s lone employee, were all in the apartment behind the shop when the murder apparently took place; given that Yosuke was missing overnight, it’s hard for forensics to give an exact time of death.  Sasagaki follows the deceased’s trail and discovers that on the day of the murder Yosuke had cashed in a CD, leaving the bank with a very large amount of cash.  The money wasn’t found on his body, and his wife and the pawnshop employee say they know of no reason why Yosuke would have had so much money with him when he was killed.

About a year later, there’s another death in the neighborhood.  Fumiyo Nishimoto is found in the tiny apartment she shared with her young daughter, Yukiho.  She was overcome by gas coming from her stove, but whether it was an accident or a suicide is impossible to tell.

These two deaths are the seeds from which the rest of the novel grow.  One of the plot lines deals with computers and hacking, and it’s very interesting to go back over forty years and read about life at the beginning of the computer age.  Personal computers are just beginning to appear in homes, cell phones are unknown.  In terms of the subtext of the plot, 1971 is another world and a distant one at that.  It must be noted that the book was published in 1999, so technology, DNA testing, and forensics were much more primitive then than they are now.

To go back to the first paragraph of this post, it’s only fair to point out a few things that make Under the Midnight Sun a dense and difficult read.  First is the length of time the novel covers and the size of the book–twenty years and 554 pages.  Second is that it takes a while to realize how much time has gone by at different points in the novel–events aren’t separated by chapters or headings with dates, so suddenly someone who was eleven on one page is five years older on the next.  Third is that there are many characters and, of course, they all have Japanese names.  Many of the names were very similar, and I had to keep referring back through the book to remember who they were in the story.

That being said, Under the Midnight Sun is a wonderful novel.  The book is beautifully translated, with a style so smooth that readers will think English is the original language.  I reviewed Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X several years ago and found this novel equally enjoyable.

Keigo Higashino is the winner of multiple awards for crime fiction in Japan, and several of his books have been adapted for television and films in Japan, South Korea, and France.

You can read more about Keigo Higashino at various sites on the web.

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

December 17, 2016

In this holy (holiday) season, my thoughts not surprisingly turn to clerical detectives.  I’ve always enjoyed reading about different religions, and a great way for fans of the mystery novel to do this is via detective stories featuring clergy who have a propensity for solving crimes.  And what better time of year to do this than during the cold, snowy days of winter, when reading is a perfect way to spend an afternoon or evening.

One of the first clerical detectives I read about was Reverend C. P. Randollph, featured in several novels by Charles Merrill Smith.  It’s been years since I’ve read the Reverend Randollph mysteries, a series that ended with the death of its author in 1986, but I remember being struck by the kindness and compassion of this protagonist, who seemed to embody the best of his Methodist faith and that of the author, himself a clergyman.

Another fictional Protestant minister, this one contemporary, is the Reverend Claire Fergusson.  Julia Spencer-Fleming’s heroine lives in upstate New York, in a small town ominously named Millers Kill (although in Dutch the word kill, less threateningly, means creek).  I suggest starting this outstanding series from the beginning so you can follow Claire’s path as she takes her place as the first female minister in the town’s Episcopal church.  The titles of the series’ first two books, In the Bleak Midwinter and A Fountain Filled with Blood, will give readers a hint that hers is not an easy road.

Moving to Catholicism, an old favorite of mine is Brother Cadfael in 12th-century England.  Written by Ellis Peters, these novels bring to life the Middle Ages, its wars, culture, and Christian faith.  Brother Cadfael, a soldier before he became a monk, is a delightful character with a scientific mind, years ahead of his time, with a great deal of worldly wisdom that helps him find those who are guilty.

The most famous Jewish detective who is a member of the clergy is probably Rabbi David Small, leader of the Conservative synagogue in Barnard’s Crossing, Massachusetts.  The eleven mysteries featuring Rabbi Small were written by Harry Kemelman, a former Boston school teacher.  Although he’s a husband and father to two children, we mainly see him as the religious leader of his congregation.  The word “rabbi” in Hebrew means teacher, and Rabbi Small strives to teach his congregants via the Torah, the first five books of the Jewish bible, also known as the Old Testament.  There are always a variety of opinions in his synagogue, and various members try in different books in the series to oust the rabbi from his pulpit, but in the end he remains to lead his flock to greater knowledge of their religion and, in his spare time, to solve a crime or two.

A great resource I recommend for readers interested in religious sleuths is Clerical Detectives.  Philip Grosset has compiled a list of over three hundred clergy-related protagonists, including widows of religious men and laypeople who are particularly pious; some of these books are contemporary, many more are not.  In addition to lists featuring the four clergy I’ve mentioned above, there are dozens of other categories, including ministers (to use a generic word) in the Buddhist, Hindu, Amish, Mithraism, Voodoo, and Druidism practices.  If, like me, you’re not totally familiar with the beliefs of the last three subsets, that’s a good reason to check out this excellent web site.

Happy Holidays and Happy Reading!

Marilyn

It’s 2004, and three-year-old Coco Jackson is missing.  Her family, including her identical twin sister Ruby, their parents Claire and Sean, two older half-sisters, three other couples, and several children are spending the weekend at the Jackson holiday home in Bournemouth, England, to celebrate Sean’s fiftieth birthday.

Before the weekend is over, Coco’s older step-siblings leave the party and return to their mother’s home; Claire drives back to London after discovering her husband in flagrante delicto with another woman; alcohol and drugs are used and abused in abundance; Coco is gone; and the lives of everyone present are changed irreparably.

The people at this party are wealthy, educated, and not very nice.  Sean Jackson is a handsome, successful, and charismatic businessman who is extremely self-involved and uncaring in his dealings with family and friends.  Claire, who was his mistress before she became his second wife, has come to realize that the charm with which he overwhelmed her before they were married is simply a cover for his narcissistic personality and his persistent womanizing; perhaps as a form of revenge, she shows no interest in maintaining any sort of positive relationship with her step-daughters.

The three other couples attending Sean’s fiftieth are similarly unpleasant.  Linda is the woman with whom Sean is having an affair, and her partner James is a Dr. Feelgood with a supply of prescription and non-prescription drugs for every occasion.  Charles is a rising Tory politician on the far right of his party; his wife Imogen has no other interest in life but furthering his career.  Maria and her husband Robert are a very successful couple, she the head of a public relations firm, he a lawyer, who seem on the surface to be the most likeable people in the group, but appearances can be deceiving.  And Robert’s fifteen-year-old daughter Simone, the child of his first marriage, is desperately trying to attract the wandering eye of the event’s host.

The Darkest Secret tells the story that starts at the beginning of this infamous weekend and continues to the present.  We first learn of Coco’s disappearance from witness statements at the beginning of the novel, and then we learn, bringing the story up to the present, that Sean has died.  Even though Milly, his younger daughter from his first marriage, hasn’t seen her father in years, her mother asks her to identify the body; she doesn’t feel able to and Sean’s third wife can’t because she’s home with their young daughter.

Alex Marwood’s novel will keep you in suspense throughout.  The tight group of adults has a lot of secrets to keep.  They’ve been successful at it for fifteen years, but now those secrets are in danger of being revealed.  And the people involved can’t let that happen.

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

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

December 3, 2016

What do a war correspondent, a nurse, the founder of a detective agency, a dentist, and the 16th president of the United States have in common?  They all wrote mystery stories.

The above (Richard Harding Davis, Louisa May Alcott, Allan Pinkerton, Rodrigues Ottolengui, and Abraham Lincoln) are these five individuals who are not known for creating stories we loosely call mysteries.  It’s true that Davis and Alcott were writers, but they are certainly not remembered for writing in this genre.  Pinkerton founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (still in business, with their motto “We Never Sleep”), Ottolengui was the author of a 19th-century dentistry textbook that was used for decades, and Abraham Lincoln–well, you know about him.

So what made these men and women, plus dozens of others equally unlikely, venture into the new field of mystery writing?  After all, American detective stories only came into being in 1841, with Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murder in the Rue Morgue.”  And even after that, the detective, whether amateur or professional, made few appearances.  It took Sherlock Holmes, more than four decades later and in another country at that, to make detective stories or mysteries a major part of the literary landscape as we know it.

In Otto Penzler’s excellent introduction to this anthology, he answers the question of how there can have been mysteries published before Poe’s Auguste Dupin came on the scene if we acknowledge that Poe is the inventor of the detective story.  Penzler explains this by giving the definition of a mystery as “any work of fiction in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is central to the theme or the plot.”  A detective isn’t truly necessary for a mystery–rather, it is the story of the crime as opposed to the story of the man or woman who solves it that makes it a mystery.  Thus, in this collection of stories, the first three stories were published years before Poe’s debut.  But I think it is fair to say that without his detective, the genre would have a very different feel to it than it does today.

Not all the stories in this volume are what I consider outstanding.  A few, including those written by very well-known authors of “serious” literature, I found mediocre.  On the other hand, some are really good and several are excellent.  Still, as Penzler concludes in his introduction, the mysteries/detective stories/thrillers of the twentieth and twenty-first century could not have been written without the earlier authors laying the groundwork.  And so those of us who enjoy mysteries must surely give thanks to the literary pioneers who started it all.

Marilyn

If we think back through history and imagine that times were easier or more law-abiding then, all we have to do is read any of the excellent historical mysteries on bookstore or library shelves.  In his latest novel, Robin Blake proves that intrigue, adultery, and murder were, so to speak, alive and well even in the small towns of England.

Titus Cragg is the coroner in Preston in the year 1743.  There are surreptitious goings-on among several of the well-do-do merchants of the town.  In the name of “improvements,” they appear to be determined to shut down Preston’s tannery and skin-yard.  Foul-smelling the industry may be, but it provides income for the town’s remaining three families of tanners.  The entire place is dirty, with fire heating the materials necessary to make animal hides into useful goods, but there is no other way to cure leather.

As the novel opens, a baby’s body is found in one of the handler pits in the tannery.   This leads to two questions:  who was the mother of this infant, and was the baby stillborn or did the mother kill her own child?

Titus would prefer that the infant be examined by his friend Luke Fidelis, a young physician who studied both in London and abroad, bringing modern techniques and theories to Preston.  Unfortunately, Luke is away, but the town’s other doctor, Basilius Harrod, is available to determine the cause of death.

Although Basilius is a friend of Titus’ and the more popular physician in town, his methods are old-fashioned, as his diagnoses often involve humours and ephemeral qualities or textures as causes of illness or death.  That is the case as he examines the baby, stating unequivocally that she was stillborn.  When Titus suggests he might like to turn the baby over for a complete look at her body, he recoiles.  “Touch it?  Certainly not, Titus….That might be dangerous….Troubled spirits….”

Then, when Luke Fidelis returns to the village and examines the corpse, he comes to the opposite conclusion, namely that the child was murdered.  So who is to be believed?

The settings and characters in Skin and Bone are perfect, easily drawing the reader into the lives of people who lived more than two and a half centuries ago.  Greed and profiteering are rampant, as are officials’ desire to come to a hasty if uninformed conclusion about a troubling issue.

Titus Cragg is an honorable man who combines strict principles with compassion for his fellow citizens.  This does not always work well with the mayor and the Council of Preston, men who are more eager to put unpleasantness behind them quickly and get on with their primary objective, obtaining as much money and power as possible through their positions.

When I reviewed The Hidden Man last year, I was struck with the author’s ability to make the 18th century come alive.  Robin Blake has done this again in Skin and Bone, a mystery that will grab you from the beginning and not let go.

You can read more about Robin Blake at this web site.

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

Vigilante justice–what does it mean to you?  The dictionary definition is easy to understand:  a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the process of law is viewed as inadequate); broadly : a self-appointed doer of justice.  We can’t allow people to take the law into their own hands, can we?  But what happens when the official justice system fails its victims?

The prologue of The Hanging Club opens with Mahmud Irani returning to his taxi after Friday prayers.  He’s hailed by a man who gets into the cab and uses his iPhone to direct Mahmud to his desired destination:  Newgate Street.  As they arrive there, the man leans forward from the back seat and presses an old-fashioned straight razor against the driver’s eye.  The car stops, the two men get out, and the passenger directs the driver into a building where three others are waiting.

Mahmud is forced onto a stool that is directly underneath a noose hanging from the ceiling.  Covering the walls of the room are dozens of photos of schoolgirls, all smiling.  Mahmud recognizes them as young girls who had been abducted and raped by himself and his friends.  As he tries to explain that these girls were whores, asking for what happened to them, the stool is kicked from beneath him, he experiences excruciating pain, and he dies.  But he’s only the first.

The opening sentence of the novel is perfect:  “We sat in Court One of the Old Bailey and we waited for justice.”  But they don’t get it.

Steve Goddard was a husband and father.  When he saw three teenage boys urinating on his wife’s car, he ran out of his house and attempted to stop them.  The three boys kicked him to the ground and kept kicking him until he was dead.  They urinated on him and laughed, and all the while one of the boys was filming this; it was almost immediately posted online.  There is no question as to who had committed the crime.

Although the jury is unanimous in its guilty verdict, the judge said the defendants’ attorney proved mitigating circumstances, which reduced the charge to manslaughter.  So for kicking a man to death, the three are sentenced to twelve months in prison.  The remaining Goddards, the mother and her two children, are left weeping and bewildered at the Crown’s version of justice.

Max Wolfe, the detective who arrested the three boys, knows there is nothing more to be done.  But that doesn’t mean he can forget about the case, the injustice of it.  Later that same day the video of the taxi driver being hanged goes viral, and the police in the Major Incident Room watch it.  After watching it multiple times, a new recruit says, “But who’d want to do that to him?”  And unconsciously, almost against his will, Max thinks, “Who the hell wouldn’t?”

Tony Parsons has written about a topic that resonates today.  What is our reaction when we think a truly heinous crime has been committed but not punished sufficiently, if at all? The Hanging Club is a remarkable thriller, not only because it’s so well written but because it brings up a subject that touches so many lives.  Does justice always prevail?  Can vengeance ever be right?  And what is motivating the vigilantes–vengeance, revenge, or bloodlust?

You can read more about Tony Parsons at various sites on the internet.

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

Hell Fire is one of the five best mysteries I’ve read this year.  In fact, I would remove the genre qualifier and say it’s one of the five best novels I’ve read this year.

The protagonist, Police Inspector Konrad Sejer, works in a small community outside Oslo.  The crime has Sejer shaken as he has never been before.  Two corpses are found in a broken-down trailer on a farm.  The victims are a woman, Bonnie Hayden, and a child, possibly hers, although there’s no identification for the youngster.  Looking at the child’s body, clothed in a sweatsuit, bloodied and with multiple knife wounds, it’s impossible for the inspector to tell its sex.

The story goes back and forth between two sets of people.  We first meet Eddie Malthe and his mother Mass.  Eddie is twenty-one, an overweight young man with developmental delays who is unable to hold even a menial job.  His mother takes care of him with total devotion and patience, but since they’re alone in the world she worries what will happen to him when she dies.

Mass has told her son that his father left them when Eddie was a young boy.  Eddie doesn’t really remember the man, whom his mother has told him died years earlier after starting another family in Copenhagen, but he has a photo of him hanging in his bedroom that he looks at every night.  His obsession is to get enough information from his mother to allow him to find his father’s grave so that he may lay flowers on it, and he never tires of asking her to do this.

Bonnie Hayden and Simon, her young son, also live by themselves.  She works as a home health aide for a charity that services the elderly and disabled, always being given the most difficult cases because of her gentle and caring behavior.  Her life isn’t an easy one, but the love and strong bond between mother and child make things a bit easier.

As Sejer questions Bonnie’s best friend, the clients she visits on a weekly basis, the farmer on whose land the trailer was located, and her parents, he can find no one with any animosity toward her, no reason for the deaths of this mother and her child.  But someone must be hiding something.

Karin Fossum’s writing is flawless, and the characters she writes about are totally realistic.  There’s a wonderful interview with her in the online British magazine Independent, in which she talks about her outlook on life and her writing.  She tells the interviewer that she is no good with plots (something which with I definitely disagree), so she concentrates on “the yearnings of life’s also-rans, and how fragile minds fracture when seclusion or routine is disturbed.”

Hell Fire is a moving, tragic story of lives on parallel tracks that must inevitably collide.  It’s a must-read for its look into the hearts and minds of people who do things with the best of intentions, only to see them lead to death and destruction.

You can read more about Karin Fossum at many sites on the web; the interview mentioned above may be found at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/karin-fossum-i-knew-a-murderer-i-knew-the-victim-too-1739894.html.

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

Someone is killing the people at a dinner party at Godolphin House, a manor located on a remote family-owned island off the southwest corner of England.  Deaths by rifle shot, knife, explosion–but why?

The owner of the island, Lord Hargrave, arrives at the office of Cyrus Barker and his assistant Thomas Llewelyn, private enquiry agents in London.  Hargrave and his wife will be hosting this party with a dual purpose; he wants to come to a diplomatic agreement with Henri Gascoigne, the French ambassador, concerning colonies in Africa; she is hoping to find suitable matches for their older son and their only daughter.  The nobleman wants the agents to guard Gascoigne, and Cyrus, the senior member of the firm, reluctantly agrees.

Everything appears to be going smoothly at the house until the first murder.  Lord Hargrave himself is the victim, shot after dinner while surrounded by several of his guests in the garden.  Of course everyone is horrified, and Ambassador Gascoigne insists he needs his own bodyguard, who has remained on board the boat that brought the ambassador to the island, to protect him.  When Cyrus and Thomas rush to the harbor to bring Delacroix back to the house, however, the boat is gone and his body is floating in the water.

Thus begins a terrifying ordeal for those left in Godolphin House.  In addition to the two investigators and the ambassador, Lady Hargrave and her three children, Colonel Fraser and his wife, Doctor Anstruther and his two daughters, a businessman and his valet from South America, and Philippa Ashleigh, Cyrus Barker’s particular friend, are present.  And, naturally, the servants—fifteen of them.

In fact, two killings occur even before Cyrus and Thomas arrive at the island.  The head of a boarding school on the mainland is shot as he calls out the window to one of his students; the woman who ran a foster home is found in her yard with a broken neck.  These two deaths, seemingly unrelated to each other or to the island, are actually just the beginning of the murderous spree that will follow.

Hell Bay is narrated by young Thomas, Cyrus’ assistant.  He is in awe of his employer and cannot shake the feeling that he will never have the insights that the latter has.  He’s anxious to appear more sophisticated and worldly than he actually is and desperate to absorb knowledge from his mentor.  But Cyrus refuses to coddle him, saying “If I spoon-feed you the answers, however shall you learn?”

Hell Bay is the eighth mystery in Will Thomas’ Barker and Llewelyn series, set at the end of the nineteenth century.  Each one of his novels sets a perfect scene that will draw you into a period well worth visiting.

You can read more about Will Thomas at this web site.

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

As Caribbean islands go, Anegada, British Virgin Islands, doesn’t stand out.  Overshadowed by its neighbors Tortola, Virgin Gorda, and the more than sixty other islands in the chain, it’s very low-key.  One of its two claims to fame is that it’s the only coral island in the group, with a rich assortment of wildlife, but that doesn’t bring in the tourists.  The other is that there never had been a crime committed on Anegada…until now.

Teddy Creque is the lone law enforcement figure on the island.  He’s not a policeman but a Special Constable, one who has never encountered a crime in his many years of patrol.  However, now he finds himself confronted with the crab-bitten corpse of a man who had been an annual visitor for several years, a man who quietly went about the study of herpetology without interacting very much with anyone.

Paul Kelliher, Ph.D., biologist and professor at Boston University, has been found dead by Anthony Wedderburn, a/k/a De White Rasta.  De White is, in fact, a British lord who has made his home on Anegada for some time.  He is always high on ganja, although no one has ever been able to figure out where he obtains his supply.  He talks in the patois of the island in public, but when he’s alone with Teddy he reverts to the Oxford English that is his mother tongue.

Never having been involved in an investigation, much less been in charge of one, Teddy is quickly removed from the inquiry into Kelliher’s death by Howard Tuttle Lane, deputy commissioner of the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force, who wants an experienced policeman in charge.  Furious at Teddy for moving the body, although obviously it was done to protect the corpse from further depredation by animals, Lane informs Teddy that as soon as the inquiry is completed and the murderer caught, he will be suspended without pay for two weeks.  The only reason the suspension does not begin immediately, he tells the special constable, is because he cannot spare anyone else to police the small island while they are searching for the killer.

Although Teddy’s professional life has been quiet up to this point, his personal life has not.  Several months prior to the opening of the novel, he met Cat Wells, the helicopter pilot who flies in the infrequent tourist from other British Virgin Islands.  It doesn’t take long for the two to start a passionate affair, making the married Teddy feel guilty and uncomfortable but not enough of either to stop seeing her.  Each time he promises himself that this time will be the last, but even as he’s saying it he knows it’s not true.  Cat is irresistible.

Sun, Sand, Murder is John Keyse-Walker’s first novel, and it’s a great debut.  The dialogue is sparkling, the setting glorious, and protagonist Teddy Creque is a wonderful addition to the genre.  He’s obviously in over his head trying to figure out what happened to Paul Kelliher, which he continues to do despite his superior’s order to leave the investigation to the professionals, but Teddy’s humanity and his knowledge of Anegada are working for him.  This novel won the Mystery Writers of America/Minatour Books First Crime Novel Award in 2015.  Sun, Sand, Murder is a wonderful read.

You can read more about John Keyse-Walker at this web site.

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

Maggie Rose is used to getting requests from convicted killers to help them in their fight for freedom.  Of course they’ve been wrongly imprisoned–isn’t everyone in jail innocent?

Hamish Wolfe is one of those men.  A strikingly handsome man, a successful physician, a gifted athlete, he nonetheless has been convicted of murdering three women and is suspected in the disappearance of a fourth.  Their crimes?  Being fat.

Hamish Wolfe’s mother and a number of his supporters have a website devoted to proclaiming his innocence.  His mother meets Maggie and implores her to look into the case and free Hamish, as she has been able to do with several other men.  In addition to being a defense attorney, or barrister as they are called in England, Maggie is the author of several books recounting the trials of the men she has been able to free.  It’s not that she necessarily thinks each man is innocent but simply that their trials weren’t properly conducted, the evidence was mishandled, or the defending barristers were incompetent.  It doesn’t appear to matter to her that these men are probably, in fact, killers; what’s important is that they were improperly convicted and thus should be freed.

Detective Sergeant Pete Weston has been closely monitoring the Wolfe case, even after its conclusion. He visits Maggie to reiterate his belief that Hamish is indeed guilty and to try to persuade her not to get involved.  Her response?  “…for what it’s worth, I agree with you.  I have no plans to take on his case….If I were to decide to do so, no amount of pressure on your part would put me off.”  It couldn’t be more clear than that, Pete thinks.

But Hamish’s mother and his “fan club” aren’t about to give up.  They become more intrusive in Maggie’s life, there’s a forced entry into her home, and continued mail from Hamish himself asking for her help.  So between her own curiosity and the pressure from those who believe that the prisoner is innocent, Maggie decides she must start her own investigation.  From there it’s a slippery slope, and she is propelled ever faster into the mystery that is Hamish Wolfe.

Daisy in Chains is a taut, suspenseful thriller.  Just like the previous book by Ms. Bolton that I reviewed, Little Black Lies, this mystery grabs you and won’t let go.  Is Hamish Wolfe innocent?  Who is the recipient of the letters he’s writing from jail, the letters that proclaim his undying love?  Does Maggie think he truly is innocent, or is the desire to write another best-selling true-crime book too irresistible to pass up?

Sharon Bolton has written an extraordinary novel, one that will keep you reading far into the night.  You can read more about her at this web site.

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

The setting–a weekly therapy group for people recovering, or trying to recover, from addictions.  Readers may immediately think of drugs and alcohol, but two members of the group are also suffering from shopping and gambling problems.  Their group leader, a former addict himself, seems to be handling things well, at least until one of the participants is murdered.

Tony De Silva is the leader.  He’s not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but as a former drug addict he certainly has an understanding of the many issues involved in recovery.  His Monday night group consists, at the beginning of the novel, of two women and two men.  Heather, a woman in her thirties, has a gambling and drug problem; Diana, a middle-aged divorcée, is an out-of-control shopaholic and as well as a former alcoholic; Robin is a sixty-something surgeon who nearly got his medical license revoked for performing surgery while under the influence of narcotics; and Chris is a homeless man in his twenties who continues to support his drug habit by homosexual prostitution.

Into this mix comes Caroline, an obese woman who admits to an eating disorder and to becoming hooked on painkillers.  And the group, which has been functioning more or less peacefully, finds that its dynamics have changed, and not for the better.

The novel is told over a period of time by each member of the group, giving the reader an insight into issues that don’t necessarily get aired in the weekly meetings.  Tony, who is a good facilitator, is a former singer/songwriter whose career never took off, something he is constantly reminded of by his wife’s cutting remarks.  The meetings take place on the lower level of their home, while on the upper level their teenage daughter smokes weed almost constantly, coming downstairs for meals which she leaves virtually untouched.

Robin talks about his childhood in South Africa and his friendship with the son of his parents’ servants, a couple who lost their jobs because of a lie young Robin told.  Diana is still fuming over her husband having left her for a much younger woman and her daughter placing the blame for that on Diana.  Heather is nursing a crush on Tony, planning a birthday party for herself in the hope that he, as well as the other group members, will attend.  Chris spends his welfare money on video games in arcades, using the venues as places to meet young boys who will give him a room for the night and perhaps pay for his sexual services.

Although the murder takes place fairly early in the novel, the reader doesn’t know who the victim is until much later.  What we do know is that someone is in prison for a crime and has a visitor who is trying to find out the motive.  But how many murders are there–one or two?

Nicola Tanner is the detective inspector in charge of the case.  Stymied by everyone’s prior agreement to keep confidential what is said in the therapy sessions, Nicola is finding it hard to discover the murderer and the motive for the crime.  Plus she’s having problems at home with her long-time partner Susan, who has an addiction problem of her own.

Die of Shame will having you turning pages compulsively until the end.  There’s a one-two punch in the last two chapters that had me saying “wow” out loud at the end of each one.  Mark Billingham has written a terrific and touching mystery.

You can read more about Mark Billingham at this web site.

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

It’s been ten years since six-year-olds Patrick Moore and Rhys Baldwin were abducted from Patrick’s home in suburban New Jersey.  Their parents have never given up hope that the boys will return, but with each passing year it has gotten harder to keep the faith.  Now one of them appears to have been located, but what about the other?

Rhys is the son of Win Lockwood’s cousin Brooke; she is one of the very, very few people about whom he cares.  One other, of course, is Myron Bolitar.  The two men have been friends since they met the first day of their freshman year at Duke, and although they couldn’t be more different on the surface, something has kept them close all these years.  Win, however, disappeared from Myron’s life a year ago without explanation; now a long-distance call from England is the first confirmation that he is alive and well.

Win tells Myron that he believes he has seen Patrick.  He had received a cryptic email that gave a clue as to the boys’ location in a seedy part of London.  When he gets there, he sees a teenager who looks like Patrick might look ten years after his disappearance, but before Win can approach him three thugs head toward the boy.  When Win tells them to leave, they turn on him with knives but, Win being Win, all three are dead before they have a chance to attack him.  Then, when he turns to talk to the boy, the teen is gone.

Win’s phone call is to ask Myron to fly to England to help search for Patrick and Rhys.  What they find is deeper and even more disturbing than the kidnapping itself.

Home is partly narrated in the first person by Win, more formally known as Windsor Horne Lockwood III, and partly in the third person limited point of view of Myron.  Win is a man of incredible wealth and intelligence but also a man almost devoid of empathetic responses.  Even his anger is controlled, always contained.  As he says of himself in the opening chapter, after killing the three men who were threatening the boy Win believes may be Patrick, “I give myself a second, no more, to relish the high.  You would too, if you didn’t pretend otherwise.”  He knows what he is and makes no apologies for it.

In Home, Win’s softer side comes out for the first time.  This is obviously because of his feeling for his cousin Brooke; this familial relationship is the reason Win has disappeared for a year, attempting to find her son.  Now he has come closer than anyone else by finding Patrick, whom he hopes will lead him to Rhys.  But it’s not that easy.

Harlan Coben is a master storyteller.  In this novel the tragedies of two families are paramount.  Win and Myron are an outstanding team, but even they cannot heal all the heartbreak that the Moores and Baldwins have experienced.

You can read more about Harlan Coben at this web site.

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

A lot of years have passed since the invasion of Normandy, but apparently not enough.  At least not enough for old sins to be buried so deeply that they’ll never be uncovered.

Bell Elkins, prosecuting attorney in rural Acker’s Gap, West Virginia, is meeting an acquaintance, a Georgetown Law School classmate, for a drink.  Darlene Strayer and Bell weren’t close, but they both grew up in neighboring small towns in West Virginia and have successful careers, and that makes each one sort of an anomaly in that area of the country.  But while Bell left behind a lucrative career in the nation’s capital to return home, Darlene stayed, became a federal prosecutor and is now a successful litigator in a private firm.  So what could be the reason that she asks Bell to meet her at the Tie Yard Tavern, requesting her help?

Darlene tells Bell that her father, Harmon Strayer, died in a nursing home the previous week at the age of ninety.  Darlene had placed him there three years earlier when his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s made it impossible for him to live alone or to move to Washington to live with her.  He had been doing reasonably well until the past few months, but during each successive visit Darlene noticed his agitation growing.

She tells Bell that although she knew there was something wrong at Thornapple Terrace, it was easier to do nothing, to attribute her father’s emotional disturbances as increasingly visible signs of the progression of his dementia.  But now that he’s dead, Darlene feels she should have forced the home to do something, to pay attention to the way her father was behaving.  She thinks that his death, even considering his advanced age and mental condition, wasn’t natural or caused by negligence–she thinks he was murdered.

When Darlene leaves the tavern to drive home to D.C., after getting a reluctant promise from Bell to look into the situation unofficially, a brutal winter storm is in full force.  Just a few hours later, in the middle of the night, a deputy sheriff knocks on Bell’s door.  A trucker has found Darlene’s wrecked Audi and her body on the curve of a road nicknamed Help me Jesus for the many wrecks that have taken place there.

Bell’s name was found on a note in Darlene’s coat pocket, the deputy sheriff said; the car smelled of alcohol and Darlene had vomited before the crash.  That doesn’t make sense, Bell thinks, because during the whole time the two women had been talking in the tavern, Darlene had never taken even one sip from the drink in front of her.

Sorrow Road then flashes back to 1938.  Harmon Strayer, Vic Plumley, and Alvie Sherrill were inseparable, and three years later they went off to war together, taking part in the Normandy invasion.  The friends had never been out of West Virginia before that, and even though each was secretly frightened, together the threesome acquitted themselves well and returned to the admiration of the townspeople of Norbitt, West Virginia.  But something had happened to them during the war that changed them, not in a good way, forever after.  Now the past apparently has caught up with Harmon Strayer.

I am a fervent admirer of Julia Keller’s series.  Her writing is outstanding, her characters shaded and believable, and her plots take the reader along for an exciting ride.  This is the fifth book in the Bell Elkins series; I strongly suggest you read the other four as well.

You can read more about Julia Keller at this web site.

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